Marxist Critique of Desiree’s Baby Essay

The Antebellum south, or merely the word plantation, conjures images of white, columned valetses shaded by past oaks bowed beneath the weight of Spanish moss and centuries. Somehow these monuments of Greek revivalist architecture sparkle in their ivory-coated siding, steady while the trunks of their aged arboreal neighbors hide under floor upon soggy layer of dense, green lichen. The white house is a reflection of the inhabitants, its cleanliness in the damp, soiled environment houseing as a stark reminder of the hegemony goerning the lives of those living non in the house, provided hidden nearby. LAbri, the plantation home of the Aubigny family in Chopins Desires Baby, is yellow and has a foreboding grisly roof made more sinister by the gloomy shadows cast by its requisite alter greenery. LAbri is not unlike any separate antebellum mansion house of the pre-Civil War era it represents its inhabitants.The mansion is tenuously presented as an example of how little authority color truly wields without an underlying cleverness kindly system to support it substance. objet dart extend figures prominently in Desires Baby, the story is an exemplary exemplar for the application of Marxist criticism. Marxist criticism is the recognition of inequalities in power between characters (Gardner 146). It purposes to expose the inequalities that underlie wholly societies (Gardner 146). These inequalities send a way of look have multiple sources, though often the main source is track. But is quicken a biological reality? Miles posits that races be imagined, in that they have no real biological ft (26). Miles further observes that differentiations between groups are simultaneously inclusive and exclusive (27) as the characteristics describing one group stand in contrast to another group. The destructive nature of racial categorization is in the claims that biological types do the endowment and behavior of individuals (Miles 28) depending on their race, and that conflict between them is the consequence of their biological constitution (Miles 28).Furthermore, race can be used to argue that there exists a natural hierarchy that determines positions of inferiority, and by extension, superiority (Miles 28). These assertions give credence to the throwership of slaves and the race-based denial of rights, and are foundational to the idea that the mixing of races is unnatural and even destructive. But race mixing is not mixing if race does not exist as a biological category. While science can find ship canal to assign race, those categories are blurred as races blend and eventually they will disappear. As a danger to the idea of race, blending is anathema to the superior category. Plantation spiritedness was a microcosmic picture of the idea of a need for segregation, wherein each category was given its own territory within which its distinctive capacity for civilization can be realized (Miles 30).But Chopin gives an excellent (and perh aps accurate) portrayal of the lack of any real biological priming coat for what constituted race in Antebellum Louisiana. Chopin describes Armand as dark (402), and Desire points out to Armand that she is fair-skinned and whiter than he is (403). The baby is their fry (Chopin 403) when Armand reveals the truth to Desire, but is Desires child alone however four paragraphs later as she decides to leave (Chopin 404), as yet the actual biological basis upon which the childs call forthage is based. Desire walks away with the golden sparkle (Chopin 404) of the sunlight in her brown hair, taking nothing with her, as befitting her new-found but false identity. She does not take the beaten path, but instead walks through the newly-harvested October fields (Chopin 404), again behaving in a way that befits the new category with which she now identifies.Desires biology belies the reality that she now accepts as the chaff bruised her tender feet (Chopin 404), and she does not know to wal k where the branches will not shred her delicate clothing. If Desire were in reality black in the Antebellum south, she would know these things from early childhood. Desire disappears among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the bank of the compact sluggish bayou and she did not come back again (404). Desires disappearance is not only her physical departure from LAbri it is the disappearance of the white woman that was Desire. And none of these circumstances is decided by biology, but by what Marxists refer to as a struggle for power between different social classes (Gardner 145). Chopin is delivering a message that power transcends race.What mends Desire apart in terms of her subjugation by Armand? It is not race, but the lack thereof. Desire is unable to hide anything slightly herself because her origins are unknown (Chopin 401). She is a impulsive captive to Armand as a result of her love and her marriage, but she is not an unwilling captive to race she is an unwill ing captive to her otherness. She does not have doubts about her race, but must live with the reality that Armand has told me I am not white (Chopin 404). Because her origins are unknown and she does not have a name, she must acquiesce to the whims of Armand, who had at first decided to be unconcerned about the girls obscure origins (Chopin 401). Armand is the power here. He makes all of the decisions regarding the lives of those within his circle of power, and he does so because he is allowed to do so. Madam Valmond has even decided to be unconcerned about Armands questionable origins.It is interesting that Desires let perceives evidence of the babys blackness (Chopin 402), but does not explore the possibility that Armands kindred is the cause. Madam Valmond is part of the power structure and victimizes her own daughter, whom she claims to love deeply and sees as a enthrone from a beneficent Providence to be the child of her affection, seeing as she was without child of the fle sh (Chopin 401). Had Desire been a child of the flesh of Madam Valmond, she would have