Desiree's Baby

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Reading Check

1. Which language is spoken at Valmondé?

2. Which social affair “had softened Armand Aubigny’s imperious and exacting nature greatly”?

3. What “curious scene” occurs at L’Abri several weeks after Désirée’s departure?

4. According to the letter, what is Armand’s mother “cursed with”?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How did Madame Valmondé find Désirée as a baby? Describe the difference between the realism of this discovery and the narrative that Madame Valmondé tells herself about the discovery.

2. Summarize Armand’s changing temperament throughout the story. How does his temperament directly link to his treatment of enslaved persons?

3. What event causes Désirée to question the race of her baby? How does she respond, and what is the consequence of her response?

4. Why does Armand want Désirée to leave the residence? How does she react to this information?

Paired Resource

“Kate Chopin’s Désirée’s Baby: A New Historicist Approach”

• Aşcı’s 2023 academic analysis of Chopin’s story
• This relates to the themes of The Unnatural and Irreconcilable Rules of Race, The Destructiveness of Hatred Versus the Salvation of Love, and The Cruelty of Slavery.