Kate Chopin’s short story “Desiree’s Baby” overtly and bluntly covers the topic of race relations and identity in America. Even in the pluralistic social milieu of Louisiana, being racially mixed is a taboo. The story also shows how the very concept of racial purity is a joke, a social construct and a manufactured category. Written in third person, the story opens with Madame Valmonde, Desiree’s adopted mother, wistfully reflecting on how she found Desiree. Madame Valmonde then ponders the romance that blossomed between Desiree and Armand, who eventually had the titular baby together. Back to the present moment, Madame Valmonde approaches Armand’s family estate, L'Abri, which is described as a “sad looking place.” The scourge of slavery still leaves its mark on L’Abri. Madame Valmonde’s impressions of L’Abri presage the events that unfold in the story. Desiree also reveals that Armand has the tendency to treat his black servants cruelly,…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, K. (n.d.). Desiree’s baby.

Gilbert, T. (2004). Textual, contextual, and critical surprises in “Desiree’s Baby.” Connotations 14(1-3). http://www.connotations.de/article/teresa-gibert-textual-contextual-and-critical-surprises-in-desirees-baby/

Peel, E. (1990). Semiotic subversion in “Desiree’s Baby.” American Literature 62(2): 223-237.

http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/library/desireesbaby.html

Desiree calls to him, "in a voice that must have stabbed him, if he was human. But he did not notice." hen asked what the baby's dark physical features mean Aubigny pulls Desiree's clutching fingers from his arm "and thrust the hand away from him"; it means "...that the child is not white," Aubigny answers, adding that by implication Desiree herself is not purely white either.
Rather than embrace the child and reassure one's wife, the way an average man would likely do, Aubigny leaves Desiree and child alone and retreats into his dark world. He was so racist and hateful of any color of skin not his own, he felt that Desiree had brought shame and injury upon his family name. hat kind of a man would fall in love so quickly, and then brutally dominate his pretty, soft, feminine wife (taking advantage of her sweetness in order to…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. "Desiree's Baby." Complete Novels & Stories: Bayou Folk. New York: The Library of America, 2002, pp. 242-247.

Desiree's Baby Kate Chopin
In many of Kate Chopin's stories there are women who are repressed by their husbands. In that sense, there are a number of male characters written by the author who are portrayed as villainous. This proclivity of Chopin is certainly evinced within "Desiree's Baby," as her depiction of Armand renders him highly iniquitous. The supreme irony of this fact is that for the duration of the story, Armand considers himself a victim -- since he believes his wife has hidden the fact from him that she is an African-American woman. Yet a closer examination of the language that the author uses to describe Armand indicates that regardless of the plot of the story, he is portrayed as a villain in many of the same terms that the fallen angel Lucifer is.

As far as the reader can discern from the information within this story, Armand was never…...

Chopin
ate Chopin's Desiree's Baby explores the intersections between race, gender, and social status. Being adopted, Desiree is deprived of the knowledge of her own ancestry. Not knowing her ancestry is an ironic source of power for Desiree. On the one hand, she can assume whatever identity she chooses. On the other hand, her identity is whatever others project onto her. The central conflict of Chopin's story is in fact between the differences in constructed identities: those that are self-constructed and self-generated through personal power, and those that are constructed via social norms, prejudices, and prevailing values.

Desiree is not the one with an identity conflict in Chopin's story. The real central conflict focuses on Armand, who although begins as a loving companion for the titular Desiree, degenerates into the symbol of patriarchal power and the racial hierarchies of the South. Especially in the unique subculture of Louisiana, being of mixed ancestry…...

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Kalaidjian, W.B. "The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism" (Cambridge University Press, 28 Apr 2005)

McCullough, K. "Regions of Identity: The Constructions of America in Women's Fiction, 1885 -- 1914." (Stanford University Press)

Trotman, C.J. "Multiculturalism: Roots and Realities." (Indiana University Press, 2002)

Fictional Elements in Selected orks from Kate Chopin and Anton Chekhov
In both of Kate Chopin's works, "The Story of an Hour" and "Desiree's Baby," the most important element of fiction which the author invokes is plot and conflict, for the simple fact that this element is the most effective way of imparting the powerful irony which grips both of these tales. "The Story of an Hour" in particular is too brief to provide a significant level of characterization or setting, yet it's brevity actually helps to accentuate the irony of a work in which the principle protagonist, Mrs. Mallard, believes that she has escaped the overbearing will and presence of her husband and reaffirms her devotion to live -- only to die suddenly at the unexpected presence of the latter at the story's conclusion. Chopin utilizes such a plot to emphasize the situation irony with which her tale is…...

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Works Cited

Chekhov, Anton. "The Lady with the Dog." 1899. Web.

Chekhov, Anton. "Darling." n.d. Web.

Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." 1894. Web.

Chopin, Kate. "Desiree's Baby." 1899. Web.

