Surviving history: Kate Chopin

Abstract

Bearing witness to the colonial and anti-feminist atmosphere of 19 th -century America, Kate Chopin created her works against a background of all kinds of repression reigning over social life. Likewise, Désirée’s Baby focuses mainly on a young woman’s marital life and the social/familial problems she confronts because of her personal background and imperial and gender-based oppression surrounding her life. Through a new historicist reading, the story has several humane elements to be taken into account. Reflecting the periphery and the repressed, Désirée’s Baby is a significant anti- canonical writing with an inspiring human touch and a historically excluded work which depicts the dramatic existential problems of the time.