Summary
Chopin brings the reader back to the present, where Madame Valmondé arrives at L'Abri, the Aubigny residence. Chopin's description of the plantation is telling, particularly as it relates to the difference in the mannerisms of Armand and those of his father, old Monsieur Aubigny:
"When she reached L'Abri she shuddered at the first sight of it, as she always did. It was a sad-looking place, which for many years had not known the gentle presence of a mistress, old Monsieur Aubigny having married and buried his wife in France, and she having loved her own land too well ever to leave it. The root came down steep and black like a cowl, reaching out beyond the wide galleries that encircled the yellow stuccoed house... Young Aubigny's rule was a strict one, too, and under it has negroes had forgotten how to be gay, as they had been during the old master's easy-going and indulgent lifetime."
Desiree is recovering slowly. When Madame Valmondé comes in, she sees Desiree laying beside her baby and attended by a nurse, Zandrine. She turns to the child, and exclaims that it is not Desiree's baby. Desiree is unconvinced, and the Madame never takes her eyes off the baby. She lifts it, walks with it over to the window, and scans the baby. She asks Desiree what Armand thinks of the baby, and Desiree says that he is the "proudest father in the parish." Marriage and the birth of the child has softened Armand's "imperious" nature.
Analysis
We are told that the Aubigny residence is not in the best condition. It is described and cast in a dark, unpleasant manner. The description is meant to antagonize (or at least present as problematic) Armand as someone who is not a typical slave owner – that it is not in the nature of every slave owner to be cruel, but rather in distinction to his father’s approach in how he treated his slaves and ran the plantation as a whole.
The cowl is a representation of Armand’s style of rule as well: it encircles, limits, possibly chokes, and has significant control over what it encompasses: slaves, women, material property, and quasi-draconian, extremely racialized mannerisms and bearings more generally. So far Chopin has managed to keep outright conflict at arm’s length, and only hints at possible tension sprinkled with some hope: the possibility that Desiree is actually quite happy and that Armand very happily and willingly took Desiree into his arms. There is also a sense within the narration that Madame Valmondé is familiar enough with the plantation to have a fairly accurate prediction or sense of what might happen.
Later in the story, we learn that Armand’s mother is black, though there is no indication that the reader should give the race (or really any quality) of his mother significant attention. His mother is mentioned very casually in passing. To some degree, it mirrors the cool, tempered manner in which Chopin reveals the fact that she is black at the end of the story. In this sense, Chopin does not want to make the mother or her race a focal point. She attempts to make the quality of being black a banal, everyday, and casually accepted norm. She also draws the contrast (as seen later) between how race is understood in France (where marrying a black woman is acceptable) and the United States (where the thought of such a possibility may cause a public riot).
At the same time, there is a kind of condescending nod at slaves as well, despite the initial appearance of a semblance of sympathy towards them. Under Armand’s father, they were “gay.” This brings out a typical, quite harmful, widespread stereotype about slaves in America, particularly propagated by pro-slavery advocates and slave owners through the country: the slaves are happy in their subservient position as property of the white man, and that as long as slaves are “happy” as slaves, there seems to be no reason to oppose slavery or abolish it.
This attempt to humanize more “compassionate” slave owners by drawing out the supposed positive feelings and experiences of the slaves under such owners presented a significant obstacle to abolitionists. Such a perspective on “happy slaves” has had a similar effect on the American public imaginary as works such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which helped broadcast popular tropes such as the slave who is happy in his subordinate, inferior position and the lovely, caring, black, fat mammy. Its effect cannot be understated: it became the second best-selling book in the United States in the nineteenth century, after the Bible. Though the time period in which the story is set probably predates Uncle Tom’s publication, there seems to be a strong indication that the narrative happily – and even proudly – incorporates and celebrates the gaiety of slaves under a more charitable and kindhearted master.
Moreover it is unclear about what is meant by Old Monsieur Aubigny’s “indulgent lifetime.” Is it possible that he truly gave his slaves free reign to do what they wanted to? Did it mean that he held lavish gatherings and brought life to what is now a sinister and dead plantation? If so, why did Armand turn out the way he did? It appears that Armand’s behavior as a man was not influenced by how his father ran the plantation before him. Moreover, his father may not have been as charitable and kind to the slaves as the reader is led to believe given the fact that Armand is a deeply racist man. Where did this hatred come from if not his father? Surely, it could not have come from his mother. As we learn later on, he did not even know the race of his mother until he read her letter. So if his father’s temperament and style of plantation rule is so different from his own, and we can conclusively state that his mother did not raise him, it begs the question, what are the origins of Armand’s harsh and strict attitude towards blacks?
Armand does appear to retain respect for French marital tradition (by waiting for the arrival of the corbeille before marrying Desiree) despite living in Louisiana. Even the way he “falls in love” speaks to the sudden manner in which his family actually falls in love: “That was the way all the Aubignys fell in love, as if struck by a pistol shot.” There are many markers that indicate how he is loyal (whether intentionally or not) to family tradition. However he does not retain the demeanor, approach, and emotional dispositions of his father in the context of race. He diverges sharply in this way, and it is not entirely clear, even by the end of the story, why this is the case.
In this way, just like Desiree’s past, Armand’s past is a mystery. Though this is not obvious at first sight, a further analysis reveals that if his father was a kind slave owner and his mother, who he never met, was black, then there might have been a third party that introduced racist thoughts and hatred for blacks into Armand’s life. At the very end, it is duly noted that Armand’s black mother thanks God for the “blessing of her husband’s love.” This takes away a significant amount of suspicion regarding the superficiality of the affection or love that Armand’s white slave-owning father showed his black mother. It is unclear, that if there was a third party, that third party knew that Armand’s mother was black. If they did, then for the purposes of saving social face and to protect his family’s name, the third party did not reveal this information to Armand. There appears to be no suggestion that Armand’s father instilled any kind of sympathy, love, or respect for the black race in Armand. One might go even so far as to say that given how much Armand’s father loved his black mother (assuming that his mother is telling the truth about his father’s love), Armand’s father may have had little to no hand in raising him. This gives more purchase to the possibility that Armand was raised in isolation to his immediate family.
In some sense, time (specifically childhood) is the central location of conflict and tension for the reader. For Desiree, it may simply be the fact that she does not know who her biological parents are. For Armand, it is not only that he is, until he reads the letter, unaware of who his mother is, but also presents the biggest challenge in understanding why he does what he does: who raised him. In other words, so much of the present depends on what has come before that Armand’s initial treatment of Desiree as a blank slate to be given a new name and new respect is actually quite misleading. It is not the case that background, in the face of love, does not matter. Armand actually cares quite a lot about the blank slate – it has a lot of underwritten requirements that are not obvious at first, arguably the most important of which is her race. But his arrogance, or quite possibly blind love, interferes with his ability to think through the very real possibility that Desiree is not of pure white blood.
