2. Kate Chopin
• 1850-1904
• “Desiree’s Baby” (1893) was her first story in Vogue
• Periodicals: v important to post-Civil war culture
• Increasing literacygrowth of mass media
• Began writing after her husband’s death as a means of
supporting the family
• Book The Awakening (1899) most controversial
• Major concerns include the roles of women within Louisianan
culture
• Writing draws upon the principles of American regionalism,
the “local color movement”
4. Local Color Movement
• After the Civil War, American writers began to write region-
specific works
• Special attention was paid to the unique cultures, language
and ecosystems (landscapes) of the East, West, South, and
Midwest
• These stories were sought due to an increased desire to
“know” what the rest of the country looked like
• (perhaps a connection to the knowledge soldiers brought home
from the war itself?)
• Printed in many national publications, they reached a wide
audience
• Chopin’s regionalism includes Bayou Folk (1894) and many of
her other works
5. Louisiana Plantations
• Major sugar producers for the U.S. before the war—
up to one half of all sugar consumed
• Also produced cotton; production more than
doubled from 1840-1860.
• Why is the story set in plantation culture?
• reflects current concerns over race in the 1890s
• allows the reader to “revisit” south in its heyday?
• intensity of labor for sugar and cotton allows for a sense of
“extremes” between house and field
• best reflects Louisianan landscape, “local color”
6. Love and Desire in “Desiree’s
Baby”
• Story features internal reflection and external conversation in
roughly equal measure
• Infatuation happens “at first sight” (internal)
• The actual marriage is developed/destroyed only through
external conversations between characters (or lack of
conversation)
• All intimate relationships are fundamentally flawed due to the
fear of miscegenation. No ability within the culture to fully
trust your partner
• The octoroon: sexually desirable “otherness”
• Reflection of the consequences of the one-drop rule and the
ideas behind it
7. Clothing in “Desiree’s Baby”
• Reflects the conflation of class and race in antebellum society
• Also reflects the intensified fear of miscegenation in postwar
society, the way people can “pass” for white (as if they were
costumed/dressing up/pretending)
• The “corbeille” (gift basket given by the groom to the bride)
comes from France; includes a Parisian layette
• Desiree’s slippers are made for indoor use, not hard walking
• Desiree’s clothing is light-colored, delicate and ornate. Muslin,
lace—and the dress she wears at the end of the story is easily
torn in the fields
• Armand keeps even the clothes at arm’s length at the end of
the story—instructs the slaves to do the burning
8. Sources
• “Antebellum Louisiana: Agrarian Life.” The Cabildo. Louisiana State
Museum. Web. 2 Sept. 2011.
<http://lsm.crt.state.la.us/CABILDO/cab-antebellum3.htm>
• Cayton, Mary, ed. Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual
History. New York: Scribners, 2001. Print.
• Greenlee, Anneta. “Dying to Belong: Women’s Search for Perfect
Love in the Works of Zinaida Gippius, Kate Chopin, Galena
Shcherbakova and Lya Luft.” Diss. CUNY Graduate Center, 2007.
Print.
• Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 6: Late Nineteenth Century - Kate Chopin."
PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference
Guide. Web. 2 Sept. 2011.
<http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap6/chopin.html>
• Story of the Week: Desiree’s Baby. The Library of America, 2010.
Web. 2 Sept. 2011.
<http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2010/09/desirees-baby.html>
