Désirée's Baby (Kate Chopin) — graded reader B1–B2

Désirée's Baby

A graded reader · Kate Chopin · B1–B2

Warm-up

• Have you ever been to the southern United States, or would you like to go?

• Do you look more like your mother or your father? Who says so?

• Do you know your family history? How far back can you go?

• In your culture, do parents have a say in who their children marry?

The author and the book

Kate Chopin (1850–1904)

Kate Chopin was born Katherine O'Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850. During the Civil War, her family kept enslaved people in their house.

In 1870 she married Oscar Chopin and moved to New Orleans. Later they lived in Cloutierville, a small French village in Louisiana, and had six children. When Oscar died in 1882, he left her deep in debt. Back in St. Louis, her doctor, a family friend, suggested that she should start writing.

"Désirée's Baby" first appeared in Vogue magazine in January 1893, with the title "The Father of Désirée's Baby". It is set in Louisiana before the Civil War (1861–1865), when white planters owned enslaved Black people. In that society, a person of African descent was usually not accepted as white, and the law treated them very differently.

Chopin loved the St. Louis World's Fair and had a season ticket. In August 1904, after a hot day there, she fell ill, and she died soon after, aged 54.

Key words

plantation

foundling

bayou

a large farm in a hot region where crops like cotton were grown; in the American South, the work was done by enslaved people

a small child who is found after being left alone, whose parents nobody knows

a slow, deep river or stream in the wet, low land of Louisiana

of African descent

brand

having parents, grandparents or older family members who came from Africa

a mark burned into the skin to show who owns an animal, or, in the past, a person; also a sign of shame

Let's talk

• Chopin's family kept enslaved people. How might that shape the way she wrote about the South?

• Why do some people care so much about family names and "good families"?

• How do you think slavery shaped life on a plantation, for everyone living there?

• The story first appeared as "The Father of Désirée's Baby". What might it be about?

PART 1 OF 4

The girl at the gate

PART 1 · THE GIRL AT THE GATE

The day was pleasant, so Madame Valmondé drove over to L'Abri to see Désirée and the baby.

It made her laugh to think of Désirée with a baby. It seemed only yesterday that Désirée was almost a baby herself.

Eighteen years before, Monsieur Valmondé was riding through the gateway of his plantation when he found a little girl asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar. She woke up in his arms and began to cry for "Dada". That was all she could say.

Nobody knew where she came from. Some people thought she had wandered there by herself. Most believed that some Texans had left her there on purpose.

Their covered wagon had crossed on the ferry below the plantation that day. In time, Madame Valmondé stopped wondering. She had no children of her own, and she believed God had sent the girl to her. And Désirée grew up beautiful and gentle, loving and honest. Everyone at Valmondé adored her.

So it was no surprise that one day, when she was standing against the same stone pillar, Armand Aubigny rode by, saw her, and fell in love. That was how all the Aubignys fell in love, as if they were hit by a pistol shot.

The surprise was that he had not loved her before. He had known her since he was eight, when his father brought him home from Paris after his mother died there. Now his passion swept along like an avalanche, or a prairie fire.

PART 1 · THE GIRL AT THE GATE

Monsieur Valmondé wanted to be practical. Nobody knew where the girl came from. Armand looked into her eyes and did not care. She had no name? What did that matter? He could give her one of the oldest and proudest names in Louisiana. He ordered wedding gifts from Paris, waited as patiently as he could until they arrived, and then they were married.

Madame Valmondé had not seen Désirée and the baby for four weeks. When she reached L'Abri, she shivered, as she always did. It was a sad-looking place. For many years no woman had lived there. Old Monsieur Aubigny had married his wife and buried her in France, because she loved her own country too much to leave it.

The steep black roof came down over the yellow house like a monk's hood. Big, solemn oaks grew close around it, and their branches covered it like the cloth on a coffin. Young Armand was a strict master, too. Under his rule, the enslaved people of L'Abri had forgotten how to be cheerful, as they had been in his father's easy-going time.

Désirée was still weak. She lay on a couch in soft white clothes, with the baby asleep on her arm. Zandrine, the nurse, sat by the window, fanning herself.

Madame Valmondé bent over Désirée and kissed her, holding her tenderly for a moment. Then she turned to the child.

"This is not the baby!" she cried.

Book club

PART 1 · THE GIRL AT THE GATE

1. How did Désirée come to live with the Valmondés?

2. Why didn't Armand care that nobody knew Désirée's family?

3. What was L'Abri like, and how did Armand treat the people enslaved there?

4. Armand fell in love "like a pistol shot". Is sudden love a good start for a marriage?

5. Should family background matter when two people marry? Why, or why not?

6. Why do you think Madame Valmondé cried, "This is not the baby!"?

PART 2 OF 4

So happy it frightens me

PART 2 · SO HAPPY IT FRIGHTENS ME

"I knew you would be surprised," laughed Désirée, "at the way he has grown. The little piglet! Look at his legs, Mamma, and his hands, and his fingernails. Real fingernails! Zandrine had to cut them this morning. Isn't that true, Zandrine?"

