Desiree's Baby

“That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot.” 

This describes the way Armand Aubigny fell in love with Désirée, quickly and intensely. The gunshot imagery lends a sense of danger and instability to their relationship, which foreshadows their tragic dissolution later in the story. This quotation also indicates that Armand’s father fell in love with his mother in the same impulsive way—in his case, with a woman whose race made their union illegal.

“He was reminded that she was nameless. What did it matter about a name when he could give her one of the oldest and proudest in Louisiana?” 

At the beginning of their relationship, Armand disregards Désirée’s “namelessness.” This is ironic because her ancestry becomes the quality he most cares about once he believes her to be mixed-race. The answer to the question, “What did it matter about a name”—posed casually here by a naive Armand—changes dramatically by the end of the story.

“It was a sad looking place, which for many years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever to leave it.”

Madame Valmondé feels negatively affected by L’Abri immediately upon her arrival, setting the story’s mood. She doesn’t know, and neither does the reader, that the reason Madame Aubigny is believed to have stayed in France is incorrect. She stayed in France because an interracial marriage between her and the late Monsieur Aubigny would have been illegal in the United States.

“The yellow nurse woman sat beside a window fanning herself.”

Madame Valmondé notices Zandrine when she first enters Désirée’s bedroom, but it’s not until Désirée addresses her that she’s named. At first glance, this character exists at the edges of the story’s frame, seemingly segregated from the main characters. As the story unfolds and the main characters’ racial identities come under new scrutiny, the presence of voiceless mixed-race characters takes on new profound and poignant meaning. 

“Madame Valmondé bent her portly figure over Désirée and kissed her, holding her an instant tenderly in her arms. Then she turned to the child. ‘This is not the baby!’ she exclaimed, in startled tones.” 

This moment represents rising action—the first confirmation in “Désirée’s Baby” that something is not quite right. Madame Valmondé’s strange feeling upon entering L’Abri foreshadows this moment. However, because Madame Valmondé does not explicitly say what she observes, the reader craves information, and tension is created between what the characters know, and the reader does not.

“‘Yes, the child has grown, has changed;’ said Madame Valmondé, slowly, as she replaced it beside its mother. ‘What does Armand say?’” 

Madame Valmondé asks Désirée what her husband says about the baby, rather than offer her own interpretation. This establishes Armand as the supreme voice of judgment. It foreshadows that what Armand says will ultimately be of great import.

“Oh, mamma, I’m so happy; it frightens me.” 

Désirée utters these words to Madame Valmondé during her visit. Désirée is happy and restful, a state which the reader suspects—because of the principles of storytelling—will not last. Désirée’s admission that happiness and fear coexist in her is perhaps a semi-conscious acknowledgment of this same principle. It foreshadows the tragic events that follow.

“When the baby was about three months old, Désirée awoke one day to the conviction that there was something in the air menacing her peace. It was at first too subtle to grasp.” 

This insight into Désirée’s emotional state acts as foreshadowing. Her inability to “grasp” the source of her anxiety mimics the reader’s own inability to put the pieces together, and her interrogation of this suspicion drives the narrative forward. Désirée’s inability to guess what’s wrong also speaks to her innocence and naivety as a character.

“Désirée’s eyes had been fixed absently and sadly upon the baby, while she was striving to penetrate the threatening mist that she felt closing about her. She looked from her child to the boy who stood beside him, and back again; over and over. ‘Ah!’ It was a cry that she could not help; which she was not conscious of having uttered.” 

This passage contains Désirée's epiphany, her enlightenment that the source of anxiety in her household is her child. The action of looking back and forth between her baby and the other little boy prolongs the moment of discovery and builds tension. The passage also contains a metaphor which describes anxiety and fear as a physical “mist,” setting an eerie and otherworldly mood.

“‘What does it mean? tell me.’ He coldly but gently loosened her fingers from about his arm and thrust the hand away from him. ‘Tell me what it means!’ she cried despairingly. ‘It means,' he answered lightly, ‘that the child is not white; it means that you are not white.’”

This passage is the first time a character bluntly utters what has been unspoken or merely implied thus far into the story. It’s a cathartic confirmation of suspicion for both Désirée and the reader, who have been searching for an answer. It also represents a point-of-no-return in the story—a character’s acquisition of life-changing knowledge that critically affects what happens next.

“My mother, they tell me I am not white. Armand has told me I am not white. For God’s sake tell them it is not true. You must know it is not true. I shall die. I must die. I cannot be so unhappy, and live.” 

Désirée pleads with her mother to somehow reverse Armand’s verdict about her race. Yet even as she pleads, she appears to know it’s in vain, because begins to speak of death. This statement helps the reader interpret Désirée's actions at the end of the story as choosing death.

“He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife’s soul.” 

When Madame Valmondé invites Désirée home, Armand tells Désirée to go. He believes that hurting his wife is a way to take revenge on God—an act that, in the context of Catholicism, would be sacrilegious. This pillar in Chopin’s Catholicism motif contributes to the characterization of Armand as evil or Satanic. 

“Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway that commanded a view of the spectacle; and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the material which kept this fire ablaze.” 

This end of the story fast-forwards past Désirée’s departure to a time several weeks later when Armand burns her things. Armand’s placement inside the hall, seated and watching the giant bonfire from a distance, is significant: it creates a menacing, hellish visual of a character whom the story has already described as Satan-like (Paragraph 18). Armand’s physical separation from the enslaved people in this scene is ironic, given the information about his own racial ancestry he’s about to learn.