Desiree's Baby

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Consider the antebellum period in the American South. In these decades leading up to the Civil War, the South’s rural, crop-based economy depended on the labor of enslaved people. What was the social stratification in this region and time period? How did factors such as race, gender, and ancestry factor into one’s social status during this time? Did this social stratification change in the postbellum period? Why or why not?

Teaching Suggestion: This Short Answer question invites students to consider the story’s themes of The Unnatural And Irreconcilable Rules Of Race and The Cruelty of Slavery within the setting of the antebellum period. In the decades prior to the Civil War, also referred to as the “antebellum” (Latin for “before the war”) period, factors including one’s gender, race, and wealth as it related to land ownership were important components in the treatment and social status of those living in the south. Although both President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the subsequent end of the Civil War in 1865 formally ended slavery, many African Americans continued to experience racial prejudice as social systems sought to exclude non-white people from the social milieu.