UNIT 23 KATE CHOPIN "Désirée's Baby" From A Study Guide: regionalist or local-color fiction is a genre which emerged after the Civil War satisfying new curiosity about different regions in their reunited nation; the historical reception of Chopin's writings shift from early success, followed by a long period of obscurity, rediscovery by feminist scholarship, until the present controversy of her treatment of gender, race and class issues; Chopin's Louisiana short stories are examples of realism and naturalism, considering that she used the conventions of localcolor fiction to undermine and dismantle the conservative ideology which this popular genre nostalgically helped to support; the reception of The Awakening was polemic since this complex narrative conveyed the theme of woman's growth from husband's possession to achieving self-ownership; "Désirée's Baby" subverts the idyllic images of the Old South offered by the plantation novels. Although in her own time Chopin was praised for her aesthetic achievement, she later was condemned on moral grounds for writing The Awakening, a story about the artistic and sexual awakening of a young woman dissatisfied with her conventional role as wife and mother. Feminist criticism has aroused a great deal of interest and encouraged analyses from other theoretical perspectives also. In the 20th century Seyersted edited her Complete Works and the first critical biography, because the only texts in print were short stories illustrative examples of regionalist or local color fiction which reduced her status to that of a marginalized "local colorist". They have been reinterpreted as subversive pieces that use the convention of the genre in order to undermine and dismantle the conservative ideology it helped to support. Chopin's Louisiana stories accurately depicted the everyday life of ordinary people of that area. Life: She is the first major writer in American literature formed outside the Protestant Anglo-Saxon mainstream. Raised by her mother, her maternal grandmother and her great grandmother, Chopin's personality was shaped while growing up in a matriarchal household ruled by strong independent-minded widows. After marrying Oscar Chopin, who had been born in Louisiana, the couple went to live in New Orleans (Louisiana), where a French atmosphere prevailed at the time. Work: She considered herself a dedicated professional writer and a serious artist as well. She started with a poem and tried Missouri local color with some short stories set in St. Louis. But she soon realized that would really sell was farther south, in Louisiana. At 18 spent three weeks in New Orleans and had been impressed by the sensuous life of its bourgeois Creole population. She became fascinated by the sophisticated and refined Creole culture, observing the exclusive milieu of this artistically sensitive elite as an outsider made up of descendants of the early French and Spanish settlers. She also came into contact with the Cajun culture, the descendants of the French-speaking Protestant. Chopin's Louisiana stories belong to one of these two groups, but as she was concerned with psychological realism, she tried to show how these people dealt with universal issues according to the specific values prevalent in their environment. Her Louisiana short stories represented one part of her literary production, since she wrote more than a hundred short stories, sketches, poems, essays, reviews, a one-act play and three novels. The reviewers praised her style in the first of her novels, At Fault, but objected to her portrayal of an alcoholic wife and to her treatment of the theme of divorce. She wrote Young Dr. Gosse and Theo but destroyed the manuscript. Before The Awakening, her reputation rested on the short narratives printed in Bayou Folk, a collection of 23 stories and sketches of rural life in Louisiana, which won great number of reviews and press notices. A Night in Acadie is her second collection of 21 stories. Several editors asked her to rewrite the stories they considered too indelicate or immoral and she reacted to censure in various ways. Sometimes she altered what she had submitted for publication, and developed and ability to hide encoded meanings that can only be uncovered by a close reading. She resisted pressure and suffered the consequences of dealing with subject matter that was deemed provocative. She never attempted to find a publisher for "The Storm", the joyful sexual fantasy of an unpunished happy adultery. "The Story of an Hour" was refused by the editor, since Chopin's heroines were becoming less submissive and more independent: she presented female characters forced to endure oppressive attachments to unattractive men imagining discontented women rebelling against their situation. Chopin also wrote about sexuality in the lives of men and women with a frankness rarely seen in the work of 19th c. female writers. The Awakening: It is a complex narrative about Edna Pontellier's growth from being her husband's possession to achieving self-ownership. She is a discontented wife and mother who experienced an awakening or process of self-discovery that makes her yearn for sexual freedom and artistic fulfillment. Although many reviewers recognized the aesthetic merit, most of them disapproved her handling of adultery which led to publishers cancelling Chopin's contract for a third collection. Its publication damaged Chopin's literary reputation, but the main reason why she wrote few stories afterwards was her failing health. Style and attitude towards slavery: The apparently clear and direct style of her brilliantly compressed prose had been revised in search of subtle ironies. Her chosen symbolism is now considered not merely decorative, but an essential artistic component of her technique. She has been called a psychological symbolist because she used symbols to project the psyche of her characters. Her narratives, set in the postbellum period, embodied a vision of society deeply concerned not with slavery itself but with its legacy. The few stories she set before the American Civil War, such as "Désirée's Baby", had tragic endings that subverted the idyllic images offered by the plantation novels evoked by Chopin in the deliberately deceptive beginnings of her narratives. "Désirée's Baby": It was published in the fashion magazine Vogue, being an immediate success, also included in the collection Bayou Folk. Her main themes -marriage and motherhood- are explored through a submissive female protagonist who is far from being like the emancipated heroin that people Chopin's later fiction. This is why the piece was not considered particularly threatening. The depiction of Désirée can be interpreted as an indictment of the patriarchal system so abhorred by the writer. It deals with miscegenation, a theme which most local colorist were reluctant to treat that Chopin managed to get through by encoding her profound meanings beneath the surface of her