Kate Chopins Desirees Baby and Flannery OConnors A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Essay Example

Comparing Fiction Other than that they are both written by female about roughly the same geographical region of the country, there would seem to be very little in common between Kate Chopin's 1893 short story "Desiree's Baby" and Flannery O'Connor's 1955 story "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Chopin's story is very short, telling the story of a young woman of unknown background and the three months or so following the birth of her baby with her husband Armand. The baby is clearly a quadroon, an individual of mixed racial blood, which causes her husband to turn away from her until she disappears, with her child, into the swamps near their home. O'Connor's story tells of a family of six - a father, a mother, three children and a grandmother - who take a trip to Florida but run into an escaped convict called 'The Misfit' along the way. Because the grandmother recognizes him, the entire family is taken back into the woods and killed with the exception of the grandmother, who is allowed to talk with the Misfit until the rest of the family is dead and then is killed there at the side of the road. A few more superficial comparisons can be made in that the main character of each story is a woman, each woman must face the death of her son and both women die by the end of the story for reasons they have little or no control over. However, there are deeper similarities between these two stories that emerge when one takes a closer look. These similarities include being written in the realist tradition, featuring men who suddenly realize their own common connections and both having a gothic element. One of the most glaring similarities between these two stories is that they are both written in the realist tradition. The realist tradition in American literature focused on the concept that people were just people, not submerged divinities as the transcendentalists claimed or helpless victims of fate as the naturalists claimed. "These American realists believed that humanity's freedom of choice was limited by the power of outside forces" (Penrose). In other words, realism acknowledges individuals have their own power to make choices, but that they are also forced to work within boundaries established by external events. In Chopin's story, this is seen as Desiree finds herself trapped in a situation in which her beloved husband can no longer stand the sight of her because of the obviously mixed blood seen in their baby - a condition she cannot control. However, her fate is determined by her individual choice to "not take the broad, beaten road which led to the far-off plantation of Valmonde ... She disappeared among the reeds and willows that grew thick along the banks of the deep, sluggish bayou; and she did not come back again" (Chopin). It is also found in O'Connor's story as the grandmother is unable to determine where she will go for a family vacation, but has the option of going along with the family or continuing to bid for a trip to Tennessee instead of Florida. In each case, there are limiting outside forces, but it is still the individual's choice that leads them to their fate. Both stories also have a strong gothic element. Some of the common elements of Gothic literature are emotional terror, some form of crumbling architecture, death and madness occurring among the characters, a sense of pervading darkness and plenty of secrets and hereditary curses (Hume 282). Desiree's home is dark enough to give Madame Volmonde shivers with its deeply sloping roof, "steep and black like a cowl," and the "big, solemn oaks" whose "thick-leaved, far-reaching branches shadowed it like a pall" (Chopin), giving a strong instance of foreshadowing in the symbolism used within this description. The nearby marshes, the stubble of the fields that cut Desiree's feet on the November evening that she disappears, and the prevailing gloom of the harshly treated slaves all function to create a gothic environment. This is further enhanced by the mental anguish of the lady as she perceives something wrong with the way she is being treated and the madness that overcomes her once she realizes the truth. The gothic is more difficult to create for O'Connor as the bulk of her story takes place along the side of a sunlit country road, but the location is remote, the trees are described as thick and blue surrounding them "with more woods, tall and dark and deep" as one would expect in a gothic. O'Connor brings in the concept of the crumbling architecture with the addition of a "big black battered hearselike automobile" that the fugitives are driving. Again, the psychological terror continues to build until the point where the grandmother's mind finally snaps to clarity and she is shot. The climax for each story is at the point where the male character finally sees a point of connection or clarity between himself and the female character. In "Desiree's Baby," this connection happens at the very end of the story as Armand sits and commands his slaves to burn the many different things Desiree and her baby left behind. Among these things is a packet of letters he saved from her, but not the letter his mother had sent to his father in which she expresses her gratitude that their son "will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery" (Chopin). His aristocratic attitudes because of his family's wealth and long-time presence in the area coupled with Desiree's unknown background as a foundling caused him to automatically assume she was the cause of his child's obvious appearance as a quadroon. This letter proves that it could have easily been his fault, and his alone, that the child gained the appearance it did. Similarly, it is when the Misfit finally sees the connection between himself and the grandmother that he shoots her, no longer constrained by the injunction not to shoot a lady. As they sit talking, she notices "his voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, 'Why, you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!' She reached out and touched him on the shoulder" (O'Connor). This connection springs the Misfit into action, causing him to shoot her three times in the chest right there in the ditch. "In her momentary clarity of vision, the grandmother judges the Misfit and herself to be members essentially of the same race - the human - and reaches out to seal the kinship with an embrace. The Misfit ratifies his name by his violent repudiation of the kinship. Yet the kinship is there" (Dyson 148). In both cases, there is a breakdown of the concept of nobility or higher status between the man and the woman and it is this break that creates the climax to the tension that has been building. Flannery O'Connor and Kate Chopin lived and wrote approximately 50 years apart, in different social times and among different artistic trends, yet they both expressed their ideas within an uniquely American voice that combined strong elements of realism with elements of gothic, two concepts that don't normally play well together. Both writers made this happen by de-emphasizing the metaphysic element of the gothic and by romanticizing to a small degree some of the realist depictions. In creating the climax of the story at the point where the male figure finally finds a connection between himself and the female protagonist, both writers force attention on the woman's treatment, calling into question the judgments that have been made upon her character and revealing the ways in which she remained trapped within the circumstances of her life and yet felt compelled to express something of her own. Works Cited Chopin, Kate. "Desiree's Baby." 1893. Web. May 11, 2011. Dyson, J. Peter. "Cats, Crime, and Punishment: The Mikado's Pitti-Sing in 'A Good Man is Hard to Find.'" A Good Man is Hard to Find. New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1993: 139-51. Print. Hume, Robert D. “Gothic versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel.” PMLA. 8.2, (March 1969). Print. O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find. New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1993. Print. Penrose, Patricia. "American Realism: 1865-1910." American Collection Educator's Site. 2011. Web. May 11, 2011. Read More