Regret

Chopin desired to portray men and women realistically, in the vein of the literary movement popular at the time known as Realism. Realism focused on what could be known from observation, absent the lenses of romanticism, moralism, or religiosity. In her early stories and writings, Chopin explored various types of heroines; these figures would later develop and deepen into the kind of characters found in her collections, Bayou Folk and A Night in Acadie, and novels such as The Awakening. Some of her heroines are more conventionally feminine and dutiful in their roles as wives and mothers but struggle with individual desires. Other heroines are less conventional and seek to live lives that are freer and more independent, on par with the lives of men. In late Victorian society, white men were freer to choose their way in the world, and they enjoyed many of the legal and political rights denied to women and recently emancipated Black Americans.

“Regret” portrays a less conventional, more independent female protagonist who has achieved the kind of self-reliance for which a man might be praised. Mamzelle Aurélie’s resistance to traditional gender roles is represented in her physical characterization; she has a more masculine appearance, wears men’s clothing, and has become strong through farm labor. She is driven, analytical, and independent. She has prioritized Logic at the Expense of the Senses, with her focus on self-reliance leaving little room or audience for sentimentality or expressiveness. While her success on more concretely measurable levels is clear, her capacity to tap into the world on an emotional level is limited. She “was quite alone in the world” (241), with the exceptions of her animals, workers, gun, and religion. In short, operating within the gender binary of her time, Mamzelle Aurélie presents as an essentially masculine figure—the only role seemingly available to someone who, at her advanced age, remains child-free and unmarried.

The inevitable side effect of Mamzelle Aurélie’s self-reliance is a profound isolation. Community and Individuality do not always align, as Chopin often points out in her explorations of women’s identity. Many of Chopin’s stories and novels were unusual for their depictions of women as individuals with unique needs and wants. Though rarely critically praised and accepted at the time of publication, Chopin’s works would later mark her place as the forerunner of American feminist authors from Catholic and Southern backgrounds. In “Regret,” the main female character’s identity sets her physically and psychologically apart the rest of society. Odile, her nearest neighbor, who is “not such a near neighbor, after all” (241), helps emphasize Mamzelle Aurélie’s through contrast. Odile is both sentimental and expressive, surrounded by and embedded in community. She arrives with a face “red and disfigured from tears and excitement” (241), leaving her four children on her way to aid her mother, while fretting about her husband’s absence.

Part of the power of community is its ability to tap into the deeper regions of the human heart. It elicits emotions more powerful and less logical than those Mamzelle Aurélie is accustomed to dealing with. In “Regret,” this aspect of community is represented by the motif of sensory experiences. The moment the children arrive, sensory details emerge that contrast with the matter-of-fact imagery of Mamzelle Aurélie’s physical appearance. There is the clove-like smell of pinks, flowers named thus because the petals appear to be trimmed with pinking shears. There is the scratching of chickens and “the sound of negroes' laughter was coming across the flowering cotton-field” (242). As Mamzelle Aurélie’s bond with the children solidifies, that connection is communicated through intensifying sensory details: “moist kisses […] the laughing, the crying, the chattering […] little Lodie’s hot, plump body pressed close” (243-44). Then, the children, as the locus of the sensory input, depart: Mamzelle Aurélie “could no longer see the cart […] could no longer hear the wheezing and creaking of its wheels” (244). In the children’s absence, finally, she cannot feel her dog licking her hand. Mamzelle Aurélie’s exposure, even for such a short period, to that depth of feeling has left her keenly aware of how little access to it she has now.

Notably, the motif of sensory experiences also stems from Chopin’s interest in the realist tradition, which aimed to present the world accurately as experienced through the senses. It is evident in much of the imagery, with a painterly eye applied to the portrayals of farm life and nature. It is also evident in the dialogue, with the text’s portrayal of the musicality of Cajun and Creole regional dialects, as well as slang and popular expressions. Such an accurate fictional portrayal of a specific region, known as “local color” or “regionalism,” was popular from the end of the American Civil War to the end of the 19th century. Often, the narrators in such stories were educated and viewed their protagonists from a distance, either sympathetically or ironically. This narrative stance is present in “Regret,” but unlike many local color writers, Chopin was more concerned with portraying individuals, not just the setting and cultural exoticisms.

Another part of the power of community is in the knowledge it offers, revealing the complexity of Knowledge as Communal, Experiential, and Revealed. Mamzelle Aurélie is a capable person. She possesses a “determined” (241) and “critical eye” (242). Yet, when the children first arrive, she is largely unable to care for them. It takes community and experience to unlock this knowledge. Heather Ostman, in her analysis of “Regret,” argues that the story “raises the question of women’s essential nature. […] ‘Regret’ reconfigures conventional Victorian assumptions about women’s maternal ‘instinct’ and suggests that it is the presence of children—not solely biology—that is the key to unlocking the maternal response” (Ostman, Heather. “Maternity vs. Autonomy in Chopin’s ‘Regret.’” Kate Chopin in Context, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 101-115). This assertion, in the late 19th century, would have been a bold one that essentially deconstructed the two main bodies of feminist thought about women’s “nature” at the time: essentialism (in which gender characteristics are inherent and immutable) and anti-essentialism (in which they are not). Instead, as Ostman explains, Mamzelle Aurélie is a “a mature female character whose newly found maternal instincts and inherent independence anticipate the New Woman of the next century.”

Notably, the omniscient narrator of “Regret” rarely enters the protagonist’s mind, relying on indirect characterization. The story expresses Mamzelle Aurélie’s thoughts and traits through her actions, speech, and the way others react to her. Many scenes between Mamzelle Aurélie and the children are summarized using the children’s reactions to her shortcomings and inadequacies, which are filtered by the omniscient narrator. Summarizing scenes in this way creates an efficient narrative flow, creating concentrated minimalism. The narrative’s efficiency propels the story’s momentum to its final emotional beat. However, in part as a result of the omniscient narrator, the conclusion of “Regret” is more ambiguous than it may seem on the surface.

If the foreshadowing of the title is straightforward, Chopin may be advocating for motherhood, or least for providing childcare, as critical to a women’s fulfillment. Mamzelle Aurélie, in the end, does come to regret her life choices. Perhaps more likely, though, is that Chopin is engaging with questions of independence, identity, and societal expectations of women. In this alternative case, the title may be ironic: regret is what Mamzelle Aurélie should feel, per societal expectations, but in fact, the one-word title hardly captures the complexity of Mamzelle Aurélie’s reaction. Barbara Ewell, for example, argues in her study of Chopin that the story explores “the limits and costs of self-sufficiency,” such that, in the end, Mamzelle Aurélie weeps because she “has glimpsed a life that has revealed the insufficiency of her own” (Ewell, Barbara C. Kate Chopin. New York: Ungar, 1986.).