Désirée’s Baby
by Kate Chopin

Désirée’s Baby: Situational Irony 1 key example

Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—The Mistake:

When Désirée confronts Armand, she and Armand both believe that she is the parent with Black ancestry and therefore the reason their son is mixed-race. Armand acts on this assumption by rejecting Désirée and telling her to leave their home: 

He thought Almighty God had dealt cruelly and unjustly with him; and felt, somehow, that he was paying Him back in kind when he stabbed thus into his wife’s soul. Moreover he no longer loved her, because of the unconscious injury she had brought upon his home and his name.