Local Color Writers and the Construction of Environment
To talk about local color writers is to refer to writers that have provided us a specific description of a place and people living in that area of the United States. Local color literature is a sub-movement from the Realism Movement. Local color writers describe different regions of our country in a vivid manner. These writers produced works not only in prose, but also in poetry. The number of these writers grew at the end of the 20th century and still persist until present times. They wrote many fictional works with powerful descriptions of dialects and customs of the regions. “Local Color fiction, then, provides us with a powerful, multifaceted, eclectic picture of the vast differences in the face of the American during our final geographical expansion at the turn of the century and presents one distinct approach by writers of American Realism to representing people, places, and situations as they existed in stark reality (“LIT-315 20th Century American Literature,” 2021).”
There are many examples of local writers, for example some writers are Bret Harte, Kate Chopin or Gertrude Bonnin. Following, we will analyze one author considered a local color writer.
The story chosen is “Désirée’s Baby” by Kate Chopin. The story takes place in the nineteenth century South, on a plantation in Louisiana. The story is mostly written in third person. Désirée and her husband are the main characters of the story. A young person whose origin is unknown was raised as the daughter of the Valmondé family, a wealthy family. Growing up, she married Armand Aubigny, a man who was also very financially sound. In the story, Désirée had a baby, and her mother goes to visit her and her grandson. Désirée’s mother looked at the grandson carefully, asking her, if Armand was happy or not with the baby.
At that time, having a male child was very important for families because it meant the continuation of the surname. It may sound a bit absurd today to give preference to a boy over a girl, but the reality was that many families wanted their children to be men and it was even better if the first child was a male, who in the future would be the head of family businesses. The text says, “Oh, Armand is the proudest father in the parish, I believe, chiefly because it is a boy, to bear his name; though he says not, — that he would have loved a girl as well. But I know it isn’t true (Chopin, 1994).”
The story is full of words and expressions in French, to highlight the French influence and the social class to which Désirée belongs like “madame,” “monsieur,” “corbeille” or “cochon de lait.” In addition, she does not take care of the baby alone, she has a maid named Zandrine, and in the story the existence of many slaves is mentioned.
Since Désirée’s origin was unknown, her mother thought that she was mulatto and therefore the child was not completely white. Three months passed and the baby started changing. Désirée wrote to her mother, and asked her to tell her the truth, to which her mother told her to return to live with her and bring her grandson. Armand and Désirée fought and her husband coldly told her that he could go. He felt that his wife had caused harm to his family and his last name.
The interesting and powerful end of the story is when the cruel Armand discovers a letter where his mother confesses that he will always be well cared for and will never discover that she belongs to the slave race: those slaves that Armand had mistreated. The text says there was “[…] an old letter from his mother to his father. He read it. She was thanking God for the blessing of her husband’s love: — “But above all,” she wrote, “night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery (Chopin, 1994).”
In ‘Desiree’s Baby,’ “Chopin examines biracial and gender themes by presenting “essential dimension of regional aesthetics,” calling on “Louisiana as a specific region in the construction of the tragic mulatto stereotype” (“LIT-315 20th Century American Literature,” 2021).”
References
Baym, N., & Levine, R. S. (Eds.) (2012). The Norton anthology of American literature (8th ed., Vol. D). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Chopin, Kate (1994). “Désirée’s Baby.” The Awakening and Selected Short Stories. Project Gutenberg, 2021. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/160/160-h/160-h.htm#link2H_4_0047
LIT-315 20th Century American Literature and Beyond: Module Overview One (2021). Southern New Hampshire University. https://learn.snhu.edu/d2l/le/content/855290/viewContent/14964750/View
