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Armand owns and runs L’Abri, his family’s plantation. L’Abri is French for “the shelter” or “the refuge,” and when Armand is satisfied and in love, the name describes how Désirée feels about her home. However, the plantation is never a refuge for the people enslaved there, and the very name of the plantation calls out Armand’s hypocrisy about his own heritage and his willingness to gain wealth by exploiting the enslaved workers, whose heritage it later turns out he shares.
In the time the story takes place, social expectations of privileged men required them to protect and defend their families and property, and Armand is certainly capable of running the plantation. He is respected in the parish and cherishes his reputation and authority. When he falls in love with Désirée, his confidence and intention propel him over any obstacles, and he refuses to heed her father’s suggestion that he consider Désirée’s lack of background; Armand is of the belief that his own background would supersede anything lacking in hers.
But Armand is a man of variable moods, prickly in his pride and arrogant in his assumption that he is always in the right. His childlike wife is tossed by his moods like a leaf on a torrent, and when he feels betrayed, he uses her dependence against her. Armand suffers a blow to his pride, for which he is unwittingly responsible, that he takes out on innocents—his wife, son, and enslaved workers. He sees them all as immature, incomplete beings that require his firm hand to guide, caress, punish, or banish as he sees fit. He behaves like a little deity of a tiny kingdom and seems to be careless of what others think—until he learns the truth, which he then hypocritically hides because, if it were known, he would be punished by the system he uses to punish others.