Zandrine bowed her head in its turban, very grandly. "Yes, Madame."

"And the way he cries!" Désirée went on. "It's deafening. The other day, Armand heard him from as far away as La Blanche's cabin."

Madame Valmondé had not taken her eyes off the child. She lifted him and carried him to the brightest window. She studied the baby closely. Then she looked just as closely at Zandrine, who turned her face away and gazed across the fields.

"Yes, the child has grown. He has changed," said Madame Valmondé slowly, as she laid him beside his mother again. "What does Armand say?"

Désirée's face glowed with happiness.

"Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I think. Mostly because it's a boy, who will carry his name. He says he would have loved a girl just as much, but I know he only says it to please me. And Mamma," she whispered, pulling Madame Valmondé's head down close, "he hasn't punished one of them, not one, since the baby was born. One young man faked a burnt leg to rest from work, and Armand only laughed. Oh, Mamma, I'm so happy. It frightens me."

It was true. Marriage, and then his son, had softened Armand's proud, demanding nature.

PART 2 · SO HAPPY IT FRIGHTENS ME

Gentle Désirée loved him desperately. When he frowned, she trembled, but she loved him. When he smiled, she asked God for nothing more.

When the baby was about three months old, Désirée woke one day with the feeling that something in the air was threatening her peace. There was an air of mystery among the enslaved people. Neighbours came from far away, for no real reason. Then came a strange, awful change in her husband, and she did not dare ask him why. When he spoke to her, he looked away, and the old love seemed to have gone out of his eyes. He stayed away from home. At home, he avoided her and the child. And suddenly he treated the enslaved people as cruelly as the devil himself. Désirée was so unhappy that she wanted to die.

One hot afternoon, she sat in her room, slowly pulling her fingers through her long, silky brown hair. The baby lay asleep, half naked, on her great bed. One of La Blanche's little boys, an enslaved child of mixed race, half naked too, stood beside him, fanning him slowly with peacock feathers.

Désirée's eyes rested sadly on her baby. She was trying to see through the dark mist that was closing around her. She looked from her child to the boy beside him, and back again, over and over.

"Ah!"

She did not even know she had cried out. The blood turned to ice in her veins.

Book club

PART 2 · SO HAPPY IT FRIGHTENS ME

1. What did Madame Valmondé do after she looked closely at the baby?

2. Why was Désirée so happy with Armand at first?

3. What changed when the baby was about three months old?

4. Désirée says she is "so happy it frightens me". Have you ever felt like that?

5. Armand was kind to enslaved people only while he was happy. What does that show about him?

6. What do you think Désirée has just noticed? What will she do?

PART 3 OF 4

"Look at my hand"

PART 3 · "LOOK AT MY HAND"

She tried to speak to the little boy, but at first no sound would come. When he heard his name, he looked up. His mistress was pointing to the door. He put down the great soft fan and crept away across the polished floor on his bare tiptoes.

She stayed completely still, her eyes fixed on her child, her face full of fear.

Soon her husband came into the room. Without looking at her, he went to a table and began to search through some papers.

"Armand," she called. Her voice should have cut him like a knife, if he was human. But he did not notice.

"Armand," she said again. Then she stood up and stumbled towards him. "Armand," she said once more, holding his arm. "Look at our child. What does it mean? Tell me."

Coldly, but gently, he loosened her fingers from his arm and pushed her hand away.

"Tell me what it means!" she cried.

"It means," he answered lightly, "that the child is not white. It means that you are not white."

She understood at once what this meant for her, and it gave her a strange courage to deny it.

"It's a lie! It isn't true. I am white!

PART 3 · "LOOK AT MY HAND"

Look at my hair, it's brown. And my eyes are grey, Armand, you know they are grey. And my skin is fair." She took hold of his wrist. "Look at my hand. It's whiter than yours, Armand," she laughed wildly.

"As white as La Blanche's," he answered cruelly. And he walked out, leaving her alone with their child.

As soon as she could hold a pen, she wrote a desperate letter to Madame Valmondé.

"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."

The answer was just as short.

"My own Désirée: Come home to Valmondé, back to your mother who loves you. Come with your child."

When the letter arrived, Désirée took it to her husband's study. She laid it open on the desk in front of him. Then she stood there like a statue made of stone: silent, white and still.

His cold eyes moved over the words. He said nothing.

"Shall I go, Armand?" she asked, her voice sharp with pain and fear.

Book club

PART 3 · "LOOK AT MY HAND"

1. What did Armand say the baby's appearance meant?

2. How did Désirée try to prove that she was white?

3. What did Madame Valmondé say in her letter?

4. La Blanche's name means "the white one". What does Armand mean when he compares Désirée to her?

5. Madame Valmondé never writes "It isn't true". Why not? What does her answer show?

6. How will Armand answer? Where do you think Désirée will go?

PART 4 OF 4

The bonfire

PART 4 · THE BONFIRE

"Yes, go."