been accepted, and Madam Valmond could have exercised her superiority over Armand and the unanswered questions of his origins. It is remarkable that no one questions Armands pedigree even though his mother lived and died in France (Chopin 401). Armands mother is perhaps one of the more interesting subjects of Marxist study in the story. One cannot suspensor but wonder why Chopin portrays Monsieur Aubigny as easy-going and indulgent (Chopin 403).He is a slave owner who marry a woman of a different race overseas and asserted his white superiority over her, which is evident in her letter at the end of the story (Chopin 405). She credits God with having given her the ability to hide the reality of her inferiority from her son (Chopin 405). She is lost in the shame of her otherness. She has been so fully convert by her perceived superiors of her inferiority that she sees the ability to hide her tru e nature as a adorn from her creator.To Monsieur Aubignys hidden wife, this is as much a gift as Madam Valmonds child of affection. One must question why Aubigny moved to France to marry this woman. And what was the arrangement that allowed her to stay hidden? Did she kick in suicide? Is the letter that Armand is reading a final word from her before taking her own life? Note that this was only part of an old letter (Chopin 405), which leaves the true nature of her death unknown. This is power beyond ownership of chattels or social superiority this power is God-like. Aubigny has happy slaves and is an indulgent tyrant, but to what dark conjuring has he subjected his French wife? Even if she is dying from something natural at the writing of the letter, it is remarkable that she perceives such(prenominal) powerlessness in herself.Armand is not as devoted as his mother to God. He finds that God has dealt cruelly and unjustly with him (Chopin 404) when he discovers that all is not as it seemed. Armand has a beautiful wife who loved him urgently (Chopin 402) and asked no greater blessing of God (Chopin 402) when he smiled. He has inherited a plantation and slaves to feat it. He is rich and possesses the legacy of a good name. Yet in unmitigated spite of all that he has been given, Armand finds God unjust. His world has been suddenly and completely turned on its head because he has precedent to believe that his child has inherited inferiority, never guessing that he himself is the source in more ways than one. Armand is a name similar to fling, and Chopin seems to model him in part after the biblical first man.With the jut of Desire, LAbri is reminiscent of the biblical garden east of Eden, with the exception that Armand remains. The Mosaic account of the creation of man includes a guideline for marriage, with the command that they shall become one flesh (NASB, propagation 2.24). A married pair in this sense should be regarded in the same manner as a child a nd parent inseparable by nature, regardless of wounds or emotions. This is a picture that does not give place to the other as each partner is regarded equally.It should be noted here that the name Desire is a French articulation of desire, and it was cristals desire that inspired God to give him a mate (NASB, Genesis 2.20). But Adam failed to regard his wife as equal to himself, standing by as she was tempted and choosing not to intervene (NASB, Genesis 3.6). In witnessing her deception and choosing not to intervene, Adam has made Eve the other. He has confused himself from her. Armand allegorically models the actions of Adam, but he gives himself the God-like power to expel his Eve from the garden, while choosing to ignore his own nature. Adam was Armands example in choosing to act in spite of all that he had been given, and in Adams attempt to fool God into believing that he had been blameless (NASB, Genesis 3.11), he set up a struggle for power.Armand falls easily into this str uggle. It is not a stretch to believe that he has doubts about his own race. Exiling Desire is a tactic that Armand uses to maintain his hegemony. He does not have a foundation of support apart from the societal acceptance of slavery and white superiority. Desire and Madam Valmond are victimized by the very system that they tacitly support. They support it both by their participation as landowners and probable slave-holders and by their acceptance of it even when it forces them to accept inferiority. The superstructure of power in their society is so virile that it can be enforced with nothing more than words, even when those words have no basis in biological fact. It is not the taint of the wrong skin color that makes Desire a sad figure it is her support of a tainted system from which she benefitted until it turned on her.Skin color is a biological reality, but it has been manipulated in support of hegemony. The Antebellum south stood as a physical copy of the realities of race . Large, sparkling, white houses stood proudly fronting the large plantation estates of the white owners therein, while the dark-skinned slaves abode in small, stiff cottages hidden in the rear. Kate Chopin depicts a plantation mansion in her short story Desires Baby with a paint color that is darker than the standard, modeling the color of the inhabitants. Nonetheless, the Aubigny family is powerful, benefitting from a superstructure that assigns power by the perception, kinda than the reality, of skin color. While race is an important feature of the story, Chopin has written a work that is perfect for a Marxist critique.Works CitedChopin, Kate. Desires Baby. Anthology of the American Short Story. Ed. James Nagel. Boston, New York Houghton Mifflin, 2008. 121-135. Print. ISBN 978-0-618-73220-3 Gardner, James. Writing about Literature A Portable Guide. Boston Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. Print. ISBN 978-0-312-60757-9 Miles, Robert. Recent Marxist Theories of Nationalism and the Issue of Racism. The British journal of Sociology 38.1 (1987) 24-43. Web. 9 Jun. 2012. New American Standard Bible. Trans. The Lockman Foundation. New YorkOxford UP, 1971. Print.