30 pages • 1 hour read
Kate ChopinRegret
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1894A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Community and Individuality
Mamzelle Aurélie has powerfully manifested her individuality. As a single woman, she is a farm owner who seems highly capable of managing her own affairs; she oversees a large property of fields, all her workers and their homes, and her animals. She thereby subverts 19th-century gender norms, per which only men would be owners of property and managers of people. In addition, her physique and clothing suggest what would have been considered a more masculine presentation in the 19th century. However, the implied cost of this individuality is community. The “so” in the observation “[s]o she was quite alone in the world” (241) is a loaded transition, possibly referring not only to the short paragraph about her choice not to marry but also to the introductory paragraph about her appearance.
This lack of community is literal and figurative; Mamzelle Aurélie is alone in more ways than one. Although Odile is her nearest neighbor, when the mother arrives, Mamzelle Aurélie observes that the mother is “not such a near neighbor, after all” (241). The “after all” in this observation seems to suggest that, in addition to the physical distance between Mamzelle Aurélie and Odile, there is a social and mental distance between them. Odile’s way of life, oriented around serving her not-insubstantial family, is totally foreign to Mamzelle Aurélie’s way of life, oriented around supporting only herself. Odile’s many obligations to others sets her far apart from Mamzelle Aurélie, with her self-determination.
Although different readings of this story are possible, it seems likely that Mamzelle Aurélie’s sudden awareness of her intense isolation, not necessarily an emergence of regret over being unmarried and child-free, is the source of her grief in the end. Much of Chopin’s work is interested in women’s identity; the author was familiar with first-wave feminism, and Chopin’s writing generally combats the concept of gender essentialism, or the idea that men and women have distinct and fixed intrinsic qualities. Rather, Chopin argues, women have complex identities, and it is society’s norms that causes them to suffer when their identities do not align with expectation. The arrival of the four children break Mamzelle Aurélie’s isolation, placing her at the center of a community, its emotional richness indicated by the wide-ranging sensory experiences involved in caring for the children. When the children leave, they take that community with them.
Logic at the Expense of the Senses
An individual without community is bereft of important emotional experiences that humans generally need to thrive. In “Regret,” the motif of sensory experiences suggests those rich emotional experiences; this motif helps portray how the feelings elicited by love and acceptance are uniquely gripping, to the point of being almost tangible. Mamzelle Aurélie, however, “had never been in love” (241) and has chosen to embrace her identity despite the cost. It seems she has therefore long prioritized logic as a mechanism of survival. Emotional detachment protects her from feeling the absence of community. As long her mind remains ordered—“determined” and “critical”—she can avoid the messy, nonsensical, chaotic emotions of community.
As the story opens, Mamzelle Aurélie’s status as a single woman, unencumbered by a husband and children, is conveyed in the first few paragraphs with simple, minimalistic declarative sentences. It is a dry accounting devoid of sentimentality:
So she was quite alone in the world, except for her dog Ponto, and the negroes who lived in her cabins and worked her crops, and the fowls, a few cows, a couple of mules, her gun (with which she shot chicken-hawks), and her religion. (241)
The lack of adornment in these lines has a humorous, satirical touch. Her gun is one proof she is not alone. Her beliefs are summed up as “religion.” The narrative maintains its slightly dry, humorous tone even as Mamzelle Aurélie spots “a small band of very small children who […] might have fallen from the sky so unexpected and bewildering was their coming, and so unwelcome” (241).
However, Mamzelle Aurélie is not cold-hearted or incapable of love. Rather, her ability to care for and even love Odile’s children seems to grow with her actions of service to them, her desire that they should be contented and well. The very moment that the children are left alone with their new caretaker, in this changed and charged situation, sensory elements are heightened, given center stage: the intensity of the sun; the scratching of chickens; the smell of flowers; the sound of workers laughing in the field.
Mamzelle Aurélie initially clings to her detachment, striving to apply a simple logic to addressing the children’s needs; the humor lingers, with Mamzelle Aurélie determining first that her duty is to feed the children from her ample larder, as if she is a commanding officer providing for a regiment of troops. However, as her shortcomings soon become evident, her awareness of sensory details increases. Taking care of others, especially motherhood, is a task grounded in the senses, the affective, the intuitive. Accordingly, Mamzelle Aurélie steadily experiences an awakening to the particular and specific: sticky hands, wet kisses, children’s noises, their “hot, plump” bodies and “warm breath.”
In the end, after the children have left, Mamzelle Aurélie is left with the “sad disorder” of not only her home but also her mind and heart. She must take time to weep—with her protective logic stripped away, she is left fully exposed to the pain of her isolation. The easy loyalty and comfort of her dog is beyond her comprehension in this moment; the bleak fact that her identity places her outside society is too overwhelming. Simultaneously, it seems she will rebuild the state of mind she needs to survive: “[t]here was much work awaiting her,” it is just that “she did not at once set about the task of righting it” (244).
Knowledge as Communal, Experiential, and Revealed
Mamzelle Aurélie is initially presented as a character with great knowledge, the kind of knowledge that enables her to run a farm. But when she becomes a surrogate mother for her neighbor’s children, it becomes evident that her knowledge had only concerned this one self-directed activity. Caring for children forces her to face the limitations of her knowledge and power:
I tell you, Aunt Ruby, Mamzelle Aurélie informed her cook in confidence; […] me, I’d rather manage a dozen plantation’ than fo’ chil’ren. It’s terrassent! Bonté! Don’t talk to me about chil’ren! (243).
The experience is a trial in adjusting her way of being in the world, a shifting of her focus from herself to others. Sharing her trial with Aunt Ruby reveals her self-assessment of her lack of skill. Aunt Ruby has some encouragement for her as well as some homespun, superstitious wisdom about what children should not be allowed to do—wisdom Aunt Ruby assures her she couldn’t have known.
Mamzelle Aurélie certainly did not pretend or aspire to such subtle and far-reaching knowledge on the subject as Aunt Ruby possessed, who had ‘raised five an’ bared (buried) six’ in her day. She was glad enough to learn a few little mother-tricks to serve the moment’s need (243).
Furthermore, the children themselves know more about how they should be cared for than their temporary guardian. They make a point of informing her about discipline and nighttime rituals. Marcéline and Marcélette laugh that she is ignorant of bedtime stories and lullabies. There is an upending of the hierarchy in terms of roles and power. It is the children and hired hand who guide Mamzelle Aurélie in the acquisition of the knowledge she needs to perform her duties, though sometimes she only learns by making mistakes such as causing Marcélette to cry when she speaks to her harshly or failing to discipline Ti Nomme.
So engaged is she in this demanding, engrossing caretaking experience that she becomes agitated when Odile returns, unannounced, to fetch her children. After the children ride away with their mother, her only work in the house is a solo endeavor—cleaning up the mess they have left behind. She is now depicted as a lone figure sitting in a room which grows darker as night approaches. It seems the time for continuing to acquire a certain kind of knowledge has ended—how to care for Odile’s children. And yet, the acquisition of a new kind of knowledge has begun—the knowledge of the cost of her identity.
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By Kate Chopin
