Kate Chopin and the Fiction of Limits: "Desiree's Baby"
1978; University of North Carolina Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1534-1461
Autores Tópico(s)Literature, Musicology, and Cultural Analysis
ResumoFor many years, Desiree's Baby was one piece of Chopin's fiction most likely to be known; even today, despite wide respect that her second novel has won, there are still readers whose acquaintance with Chopin's work is restricted to this one, widely-anthologized short story. Rankin, who did not feel need to reprint Desiree's Baby in Kate Chopin and Her Creole Tales, nonetheless judged it perhaps ... one of world's best short stories. (1) Unfortunately, Rankin left future critics a terminology with which to describe value of this and other studies in Bayou Folk: it had freshness which springs from an unexplored field--the quaint and picturesque life among Creole and Acadian folk of Louisiana bayous. (2) In short, it was excellent work--hence limited to certain circumscribed triumphs. Critics' tendency to dismiss Chopin's fiction as little more than color began to diminish by late 1950's; nevertheless, old habits died hard. Desiree's Baby continued to be most frequently anthologized of her short fictions, and while comments on it strained after some larger tragic significance, definition of that tragedy was still formulated almost exclusively in terms. Claude M. Simpson introduces tale in his collection with a brief essay on color movement and concludes that story draws its effect from a reader's appreciation of impartial cruelties of slave system. (3) Several years later, in another anthology of American short stories, Eugene Current-Garcia and Walton R. Patrick give Chopin credit (again as a regionalist) for daring to touch upon forbidden subject of miscegenation; and, of course, story they select to illustrate Chopin's particular talent is Desiree's Baby. (4) Other critics, still acknowledging importance of regional elements in tale, seek to discover reasons for its persistently compelling quality by examining structure. Thus Larzer Ziff observes that the most popular of Mrs. Chopin's stories, while they make full use of charming lilt of Creole English and easy openness of Creole manners, concern themselves, as do Maupassant's, with some central quirk or turn in events which reverses situation that was initially presented. (5) He cites conclusion of Desiree's Baby as an example: So, characteristically, does Chopin story depend on a twist. (6) Taking a similar view, Per Seyersted remarks taut compression and restrained intensity of tale and then notes (with some asperity) that the ending, though somewhat contrived, has a bitter, piercing quality that could not have been surpassed by [Maupassant] himself. (7) Yet, in final analysis, these judgments are no more satisfactory than those that grow from more narrow definition of Chopin as local colorist: if significant effects are seldom achieved merely through a deft management of dialect and scenery, it is also case that a trick or surprise conclusion is almost never a sufficient means by which to evoke a powerful and poignant reaction from reader. Thus Desiree's Baby remains an enigma. We still tend to admire it and to demonstrate our admiration by selecting it to appear in anthologies; yet admiration is given somewhat grudgingly--perhaps because we cannot fully comprehend story. The specifically Southern elements of story seem significant; however, nature of their force is not clear. The reversal of situation that concludes tale is important (although to a discerning reader it may well be no surprise), but, contrary to Seyersted's remarks, story's full impact patently does not derive from this writer's trick. And while story has been accepted as characteristic of Chopin's work, it is in several ways unusual or unique--being only one of her fictions to touch upon subject of miscegenation, for example. …
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