In the old days, women were practically slaves in marriages. This meant that they actually had no rights and their masters were their own husbands. Kate Chopin, author of numerous different short stories, wrote some short stories in which the female character shows signs of being in a slave marriage. Kate Chopin's stories have a common theme: women suffering from slavery in a marriage and the denial of any kind of freedom. To prove this, in Kate Chopin's stories we see a woman who cheats on and disgraces her current husband with "The Tempest" from one of her old lovers. Secondly, another character was happy when she found out that her husband had been declared dead. “Story of an hour”. And finally "Desiree's Baby" about a woman who was abused by her husband. This story is more on the racist side than being a slave in marriages. Even though it's more on the racist side, you can connect it to the common theme of Kate Chopin. The story is mostly about a married white couple who have a black son. Even in this time period there is still a lot of slavery, so the husband blames the wife, Desiree, for being black since she was originally adopted. After the husband finds out that there is a possibility that his wife has black heritage in her. “Then a strange, terrible change in her husband's ways, which she dared not ask him to explain. When he spoke to her, he did so with averted eyes, from which the ancient light of love seemed to have gone out. He went away from home; and when he was there, he avoided her presence and that of his son” (Chopin). Here in this part of the story Chopin shows how Desiree was mistreated once her husband discovered that she might be black. Not only does it demonstrate women's rights and the fact that they were disobeyed, but it also demonstrates the time period in which the story takes place. What I am trying to show is that Kate Chopin's common theme is women's rights and their role in the marriages of her era, it shows that all of her stories take place around the same generation. “Desiree was happy when she had the baby and Armand was just as happy and kind to the slaves as before, but after seeing his son grow up to be mixed, his attitude changed completely” (Griffin). This shows how the story takes place during the time of slavery, as the husband had it