Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin was born Katherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri in 1850. She died in St. Louis Missouri in 1904 at the age of 54 from a brain hemorrhage. Her father was from Galway Bay in Ireland and her mother was of French Canadian Creole descent. Her mother’s people were the first settlers of Dauphin Island in Alabama. Within the first 8 years of her marriage, Kate Chopin had 6 children who she raised in New Orleans, her husband’s hometown. When her husband died of malaria in 1882, he left her with the equivalent of 1.3 million dollars in debt in today’s money. Her mother begged her to move back to Missouri, which she did. Her mother died a year later. She became depressed because of these personal tragedies so her doctor suggested that she write as a way of therapy. She wrote but never earned a lot of money from her efforts living instead off of her mother’s investments.

She admired the French writer Guy de Maupassant, who is well-known for writing The Necklace. She said, “(He) entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being and with his own eyes; and who, in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw.”

Desirees Baby is a tragedy written in 1893, and takes place in rural Louisiana before the abolition of slavery. It is about inter-racial marriage, but not in the way one might think of it today. Ignorance is bliss, they say, until you find out the truth but by then it’s too late.