In Kate Chopin's short story, "Desiree's Baby," Armand
Aubigny of French Creole landed gentry descent, tells his wife after she asks him to
look at their son that the boy is not white, nor is she white. When Desiree asks him if
he wants her to go, he coldly replies "yes." For,
He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and
unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he was paying Him back in kind when he
stabbed thus into his wife's soul. Moreover, he no longer loved her, because of the
unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his
name.
Clearly, then, Armand
Aubigny is excessively proud. Feeling himself an aristocrat, he values whatever he
possesses that reflects well upon him: name, reputation, child, property, When his son
is discovered to resemble the little mulatto children among his workers, Armaud
is horrified that such a child exist in his world to reflect badly upon him. So, he
tells his wife to leave.
To underscore the false value that
Armand places upon his possessions, in the exposition of Chopin's story, the narrator
notes that Armand has only fallen in love with Desiree when she is eighteen years
old:
The
wonder was that he had not loved her fefore; for he had known her since his father
brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died
there.
It is only when he
realizes that Desiree is so beautiful that she will be an asset to him, that Armand
considers being in love with her. Of course, he really only loves what she can do for
him as a possession. The great irony of the story, too, is suggested in this passage:
Armand returns to Louisiana only when his Negro, mother dies in Paris, thus revealing
how truly false his pride has been.
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