One of the most important distinctions made in the story is how differently race is conceptualized in France versus in the United States. Despite sharing Christian roots, imperialist tendencies, and violent histories, both countries could not have been more different on how their respective citizens understood the topic of race.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was written and ratified (with the help of Thomas Jefferson) in 1791. There was no specific mention of slaves, but because of pressure from the land-owning class, slavery was kept intact. However, there was not enough support to keep France's most prized colony, Saint-Domingue, from becoming the site of the first successful slave revolt in the New World, leading to the creation of the country of Haiti. Nonetheless, as a result of a series of new constitutions in the next few decades, blacks and people of color gained more respect in France.
In contrast, slavery was written into the US Constitution, under clauses such as the 3/5 Compromise, which allowed slave states to include 3/5 of their black slave population in the census for purposes of representation in the US House of Representatives. Over time, more restrictions at the federal level were being placed on slaves, and a fight over abolition was raging - with radicals like William Lloyd Garrison leading the abolitionist movement in the decades leading up to the Civil War. It took years of legislative, judicial, and presidential campaigning in addition to 600,000 lives to finally give blacks freedom, but only a conditional, damned one that was not much better (and in many cases, worse) than what they had before.
Chopin's story attacks many of the conservative, Southern tropes surrounding race, femininity, religion, and hypocrisy against this backdrop. It does not take one too much effort to think about how different this story would have been had it taken place in France.
