In the following essay, Wolff addresses enigmatic elements in "Désirée's Baby," defining "ways in which it articulates and develops themes that are central to other of Chopin's works."
For many years, "Désirée's Baby" was the one piece of Chopin's fiction most likely to be known; even today, despite the wide respect that her second novel has won, there are still readers whose acquaintance with Chopin's work is restricted to this one, widely-anthologized short story. Rankin, who did not feel the need to reprint "Désirée's Baby" in Kate Chopin and Her Creole Tales, nonetheless judged it "perhaps . . . one of the world's best short stories." Unfortunately, Rankin left future critics a terminology with which to describe the value of this and other studies in Bayou Folk: it had the "freshness which springs from an unexplored.....
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