Divinity and Defiance
Desiree’s plea to Madame Valmondé goes so far as to invoke God. Her use of the interjection, “For God’s sake,” adds to the outrage and impatience with which Desiree is communicating her emotions. In the next two sentences she talks about death. The irony is that suicide (which is what she seems to want to do) is a sin in Christianity. Her mentioning of God and suicide in the same letter makes reconciling her morals somewhat difficult. According to the Christian tradition, God is the giver of life. He gives and takes it away. Suicide is a sin because it “rejects God’s gift of life.” The act of suicide operates on the assumption that no human should be able to take God’s “authority” upon his or herself to end his or her own life. However, her faith in God and religion – unlike that of Armand’s – is less clear. Armand is quite religious and challenges God’s decision to place him in what he sees as a terrible position, and he attempts to deliver Him a blow by treating Desiree with hatred and complete indifference. Desiree is similarly bold in attempting to defy God. Such behavior in mid-nineteenth-century Louisiana would have been considered heretical.
Heritage
The greatest irony in the story comes in the very last lines, when Armand learns after reading a letter from his mother to his father that his mother was in fact black. The representation of race needs to be mediated by a thinking subject, and in this way Armand understands what race is through mixed heritage. It is possible for him to accept that he could have an illegitimate child who is of mixed heritage, but for that to manifest itself in the form of something official is unacceptable. His vices and his secrets must remain just that: unknown to the larger public. And yet he punishes Desiree and their child for his own mistakes. His selfishness and commitment to the racial hierarchy of America ultimately leads to his own download. Here we see that it was not only the oppressed that slavery dehumanized, but also the oppressor, making the white man blind, insensitive, and unappreciative of the harm that he caused.
