36 pages • 1 hour read
Desiree's Baby
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During Reading
Reading Questions & Paired Texts
Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.
Reading Check
1. Which language is spoken at Valmondé?
2. Which social affair “had softened Armand Aubigny’s imperious and exacting nature greatly”?
3. What “curious scene” occurs at L’Abri several weeks after Désirée’s departure?
4. According to the letter, what is Armand’s mother “cursed with”?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. How did Madame Valmondé find Désirée as a baby? Describe the difference between the realism of this discovery and the narrative that Madame Valmondé tells herself about the discovery.
2. Summarize Armand’s changing temperament throughout the story. How does his temperament directly link to his treatment of enslaved persons?
3. What event causes Désirée to question the race of her baby? How does she respond, and what is the consequence of her response?
4. Why does Armand want Désirée to leave the residence? How does she react to this information?
Paired Resource
“Kate Chopin’s Désirée’s Baby: A New Historicist Approach”
- Aşcı’s 2023 academic analysis of Chopin’s story
- This relates to the themes of The Unnatural and Irreconcilable Rules of Race, The Destructiveness of Hatred Versus the Salvation of Love, and The Cruelty of Slavery.
- Based on the text as well as the above resource, how does Chopin’s story fit within the framework of the New Historicism theory?
Recommended Next Reads
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- Chopin’s 1899 novel, which is considered to be one of the first examples of feminist fiction, centers on female protagonist Edna Pontellier and her quest to emancipate herself from social expectations.
- This connects with the theme The Destructiveness of Hatred Versus the Salvation of Love.
- Shared topics include race and gender in the south, double oppression of women, and Southern-focused female authors.
- The Awakening on SuperSummary
“Parker’s Back“ by Flannery O’Connor
- O’Connor’s 1965 short story follows protagonist Parker and his acquisition of tattoos as a form of spiritual exploration.
- This connects with the theme The Destructiveness of Hatred Versus the Salvation of Love.
- Shared topics include Southern Gothic literary genre, race and gender in the south, and Southern-focused female authors.
- “Parker’s Back” on SuperSummary
Reading Questions Answer Key
Reading Check
1. French (Paragraph 8)
2. Marriage to Désirée (Paragraph 16)
3. “[A] great bonfire” (Paragraph 44)
4. That she “‘belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery’” (Paragraph 47)
Short Answer
1. Madame Valmondé recalls that she discovered Désirée outside the property of the Valmondé residence when she was a baby. Although the rumors were that the baby was left behind by a traveling group, Madame Valmondé chooses to think “that Désirée had been sent to her by a beneficent Providence to be the child of her affection, seeing that she was without child of the flesh.” (Paragraph 2)
2. Armand’s nature, which was particularly harsh toward the enslaved persons on his property, softened following his marriage to Désirée. However, after the birth of his son, Armand begins to withdraw from his wife and to return to the harsher treatment of the enslaved people. (Paragraph 17)
3. One afternoon, Désirée observes one of “little quadroon boys” standing next to her baby and makes the connection that her baby also possesses darker skin. She rushes to her husband in order to ask what this entails, to which her husband replies, “It means … that the child is not white; it means that you are not white.” (Paragraphs 18-24)
3. After her mother offers her the opportunity to return to Valmondé, Désirée approaches her husband and asks him what he would like for her to do. Since “he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name,” he tells her to leave, upon which she takes the baby and walks into the “deep, sluggish bayou,” and is never seen again. (Paragraphs 29-43)
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By Kate Chopin
