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Desiree's Baby Literary Analysis

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How would a woman be treated today if she had a black child with a white man compared to the early ages of America. The era that Kate Chopin wrote this story in was the mid-19th century when slaves worked on plantations and women in the south were beginning to fight for freedom. An analysis of Kate Chopin’s story “Desiree’s Baby” uses plot structure to build up suspense for the climax, to get the audience situated on the same suspicion, and to create an ironic ending, so that she can show the audience her point of view on how women always seemed to be the culprit. Kate gives a brief description of each characters, but the way she describes Desiree makes the audience immediately aware that her past might affect her in some way down the line. Chopin built up this suspense for the climax of the story. “The prevailing belief was that she had been purposely left by a party of Texans”. (80-81) Chopin explains that Desiree’s past remains unclear and since it is not concrete, it leaves her past open to discussion. Chopin builds suspense …show more content…
At first, Chopin gives a history of Armand’s life which can mislead the audience into thinking that there was nothing wrong with Armand. “…he had known her since his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there”. (81) The misleading part of his history is that the audience thinks that he would remember his mother being black at the age of eight. Coming from France also had a stronger case against Desiree’s unknown past. When the baby was born Desiree didn’t see anything wrong with him, this late realization of her baby allows the audience to judge her on her past. “She looked from her child to the boy who stood beside him, and back again”. (82) When she reached Armand to ask what she found out, she discovers instead that Armand already knew, and it was making him really

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