Desiree's Baby

In “Désirée’s Baby,” and in the antebellum Southern American society it reflects, the rules of race delineate who lives as a free person and who lives as an enslaved person. The punishments and rewards of one’s racial identity are extreme and non-negotiable. However, the rules by which one’s racial identity is defined are fluid and untrustworthy. One’s race, it seems, is not only defined by one’s ancestors or by one’s physical appearance, but by the fickle and fragile perceptions of one’s physical appearance.

This perception of racial identity is best exemplified in the scene in “Désirée’s Baby” wherein an enslaved woman’s child fans Désirée’s child to cool him off: “The baby, half naked, lay asleep upon her own great mahogany bed, that was like a sumptuous throne, with its satin-lined half-canopy. One of La Blanche’s little quadroon boys—half naked too—stood fanning the child slowly with a fan of peacock feathers” (Paragraph 19). A “quadroon” is an antiquated term describing a person who is one-quarter black, which the reader knows by the end of the story, describes Désirée’s baby just as accurately as it describes La Blanche’s baby. Despite their similarities in appearance and racial ancestry, La Blanche’s boy is enslaved, and Désirée’s child is depicted as a prince.