text. The story is told in Standard English but includes glimpses of French, spoken in the historical context where the plot takes place. Exploratory Questions - Chopin's language is generally simple and her vocabulary very precise. There is a preponderance of concrete nouns in DB, could it express the author's concern with material details that help to create a believable physical world? There is a preponderance of concrete nouns vs. the scarcity of abstract nouns. Chopin used the concrete words to evoke emotions and to foreshadow of what was going to happen or just the actual reality. Race and slavery appear at the end because is when we see the real meaning of the story. - Chopin's diction conveys the lazy mood with the use of static verbs that do not represent an action and adverbs that anchor the actions in a long space of time. - Analyze the eight similes paying attention to what some of the have in common: "as if struck by a pistol shot", "like an avalanche", "like a cowl", "like a sumptuous throne", "like ice". Are they merely decorative, or do they perform a function in the sinister development of the story? Do they emphasize the important of color in the story? - The juxtaposition of disparate or opposed images and ideas is a common literary technique in Kate Chopin's fiction (contrast). The binary logic that opposes such mutually exclusive pairs always privileges or values the term that is considered positive or superior and depreciates the other one as being negative or inferior. She also undermines any confidence in knowing where each character really stands within a firmly established hierarchical system, which is not as stable and "segregated" as one might think. "Désirée's Baby" cannot be interpreted only as a Manichean allegory as it is also a critic to the unfair situation lived by Désirée, who had it all and loses it for the accusation of being descendent of black people. From the beginning, we have clues of Armand's darkness and Désirée's goodness. - Chopin uses some fairytale convention which are incompatible with the typical features of a realist piece of fiction. There is tension or conflict caused by the juxtaposition of the two frames of reference -the old fairy tale framework and the modern realist short story framework, consider whether the author's subversive appropriation of traditional forms provides any new insight. - Chopin described southern life in a detached manner, with the objectivity that marks realist writers. The narrator explains the facts but not what the characters are thinking. She tells the story in a detached way but show her preference towards Désirée as it is patent when he she says about Armand "if he was human". - Analyze how the notion of "arbitrary justice" pervades DB, bearing in mind that the story exemplifies female dependence on male characters generally leads to the heroine's self-destructive behavior. Note that naturalistic writers often emphasize the extreme vulnerability and absolute powerlessness of their characters, faced with strong social and natural forces. Désirée's innocence is foreshadowed by linking her to white colors. - Armand could be viewed as part of the tradition of the "tragic octoroon" is linked to the stereotypical cruel slave-owner (Simon Legree in Uncle Tom's Cabin), find the devices used to present him as the villain. Most male characters in Chopin's fiction, and not only a brutal slave-owner such as Armand, treat their wives as if they were possessions or commodities, although not all women submissively see themselves as their husband's property. The theme of male possessiveness links DB to some of Chopin's most mature works labeled "proto-feminist" partly because their heroines envisage "self-ownership". Armand is presented as the villain, linking him to black colors and rude behavior towards his slaves. - Chopin provides many small clues, being foreshadowing a device to create expectation or to set up an explanation of later developments: "Oh, mamma, I'm so happy; it frightens me". - Chopin was ahead of her time in her way of addressing race and gender issues. To what extent is "DB" a story about the disastrous consequences of institutionalized racism and sexism upon people's lives? It offers a critique with emphasis on the evils of patriarchy and the slave system. - Reilly commented that Chopin's gift are in DB: directness of approach, sureness of touch, the swift strokes which give the setting and introduce and realize the characters, the amazing economy of words. Reilly, like most early critics, focused on Chopin's "charming" style while ignoring her social criticism. Local-color elements include picturesque landscape, vernacular speech, and the singular manners that characterize a particular region. French proper names appear in the story to the interspersed use of French, as the only phrase uttered by Zandrine is in French. The author chooses not to use dialect so she reduces the description of landscapes and other regional aspects to a minimum. To what extent does she appropriate the profoundly conservative local-color discourse in order to question or challenge it? Note that this short story directly and explicitly illustrates the problem of miscegenation, a taboo subject at the time. - Désirée's remark that Armand can hear the baby from La Blanche's cabin can suggest that he is the father of one of her children. - His marriage to Désirée could have been part of a plan to have legitimate children that would pass for white, and if they had a dark complexion he could always blame Désirée's "obscure origin" without endangering his own statues as a master, which depended on "racial purity" under the "one-drop rule" system. - As a "creative reader", do you enjoy Chopin's multilayered fiction? Chopin was reluctant to give any interpretation of her work which might be taken as definitive. From A Study Guide: Analyzing binary oppositions The purpose is to analyze how one term in each opposition is privileged, and how the contrast between the terms is reinforced or undermined. The binary oppositions to be found within "Désirée's Baby" are: - feminine vs. masculine - black vs. white - good vs. evil Combine or superimpose the oppositions, and carefully examine the resulting pattern of the terms which are favored. Note that binary oppositions should be tested for contradictions and inconsistencies. Look at the binary opposition feminine vs. masculine, and explain how the author represents social inequality between the sexes and constructs oppositions of gender. What gender issues are featured in this story? Look at the binary opposition black vs. white, and explain how the author represents social inequality between the races. What racial conflicts are emphasized in this story? Look at the binary opposition good vs. evil, and accept or reject the interpretation of "Désirée's Baby" as a Manichean allegory (bearing in mind how the concept is defined in the Glossary at the end of this Guide).
