The Color Purple & Desiree’s Baby
Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple and Kate Chopin’s short story Desiree’s Baby are two completely different stories about women. While Celie in The Color Purple follow the way from sorrow to happiness, Desiree, the main character of Desiree’s Baby, follows an opposite route. Her destiny is a complete vice-versa of what Celie experience, because her path starts with happy careless life, and ends with humiliating dislodge. While Celie in The Color Purple finds herself, in the end of the book, Desiree, contrarily, finds exile, unjustly becoming an outcast.
Although the two stories follow two completely different plot paths, there still is a mite of correlation between the novel and the story. Both books’ main characters are women; both heroines experience unjust treatment from their men (Celie not only had an abusive husband, but also a stepfather); both Celie and Desiree submitted themselves to their husbands, and were literally afraid of them during rages. 
Although Celie did find the way to overcome her helplessness and weakness, Desiree was not as lucky as Celie, and this is the main difference of the book. Other differences, however, include the local setting, the main characters involved in the plot, the motifs of the main characters, the theme, and the overall presentation of the plot of the author to the reader.
While The Color Purple is a huge book, with very many characters, which more or less influence the flow of the events and the actions and decisions of the main character Celie, Desiree’s Baby, on the contrary is a little story with very few characters involved. As for the comparison and contrast of heroines themselves, they both are very reticent, humble women, who respect a man as the mater of the household. In Desiree this respect is contiguous with fear, however in Celie, this respect is not respect at all (till the climax at the end of the book), but rather she takes his authority for granted.
The problems of the two heroines are different as well. Unlike Desiree, Celie experiences trouble throughout the book. Her stepfather’s sinister attitude to her was the beginning. As the plot of the book goes further, she experiences even more problems with her stepfather when he force her to marry the unloved man. Afterwards she has many unpleasant people to deal with, the most prominent being her husband’s lover Shug. And finally, Celie’s husband is the greatest source of sorrow that she encounters’ in the entire book. 
Unlike Celie, Desiree experience this kind of sorrow only once, when her man Armand dislodges her out of his house. The reason for such Armand’s behavior is enclosed in his scornful attitude towards the blacks, and a he infers, Desiree is black. Since Armand literally hates negroes, which is revealed in the way he beats them on the daily basis, he cannot accept their black baby. And since Armand I hundred percent sure it I Desiree who is black (he excludes the possibility of him being black), he gradually turns cold and eventually neglects Desiree.
Another feature that I worth attention, and that makes the short story distinct from the novel, is the very last sentence of the story. This excerpt from Armand’s mother’s letter to his father reveals to the readers and to Armand himself the truth about him, that black blood runs through his veins. This kind of culmination of the story turns the entire writing upside-down, revealing the unjustness of Armand’s attitude towards Desiree. 
Unlike in Desiree’s Baby, there is no such a great turn. Although the climax of the novel consists in the “awakening” of Celie and discovering her femininity and sensibility, this conversion was slowly and gradually taking place starting from the middle of the book. Moreover, Celie’s conversion was a logical outcome of the entire novel. Kate Chopin’s climax, on the other hand, underlies entirely different motifs and symbols. 
In general, while Desiree’s Baby is a book with a negative outcome, The Color Purple has more a positive outcome. As seen from the climax of Chopin’s story, Armand hated the people, with which he himself identified, which creates a clash of ideas in readers’ minds at the end of the book. In Walker’s novel such a controversial ending is omitted, and substituted by a positive ending. Walker makes everyone happy, reconciled, and joyful about their lives, which is a great option for the character of the novel, since they experienced harsh times during the novel.
As we have just discussed, these two stories – Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple and Kate Chopin’s short story Desiree’s Baby – seem to be completely different only for the first glance. Both stories are about women and written by women, and both are focused on women’s lives because the lives of the authors themselves had too much in common. Both Alice Walker and Kate Chopin are considered to be “women novel writers” and are often referred to as the feminists. Although these two stories have been written and published with almost one hundred years difference between them, the reader would never be able to point it out, as for all the characters are skillfully portrayed according to the customs and attitudes of the times described. 
The question of the human rights in general, and women’s rights in particular, especially for a black women in the United States of America of few centuries ago, has always been a cornerstone in various discussions. Both Kate Chopin, at the end of nineteenth century, and Alice Walker, at the end of twentieth, could not ignore this topic. The authors have both paid great attention to the description of young women’s relations with their families, husbands, children, other women and, which is the most important, with themselves. The attitude of both Celie in The Color Purple and Desiree in Desiree’s Baby to themselves are evolving throughout the stories. And, to my mind, this is where it lies the major similarity of these two completely different stories. As black women were used to have very few rights before in the United States, it was a matter of very strong will and high confidence to survive in the described atmosphere. Because Celie made enormous efforts in order not to fall in despair in spite of all the miseries she had to go through, she survived and even helped other black women to recognize their abilities. Desiree’s attitude to herself was oppositely going worse with the help of her husband. 
Thus, we face the very unpleasant fact in both stories, that the women’s lives were formed and conducted by the society, its norms and rules, and some particular members of this society. And though the final of one story is sad, and the other has the happy end, to my mind it does not matter much. Both main characters suffer from severe attitudes, and it is obvious that Celie was just successfully put in the circumstances where she did survive. Though the similarity is rather explicit, both stories may teach any woman a lot. Recognizing your rights, understanding and forgiving yourself, determining your own place in life and your purpose – these are main lessons that the stories, The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin, give to any woman.