“Story of an Hour” and “Desiree’s Baby” Essay Example

â€Å"Story of an Hour† and â€Å"Desiree’s Baby† Essay Kate Chopin lived a conventional life, marrying young to a wealthy businessman and from a prominent family herself.   She began writing to help support her family when she was widowed at a young age and left with 6 children to take care of and only a meager salary to live on.   She was almost an immediate success in the literary field, but almost stopped writing completely after the publication of The Awakening, which had themes of personal and sexual freedom for women and shocked her American audiences.   Despite that, her work is still considered to be a prominent figure in early feminist literature.In the time that Chopin was writing, and the time she was writing in, both women and African Americans were considered citizens of secondary class.   They did not have the same rights, freedoms, and privileges as white males.   Women were males’ subordinates, expected to live and breathe for their men and their men’s benefit.   Any woman that strayed from this male-servicing mentality was considered to be an aberrant female—not normal, unfeminine, anti-woman.   Blacks were slaves, and that was as simple as that.   They were not people, they were property, and for a white woman to have a black child, meaning that she already betrayed her family and race by having sex with a black man and out of wedlock (since they were not allowed to intermarry) was considered among the highest atrocities.   The white men could sleep with the black female slaves, however, because (a) the slaves were their property and (b) women existed to fulfill men’s needs.â€Å"Story of an Hour† is about a woman who is told that her husband has died in a train accident.   Her friends were worried that the news would cause her severe devastation, but the result was quite the opposite.   She experienced relief, and was anxiously anticipating her newfound freedom†¦until her husband walked through the front door, alive and well, causing h er the â€Å"severe devastation† and resulting in her death.   â€Å"Desiree’s Baby† is about a woman named Desiree whose recently-born child shows signs of undesired genetic makeup—the child appears to be of African American descent.   Desiree, who was adopted by a prominent family, is ostracized by her husband and thrown out of her home with the child, because he assumes it is she who is of â€Å"black blood† and disgraced him and his family’s good name.   We find out at the end of the story that it is not her at all, but him, and he finds out after he had already sent Desiree and the baby away.The main character is â€Å"Story of an Hour† is Louise Mallard.   Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition, but that is not all that appears to be â€Å"weak† about her.   She seems to be a very frail woman, the sort of woman who allows life to happen to her and who is a victim of her circumstance.   She is married to a man even she admits to be a wonderful person, and she never wanted for lack of love and affection.   Her situation appears to be a rather good one: loving husband who is not restrictive of her, well taken care of financially, friends and family that care for her tremendously.   And yet she still felt trapped.   She still felt as though she did not have her freedom, her ability to exist as a separate individual apart from her husband.   Her husband seemed to be the sort of man who would allow her to do whatever she wanted without question, yet she felt that the only way she could have her freedom was with him gone.   This mentality really only signifies her own mental weakness: that she is unable to take what resources she has to be independent and free and use them to her greatest advantage, instead once again being dependent upon another person for her own independence.Mrs. Mallard reacts in a number of ways when her husband dies.   When she first receives news of his death, sh e first weeps uncontrollably, then goes up to her room alone where she sits in silence, completely blank.   Then it dawns on her, and first she is gripped with terror, the excitement—she is free.   She became gripped with joy, until she saw her husband, still alive.   Whatever sorrow she felt initially was completely erased by the anxious anticipation of her freedom, her assertion of self.   She still felt a little sad for her dead husband, but that small feeling of sadness couldn’t compare to the immense joy she felt on top of it.Mr. Brently Mallard is a kind man.   He is, as described by Louise herself, a kind and loving man.   The way Louise herself describes him, it appears that he was a doting husband that would do anything for his wife and would also allow her to do anything she asked.   Their relationship seemed to be one that would be very positive; he did not appear to be a controlling man and would most likely have allowed Louise to pursue whate ver she wanted without question.I think that the end of this story shows Kate Chopin’s flair for tragic irony; that a woman with a heart condition would die of shock (and disappointment) upon seeing her husband still alive as opposed to finding out he died is incredibly ironic, and so much more considering her friends were reluctant to tell her for that very reason.   I think also that it is ironic that a woman with a husband who is so clearly understanding and loving would truly believe that her only chance of freedom is with him dead.   To me this shows a weakness in mind of the main character, and she deserved to be so overwhelmed by her husband’s reappearance that it killed her.   Louise Mallard would be a much more sympathetic character if her husband was cruel and abusive and controlling, but he was none of those things.   Therefore, her death, though definitely heavy in irony, is kind of anticlimactic.   By that point, I no longer cared what happened t o this fool of a woman.The character of Desiree in â€Å"Desiree’s Baby† is another victim of circumstance, but in her case it is completely outside of her control.   Desiree Aubigny is a beautiful young girl, who was abandoned at birth and taken in by an affluent Louisiana family.   She married what she thought to be a wonderful man, and soon gave birth to a son that she loved dearly.   