What is a character analysis of Desiree in "Desiree's Baby" by Kate Chopin?

A character analysis of Desiree reveals that she is a
gentle and loving young woman who feels no shame nor inferiority because she was a
foundling abandoned by the road when a toddler, then found, claimed, and adopted by the
Valmondes. When grown into young womanhood she is as beautiful and charming as she has
always been good natured and sweet of temperament. In addition, she loves easily and
without judgementalism for we learn that she gives her heart to the first man who dotes
upon her beauty--fortunately, he is a man her parents know well and approve of for her
(perhaps wrongly, we find out).

As a young wife, Desiree
exerts a peaceful and tranquil influence on the hard-hearted Armand, which induces his
mean spirit to exert a gentle understanding hand with his slaves instead of a punishing
and severe hand so as to escape being what he later becomes when Desiree's influence is
lost to him: "the very spirit of Satan." As a young mother, she is overjoyed with her
infant and even more overjoyed to see the pride and joy the infant's father experiences.
She reaches a level of happiness that almost frightens her when she realizes the change
the infant's presence brings in Armand's feelings and
behavior:

"he
hasn't punished one of them - not one of them - since baby is born. Even Negrillon, who
pretended to have burnt his leg that he might rest from work - he only laughed, and said
Negrillon was a great scamp. Oh, mamma, I'm so happy; it frightens
me."

When her world tumbles
around her and Armand rejects her, she is quick to sense the impending doom coming her
way and horrified when Armand finally explains the reason for the growing doom to
her:

"Tell me
what it means!" she cried despairingly.

"It means," he answered
lightly, "that the child is not white; it means that you are not
white."

On a negative side,
rather than fight back and uphold her right to dignity and her humanity--regardless of
evidence of racial mixing (wrongly interpreted evidence)--she instantly and immediately
yields to despair and takes herself and her beloved baby to cleanse them both of
ignominy, shame, and rejection in the bayou.

A cultural note may be
helpful in understanding the falling action of the story. You will notice that the text
says:

Desiree
had not changed the thin white garment nor the slippers which she
wore.

This indicates that the
action of walking into the bayou occurred on the same day as the pronouncement that her
baby was not white. The reason this can be so is that messages would be sent back and
forth between L'Abri and the Valmonde plantation in minutes, as a slave would have been
sent as messenger, either walking on "the broad, beaten road which led to the far-off
plantation of Valmonde" or on horseback, the latter of which seems most probable. Her
mother's response to her despairing letter would have been written immediately while the
messenger waited for it before rushing back to L'Abri with Madame Valmonde's reply.
Thus, everything would have been accomplished in one afternoon and evening, everything
from listlessness to disappearance:

readability="13">

She sat in her room, one hot afternoon, in her
peignoir, listlessly drawing through her fingers the strands of her long, silky brown
hair that hung about her shoulders. ...
Desiree had not changed the thin white
garment nor the slippers which she wore. ...
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.