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The Limits of Love
Two kinds of love are at play in “Désirée’s Baby.” The first is parental love. Madame and Monsieur Valmondé are aware, when they take Désirée in, that they will never know her background or where she comes from, but they see a child in need of care and embrace her immediately. When they believe that she is of mixed heritage, their unconditional love persists, and perhaps it could have saved her from despair had she gone home.
The second kind of love, marital love, appears flawed and limited. At first, this might not seem to be the case. Désirée believes that her love transforms Armand’s anger to gentleness. He is a better, kinder man when he is in love with her. Yet Armand’s love is conditional. When he finds his wife wanting for reasons beyond her control, he spurns her in disgust, even as she believes, up to her last moment in his presence, that love can change his mind.
Since Chopin does not explicitly say that Désirée drowns herself, it is possible that, instead, Désirée begins a new life elsewhere. However, this interpretation of events is inconsistent with Désirée’s behavior. Love for Armand animates her and structures her existence. She has come to believe that her identity is defined by wifehood and motherhood. When Armand “frowned she trembled.” When he is pleased, she feels blessed. But Armand’s “love” has limits, particularly when it intersects with his dehumanizing beliefs about those who aren't white. As a white woman, Désirée was maddeningly enticing; as a mixed-race woman, she disgusts him. He is more in love with the idea of supposed racial purity than with the woman he married. Possibly this is the outcome Monsieur Valmondé feared, as if he sensed that Armand’s passion could not withstand obstacles.
The Idols of Status and Authority
When he passionately courts Désirée, Armand reveals that status is never far from his mind. He ignores Monsieur Valmondé’s concerns about her parentage because he already has “one of the oldest and proudest” names. He orders the corbeille—the basket of wedding gifts and clothing—from Paris, rather than from New Orleans, even though it delays the wedding. Luxurious gifts mark him as a man of importance and his wife as worthy of respect. That Armand later burns the corbeille suggests that he considers it as contaminated and dangerous to his status as he does his wife.
In addition to status, Armand also serves the idol of authority. In his domain at L’Abri, he is the unquestioned power that directs all activity and punishes laziness. What Armand cannot control, he rejects. In a dramatic example, he has enslaved people burn a fortune in luxury goods as he watches, asserting his power over his material possessions in a way that likely distresses the men piling the precious objects, so out of their reach, onto the bonfire. The baby’s layette and cradle and Désirée’s corbeille are a kind of burnt offering to the status and authority that would have slipped away from him had he not sent his wife and son away, and that he still risks losing should the truth in his mother’s letter become known.
Sources of Identity
Chopin explores identity and belonging particularly as they relate to social pressures, others’ expectations, and structures such as family and community. Armand and Désirée provide contrasting explorations of the theme of identity.
Armand’s sense of who he is and where he stands is informed by his family name and supported by generational wealth. He knows the progression of roles society expects him to play: son and heir who carries on the family name, manager of L’Abri, participant in parish business, and husband whose wife helps him perpetuate the pattern established by his forebears. No wonder Armand is confident and capable, if short-tempered and demanding. His identity is secure—until his realization that his son has mixed heritage. This disruption to the plan so disturbs Armand that he rails against fate, sees himself as a victim, and drives out his wife and son to restore his identity. He acts brutally toward Désirée in part to lash out at God for treating him “cruelly and unjustly.” Armand seems to succeed, yet it’s ultimately revealed that his mother’s hidden letter contains a secret that could upend his carefully structured identity.
Désirée gets her identity first from the adoptive family that adores her and raises her to be an affectionate wife and mother, and then from her roles as Armand’s wife and the mother of their child. What Désirée lacks, however, is rootedness—a generational history and cultural inheritance that secures her place in her family and in the larger community. In a sense, she has identity and knows where she belongs only conditionally. When Armand accuses her of failing to fulfill expectations, Désirée’s identity fractures, and she stands before like “a stone image: silent, white, motionless.” When he fails to restore her as his beloved wife, she believes she has no identity and disappears from the community.
