Desiree's Baby: Manifest Destiny and Providence
How Colonialist Ideology Facilitated American Slavery
Aug 19, 2008
"Desiree's Baby" shows the ways European colonialist ideas shaped the American culture, providing the means to enslave Africans, and constructing its belief system to consider them sub-human and deserving of their lot, while using Christian ideology to facilitate and prop up these beliefs.
Manifest Destiny
The white man is seen as blessed with dominion over lesser races, and the “Manifest Destiny” to use them in shaping a brave, new world. Throughout “Desiree’s Baby,” one can see the casual assumptions of God’s blessing on the white man, as well as his having cursed the black with slavery and inferiority, leading to the belief that white equated to good and just, while black meant evil.
In Desiree’s rise and fall in grace we can see this ideology at work. Found as a baby, on the doorstep of her adopted parents’ estate, Desiree is seen as delivered by God, a replacement for the children Madame Valmonde was unable to bear.
She is heralded as the embodiment of “beneficent Providence,” and the theory of her true parents being pioneers casts her as the avatar of God’s manifest destiny for the American white.
This continues in her life as she falls in love with and marries Armand. Desiree considers her husband and his happiness to be blessings. She casts their marriage in a religious light, placing God’s approval especially upon Armand, even though he’s a brutal slave owner.
That his “rule was a strict one” is considered an affectation of his personality, and not cruelty. Desiree even muses how God’s blessing them with a child, has brought him so much joy that he even forgets to beat his slaves.
The Baby’s True Heritage
The story takes a darker turn as the baby grows older and his African heritage becomes evident. The slaves begin to behave differently, and Armand grows cold, leading Desiree to realize her child is not white.
Desiree becomes frantic and pleads with Armand to make sense of it. His answer: “the child is not white…you are not white.” Armand does not accuse her of being black, but focuses on her being “not white;” for being white places her in God’s grace, without that it matters little what other race she is.
Desiree writes to her mother: “For God’s sake, tell them it is not true” she pleads. Her mother’s reply makes no mention of God; it is simple and tinged with sadness in its assumption that she must, in fact be black.
The connection between being in God’s favor and being white is shown then in Armand who “thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him” giving him a wife and child who turned out to be black. Armand feels no remorse in sending Desiree away, in “othering” her and his son, because she has shamed him with her sin of not being white.
The Twist
The twist of the story is that it is not Desiree who is black, but Armand, as he discovers while burning Desiree’s things. The concept of God’s blessing on whites and curse on blacks is shown one last time by juxtaposing two letters, one from Desiree to Armand, and one from Armand’s mother to his father.
In Desiree’s she is again the white woman, “thanking God for the blessing of her husband’s love.” The mother’s is the letter of a black woman thanking God for allowing her son to grow up ignorant that he “belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery.”
“Desiree’s Baby” shows how the ability to “other” a race of people rests on the belief that the right to is ordained of God. Kate Chopin, by simply writing in the language of her day, has exposed the ideology that made such racism possible.
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