A Study Guide for Kate Chopin's "Desiree's Baby," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

Desiree's Baby BY Kate Chopin is about the daughter of Monsieur and Madame Valmond�, who are wealthy French Creoles in antebellum Louisiana. Abandoned as a baby, Desiree was found by Monsieur Valmond� lying in the shadow of a stone pillar near the Valmond� gateway. She is courted by the son of another wealthy, well-known and respected French Creole family, Armand. They marry and have a child. People who see the baby have the sense it is different. Eventually they realize that the baby's skin is the same color as a quadroon (one-quarter African)-the baby has African ancestry. At the time of the story, this would have been considered a problem for a person believed to be white.

A Study Guide for Kate Chopin's "Desiree's Baby," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

A pretty book of tales drawn from life among the Creoles and Acadians of Louisiana. They represent with fidelity and spirit characters and customs unfamiliar to most readers ; they are admirably told, with just enough dialect for local color; and they can hardly fail to be very popular. Some of these stories are little more than croquis — just a brief incident of idea sketched in with a few rapid strokes and left to the imagination of the reader to be materialized, if we may so speak. Others are longer and more finished, but all are full of that subtle, alien quality which holds the Creole apart from the Anglo-Saxon — a quality we do not quite understand and can never reproduce, but which is full of fascination to us from the very fact that it is so unlike ourselves.

Ray Moore's Study Guides aim to provide readers with insights into important texts so that the reader can develop their own thoughts and opinions about the text.The Seven Stories are "At The 'Cadain Ball", "Desiree's Baby", "A Gentleman of Bayou St. John", "A Respectable Woman", "The Story of an Hour", "A Pair of Silk Stockings" and "The Storm". In these deceptively simple narratives, Chopin deals with the struggle of individuals to establish their independence in the face of racial, class and gender stereotyping.The guide offers the reader insight into Chopin's ability to tell stories in which both setting (of both place and time) is vitally important while dealing with themes of universal significance. Includes for each story: - An introduction; - Guiding questions and post-reading activities that suggest topics for further discussion and thought; - A detailed analysis of characters, genre, narrative voice, setting and themes; - A graphic organizer that allows the reader to make notes on plot; - A glossary of relevant literary terms; - A literary terms activity; - Suggestions for group discussion and activities.These seven short stories make the perfect introduction to a study of Chopin's greatest work The Awakening (1899).