Armand's previous knowledge. In addition paragraph, write page essay, present develop opinion question Armand sensed feared; Armand suspected.
Armand's knowledge in "Desiree's baby"

Kate Chopin's short story "Desiree's baby" puts across misunderstanding as it presents the protagonist, Armand Aubigny, being caught in a web of confusions influencing him to abandon his wife and child. Although most readers are likely to consider that Armand had absolutely no idea of his background and of the fact that his mother was black, it is actually different to understand exactly how much the man knew. Most elements in the short story point toward the belief that he was shocked to find out that his mother had been of African-American descent. The line between misunderstanding and wicked deceit is very thin in this story and one is likely to have trouble deciding what Armand's position in regard to the overall state of affairs was.

In contrast to…...

This increased their word of mouth advertising and eventually led to a very large order from a grocery chain, Fresh Market. This word of mouth marketing helped expand their distribution channels as well.
The greatest opportunity for a small business, like Sweet Grass, is to focus on what they do best and serve a niche market. Sweet Grass isn't trying to be the largest dairy producer, with an all-encompassing product mix, instead, they are satisfied by providing consistent high quality cheeses. And it is cheese that they do oh so well.

Small businesses have the ability to focus all of their efforts on a limited line up of products. They can discover what they do best, and differentiate themselves from the rest of the market by doing just that. Small businesses may not be able to compete in areas such as cost or large deliverable quantities, but quality is an area…...

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References

Aschwanden, C. (Mar 2005). New name, old diet. Health, 19(2). Retrieved April 19, 2005, from Alt HealthWatch database.

Carb-crazed? (24 Sept 2004). Current Events, 104(3). Retrieved April 19, 2005, from Academic Search Premier database.

Steinmehl, E. (Mar 2005). Eat less protein, get stronger bones. Health, 19(2). Retrieved April 19, 2005, from Alt HealthWatch database.

Walker, R. (5 Aug 2004). Handcrafter cheese from Georgia? The Atlanta Journal - Constitution. K1.

Society looks at women's bodies to define their happiness or unhappiness, but Chopin suggests that women must look deeper into their psyche to find the cause of their personal difficulties.
omen become scapegoats for what is wrong with society. omen are eternally 'misread' by those who claim to love them because they are only seen in terms of their physical or married life. Mrs. Mallard dies of horror when she sees that her husband is alive but his apparent resurrection from the dead is assumed to have stopped her heart with "the joy that kills" by the doctors who examine her body. They cannot conceive of the idea that a lack of freedom, rather than a lack of a man might make a woman miserable. Although Armand is himself of mixed race, as is revealed at the end of the story, it is Desiree who must suffer and is blamed…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Full text retrieved May 25, 2009 at  http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/160 

Chopin, Kate. "The Father of Desiree's Baby." Full text retrieved May 25, 2009 at  http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ChoDesi.html 

Chopin, Kate. "The Storm." Full text retrieved May 25, 2009 at  http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/kchopin/bl-kchop-thestorm.htm 

Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Full text retrieved May 25, 2009 at  http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/

This sentence, although it talks about bowels, is really describing the mother's love of the baby.
This story is written like a detective story. It is very difficult to determine which woman is telling the truth and to determine if King Solomon is actually a bad person or a good person. It does not give the names of the women. They are simple referred to as one woman and the other woman. It does say that they were "harlots," but it does not give any background information about who the women are or how they got involved in this argument. They were simply two women in the same place that had babies at the same time.

Also, it is not clear to the reader rather King Solomon is a bad person or a good person. He does propose to slay the baby and divide it into two half to settle the…...

Fiction has the unique attribute of being able to be relatable to a person regardless of its implications to real life. No matter how bizarre a plot or character might be, it is the meaning behind everything that is obvious that makes the interpretation of stories unique and applicable to the human experience. This is greatly demonstrated in a collection of quotations from a variety of stories that all share one commonality: survival. No matter how tough things go, and no matter what life's circumstances can be, survival is the ultimate goal, and these stories all bring together that philosophy in a variety of ways, but all coming up with the same equal concept.
Nothing brings on this notion of survival more than Zora Neale Hurston does in her story "Sweat." Life is all about how hard one works in order to be able to excel and in order to get…...

My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:

She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange,

Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:

She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd

That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, should but teach him how to tell my story.

And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:

She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,

And I loved her that she did pity them.

This only is the witchcraft I have used:

Here comes the lady; let her witness it.

Translation

Setting: The inside of the administrative building. Nighttime. Othello is wearing a suit, and is confronted by the school's president, 'Dr. B,' and several members of the administration in their pajamas.

John Othello: Look Dr. B, I know it's not easy when your little girl leaves you. Lord knows…...

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. "Othello." MIT Classics Page. [2 Nov 2006]  http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/othello/othello.1.3.html