"Do you want me to go?"

"Yes, I want you to go."

He believed that God had treated him cruelly and unfairly. And somehow he felt he was paying God back when he wounded his wife's soul like this. Besides, he no longer loved her, because of the harm she had brought, without knowing it, to his home and his name.

She turned away like someone stunned by a blow, and walked slowly towards the door. She was hoping he would call her back.

"Goodbye, Armand," she said softly.

He did not answer her. That was his last blow at fate.

Désirée went to find her child.

Zandrine was walking up and down the shadowy veranda with him. Désirée took the little one from the nurse's arms without a word. She went down the steps and walked away under the oak branches.

It was an October afternoon, and the sun was just setting. Out in the quiet fields, enslaved men and women were picking cotton.

Désirée had not changed her thin white dress or her slippers. Her head was uncovered, and the sun brought a golden light out of her brown hair. She did not take the wide road that led to the far-off plantation of Valmondé. Instead, she walked across an empty field, where the sharp stalks hurt her soft feet in their delicate slippers and tore her thin dress to pieces.

PART 4 · THE BONFIRE

She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep, slow bayou. And she did not come back again.

Some weeks later, there was a strange scene at L'Abri. In the middle of the neatly swept back yard burned a great bonfire. Armand Aubigny sat in the wide hallway, where he could watch it. He was handing out things to half a dozen enslaved men, to keep the fire burning.

A pretty willow cradle, with all its lovely bedding, was laid on the fire. It had already eaten a fine set of baby clothes. Then came silk dresses, and velvet and satin ones too, lace and embroidery, bonnets and gloves. The wedding gifts from Paris had been of the finest quality.

The last thing to go was a small bundle of letters: innocent little notes that Désirée had written to him in the days before their wedding. At the back of the drawer where he had found them, there was a piece of another letter. But it was not Désirée's. It was part of an old letter from his mother to his father. He read it. She was thanking God for her husband's love.

"But, above all," she wrote, "night and day, I thank the good God for having arranged our lives so that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery."

Book club

PART 4 · THE BONFIRE

1. What did Armand tell Désirée, and why did he want to hurt her?

2. Which way did Désirée walk, and what happened to her?

3. What did Armand burn, and what did he find at the back of the drawer?

4. Armand burned everything Désirée left behind. Was it grief, anger, or something else?

5. Armand's mother hid her ancestry all her life. Why do you think she did?

6. Chopin never tells us what Armand felt when he read the letter. What do you imagine?

Big questions

1

Who is most to blame for what happened to Désirée and her baby: Armand, or his society?

2

Nobody ever learns where Désirée came from. Why do you think Chopin leaves it a mystery?

3

Armand's "race" changed with one letter, but he was the same man. What does that tell us?

4

Did the ending surprise you? Looking back, can you find any clues?

5

Chopin wrote this in 1893, long after slavery ended. Why set it before the Civil War?

6

Where do people still judge others by their appearance or their origins today?

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key (1)

Part 1 · 1 Monsieur Valmondé found her as a small child, asleep by the stone pillar at the plantation gate. Nobody knew who her parents were, and the childless Madame Valmondé raised her as her own.

Part 1 · 2 He was in love, and he could give her one of the oldest and proudest names in Louisiana.

Part 1 · 3 A sad, gloomy house with a steep black roof, shadowed by big oaks. Armand was a strict, harsh master, and the enslaved people there had forgotten how to be cheerful.

Part 2 · 1 She carried him to the brightest window, studied him closely, then looked just as closely at Zandrine. She said he had grown and changed, and asked what Armand said.

Part 2 · 2 Marriage and his son had softened Armand. He was proud of the baby, and he hadn't punished anyone since the birth.

Part 2 · 3 There was an air of mystery among the enslaved people, neighbours came for no reason, and Armand turned cold: he avoided her and the baby, and became very cruel to the enslaved people.

Part 3 · 1 That the child was not white, and so Désirée was not white.

Part 3 · 2 She said her hair was brown, her eyes were grey and her skin was fair, and she said her hand was whiter than his.

Part 3 · 3 Come home to Valmondé, to the mother who loves you, and bring your child.

Part 4 · 1 "Yes, go. Yes, I want you to go." He felt God had treated him unfairly, and hurting her felt like paying God back. He no longer loved her because of the harm she had brought to his home and name.

Part 4 · 2 Not along the road to Valmondé, but across an empty field to the bayou. She disappeared among the reeds and willows with her baby and never came back.

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key (2)

Part 4 · 3 The cradle, the baby clothes, the wedding gifts from Paris and Désirée's letters. He found part of an old letter from his mother to his father, which showed that his mother was of African descent.