Monsieur Valmondé picks up Désirée at a stone pillar as an abandoned baby. The Valmondé family then takes her in and adopts her despite the child being black. Against the expectation of many people, Desiree grows up to be a beautiful young lady raised well by a wealthy white family. One day she goes back to the stone pillar where she was picked up wearing fine clothes. In this place, she meets Armand Aubigny, a wealthy plantation owner, who instantly falls in love with her. Armand marries Désirée in a love that would turn bitter because of the color of Désirée’s baby. Armand blames Désirée for the mixed ancestry of the baby, not knowing it is mixed ancestry. Chopin, in this story, uses a lot of symbolism to show her audience the hierarchy of race, social class distinctions that existed in the Antebellum South, and how major themes are portrayed.
Stone Pillar
Stones are known to be tough, and a pillar made of stone is in no way expected to be destroyed. As used by Chopin, the stone can be interpreted as having mysterious origins and a strong foundation in which the slaves’ ancestry is built. When Monsieur Valmondé discovers Désirée, she is placed in the shadows of a stone pillar. “Monsieur in riding through the gateway of Valmondé had found her lying asleep in the shadow of the big stone pillar” (Chopin 1). The shadow of the stone pillar symbolizes a race so vast and dominant but not recognized. The race in the shadow yet a pillar is the African-American race, which many consider cursed, and most are used as slaves. Using them as slaves only masks their potential and does not in any way deter African-Americans from being great.
In addition to overcoming the masked potential, the race cursed as slaves has beaten the challenges of time to emerge again. Armands’ mother is black, but her traits are not present in Armand. Armand is thus referred to as a creole, his father’s race, and a superior race. When Armand Marries Désirée, he expects their offspring to have creole blood so that he can continue his father’s lineage. Instead, his mother’s blood is visible in their child with Désirée, which is the story’s central theme. Désirée’s baby has the genes of African-Americans and not that of Armand’s father, which Armand wants so badly for their child. It would not be a surprise for Armand not to like his mother’s genes given the difficult position they are put in, that of being a cursed race only worthy of being enslaved.
Fine Clothes
Fine clothes represent Chopin’s idea of how women have been treated in society as possessions whose loyalty can be traded and bought with gifts. Armand treats Désirée as possession by buying her expensive gifts, mostly corbeille gifts and lovely clothes. Armand believes that the gifts she buys for Désirée will make her love him. “He ordered the corbeille from Paris, and contained himself with what patience he could until it arrived; then they were married” (Chopin 1). It is as if the marriage could not occur before the gifts arrived; the gifts were a bribe for Désirée taking Armand’s hand in marriage. In the story’s setting, Désirée lives in a place where women are not recognized in society. Instead, they were objectified and associated with earthly possessions such as fine clothes and expensive gifts.
After Désirée walks into the desert, instead of walking back to the Valmondé family plantation, Armand sees that all her clothes and belongings at the Augbiny’s are placed in a bonfire. What better way to forget about a person than by burning what reminds you of them? The burning of the fine clothes that Armand bought confirms the notion of the readers that women were objectified in the earlier society where Valmondé’s and Augbiny’s ruled the world. One would be made to believe that love is beyond personal belongings and that nothing could stand in its way. It is also possible that when a person loves, the hurt will make them wounded forever. Chopin is not all conclusive about the fine clothes, but it could mean a lot of things (Guo and Du 28). It is therefore prudent to check from all perspectives whatever element of fine clothe symbolism could represent.
L’Abri
L’Abri is a large plantation owned by the Aubigny family, which has now been left to Armand Aubigny to manage and oversee. Chopin has used the plantation to show the relationships between races, interracial sex, and races that are hard to trace due to their ambiguity. Armand was born in France and stayed over there until his mother died. His mother was black, like the letter he burns at the end of the story states. In the letter, it states
But, above all,” she wrote, “night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives 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 (Chopin).
Armand is, however, known to have come from a respectable creole family; this means that nobody knew that he was the son of a slave woman and that he is of mixed race.
When Armand marries Désirée, a black, it is like he already knew his background and that marrying a black would derail his status in society. The plantation is, therefore, a symbol of how black slaves are considered inferior while the whites and creoles are deemed superior. Chopin uses L’Abri to instigate that slavery and being black is a curse (Stowell 1). Armand is hidden and lives most of his childhood in Paris; he only comes back when his mother dies, presumably with his father. The creoles and whites are higher in the racial hierarchy than African Americans. The racial hierarchy claim is also made with Désirée’s baby when Armand says he cannot have that child because of his skin color. Having the baby would have made Armand move down the pecking order.
The Bonfire
Fire symbolizes different things in different cultures and places, and Chopin has used this form of symbolism to show other items in Desiree’s baby. The astounding thing is that a bonfire is placed at the end of the play as Desiree vanishes with her baby into the desert, where her feet are stung and burnt with thorns. A bonfire is a large outdoor fire where items are burnt ancient items or rubbish, and it can also be lit as a celebration. Armand lit the bonfire to burn Désirée’s clothes and love letters she had sent to him (Chopin). Bonfire is used in this setting to represent the sacred heart of Armand in which he held Désirée so dearly that it hurt when she went away, never to return. When burning rubbish and item in a bonfire, they are items you want to get rid of and will never see again.
The bonfire is also used to show that Armand is getting rid of memories they had with Désirée. Anything that would have reminded him of Désirée was put in the fire. He might also be celebrating that he would no longer have to live with a target on his back. A person of his status was not expected to have a baby with a slave, let alone marry one. Armand knew from the beginning that he was of a mixed-race, given the revelation of a letter written to him by his mother. The letter read that Armand’s mother was black and that it was good if Armand never had to look over his shoulder for being the descendant of a slave. Burning this evidence in a bonfire showed that Armand never wanted anybody to learn about his origins and that he was of African-American roots.
In conclusion, the element of symbolism is present in Chopin’s ‘Désirée’s Baby.’ The significant aspects of symbolism include the fine clothes and gifts bought for Désirée’s by Armand, the L’Abri family-owned by the Augbiny’s, the stone pillar where Désirée’s was picked by Monsieur Valmonde and the bonfire where Armand burnt all remaining Désirée’s belongings. The stone pillar represents the African-American race, an inferior race in the shadows but suppressed because the oppressors know its potential. The fine clothes are used to show how men in the earlier society objectified women. The L’Abri plantation symbolizes the dominance of the mixed race and how it always triumphs over pure races. Lastly, the bonfire, which concludes the story shows a new beginning where the African-American race continues to face suppression, the same way Armand does not want anyone to know the secret of his origins.
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. “Désirée’s Baby.” KateChopin. 1892. Web.
Guo L., and Qianru Du. “An Analysis of Désirée’s Baby from Reader-Response.” Scholars International Journal of Linguistics and Literature, vol. 4, no. 1, 2021, pp. 28-32. Web.
Stowell, Olivia. “Re-inscribing racial hierarchy: white racial anxiety, interracial sexuality, and ambiguously raced bodies in Kate Chopin’s “Désirée’s baby”.” Liberated Arts, vol. 6, no. 1. 2019, pp. 1-11. Web.