Desiree was full of joy; she loved life fully, and loved her husband and son even more.   She was so blinded by love, in fact, that as people began whispering about the color of her son’s skin, she didn’t at first notice; and she never once saw the darkness in her son’s skin for herself.   It wasn’t until her husband Armand turned his back on her because of it that she began to pay attention to it.Desiree reacts in a variety of ways to the crisis in her life.   When the rumors begin, Desiree is still blissfully oblivious, and perfectly content wi th her child and her life.   Then she begins to sense that something is wrong, and this is when her husband starts to ignore her.   She is devastated by his treatment of her, but it still takes her some time to understand why.   When it finally dawns on her that her child is partially black, she is gripped with terror and confusion.   When her husband Armand accuses her ancestry as being at fault for their child’s color, she denies it, citing how white her skin is.   She cannot accept that she is to blame for what Armand is treating as an abomination.   In despair she writes her mother, who tells her to come home to her, and in one last pathetically hopeful attempt she questions Armand as to whether or not he wanted her to leave.   He did, and she left, dead inside, walking like a statue in a daze.Armand Aubigny is man in denial.   Poor adopted Desiree had no way of knowing that the man who would fall so madly in love with her would end up betraying her, turni ng his back on her, and all as a result of his own heritage (and which of her own she had no way of knowing, either, as a result of being abandoned by her birth parents).   Desiree is very much a victim in this case—a victim of a cruel, fickle man, who is more interested in protecting his own interests (such as his family’s name) than he is in standing by the love of his life’s side.   He turned his back on her, assuming immediately she was of African American descent, which she could not refute having been adopted, and cast her aside.   Armand is selfish, and his moods are like the weather—sometimes sunny and beautiful, other times stormy and vicious.   Before he and Desiree married, Armand had been a cruel and exacting man.   His nature became much gentler when he fell in love and married, and he was a wonderful, doting husband to Desiree.   But when his son’s heritage became increasingly more visible Armand’s cruelty came ragi ng back, and Desiree received the brunt of it.   He did not hit her—he just ignored her, as if she didn’t exist, which can be even more cruel.   And he remained in complete denial that he could possibly be at fault for the child’s blackness; and presumably continued to do so even after he discovered his own mother’s letter.The end of this story is another example of Chopin’s love of tragic irony, only in this story it was much more powerful.   Throughout the story the reader feels pity for this poor girl Desiree who had no way of controlling what was happening to her, no way to disprove what was being accused of her, and no way to talk sense into her boorish, pig-headed husband.   The entire story is heart-wrenching, and the reader experiences how badly Desiree suffers.   But at the end, when the audience discovers that it was Armand whose own mother was black, we realize how unjustly Desiree had been treated and just how cruel Armand rea lly was, and all because of him.   There is much more to sympathize with here, because Desiree’s suffering was much greater, and much less controllable.Louise Mallard and Desiree Aubigny are very similar characters.   Both women had husbands who, at least initially, adored them, and who were treated very well by their husbands.   Both women were victims of circumstances beyond their control—Louise with her heart condition and the false news, Desiree with her unknown parentage and black son.   Both women are dealt cruel blows at the hand of fate—Louise dies of shock at the sight of her living husband, and Desiree is thrown out of her home with her baby by her spiteful husband.   Both women are tragic characters.But for as many similarities exist between them, there are also a number of differences.   Desiree, for one, loved her husband and loved hr life.   She was happy and full of joy, until Armand turned against her.   Louise, on the other hand, was a miserable person who wished for death, and it was only at the thought of losing her husband that she felt excitement and joy.   Desiree did not want to lose her husband, and that was ultimately was drove her into despair.   Louise did want to lose her husband and was ecstatic when she thought she did; when she found out the contrary, it devastated her so badly it killed her.   Both are victims of circumstance, but Louise had circumstances she could change.   Whatever negative situation she believed herself to be in was of her own doing and existed primarily in her own head; her husband was not one who would try to control her or prevent her from doing anything she wanted to do, she just merely believed that to be true.   She was a victim of her own helplessness.   Desiree was in a negative situation completely outside of her control; she had no way of proving to Armand that she wasn’t black, since she had no way of knowing who her parents really were.   T hus her attempt at denial was futile, and she was a victim only of Armand’s cruelty.My opinion of â€Å"Story of an Hour† is that it allows the main character to be too much of a victim, without necessity.   If the readers are really supposed to feel sorry for her, then her husband probably shouldn’t be Mr. Wonderful.   â€Å"Desiree’s Baby† has a much more sympathetic main character in Desiree in that she was not able to prevent anything that happened to her from happening.   Everything that happened was as the result of other people’s doing; she had no role in any of it.   And yet she was the one who suffered the most and lost everything.   This is the ultimate cruelty.   Really, Louise Mallard simply just got what she wanted when all was said and done—before hearing about her husband’s death, she had been wishing for her own, which she got.  Ã‚   Desiree’s soul was crushed, and it was for no reason that she could control.