Thesis: The main idea of the story is that even though independent people like Mamzelle Aur'elie become used to living alone, they still need human intimacy.
I. Mamzelle Aur'elie is depicted as a masculine woman with a
somewhat military demeanor.
A. Masculine qualities of Mamzelle Aur'elie
B. Could Mamzelle be a lesbian?
C. Mamzelle Aur'elie compared with Odile
II. Mamzelle Aur'elie assumes an even more military air when she is confronted with the unfamiliar task of caring for the children.
A. Mamzelle's first approach to dealing with the children
B. Changes the children make in Mamzelle's life
III. The contrasting symbols of the story show the changes that have occurred in Mamzelle Aur'elie's life.
A. Symbols of masculinity and feminity
B. Symbols of happiness and regret
The short story, "Regret," by Kate Chopin is about a childless spinster who accepts the responsibility of caring for a neighbor's four young children while their mother is away. The main idea of the story is that even though independent people like Mamzelle Aur'elie become used to living alone, they still need affection and human intimacy.
Mamzelle Aur'elie is depicted as a woman with masculine traits and a somewhat military demeanor. Her "good strong figure," clothed in "man's hat, ... army coat, and topboots" contribute to her masculine image (461). And like a man she manages her own farm and keeps a gun "with which she shot chicken hawks" (461).
Mamzelle Aur'elie's masculine traits combined with the facts that "[S]he had never been in love" (461), and at the age of fifty " had not yet lived to regret" not marrying, raises questions about her sexual orientation (461). Perhaps Mamzelle Aur'elie is a lesbian. The probable setting of the story is rural Louisiana in the late nineteenth century. The mores of this society would have made it difficult for her to carry on an intimate relationship with another woman or to raise a child of her own out of wedlock. With no desire to marry, and other options closed to her, she remains alone.
Kate Chopin contrasts Mamzelle Aur'elie's solitary life and independence to the more ordinary situation of Oldie, the neighbor who brings her four children to stay with Mamzelle Aur'elie. Oldie is a wife and mother who is almost overwhelmed by family obligations. When she comes to Mamzelle Aur'elies, she is carrying her youngest child in her arms and dragging a second by "an unwilling hand" (461). Alarmed by news of her mother's illness and deprived of help from her husband who is away in Texas, she approaches with a face that is "red and disfigured from tears and excitement" (461). Thus, she is quite the opposite of the stolid Mamzell Aur'eles who is "quite alone" but looks with a "determined eye" (461) over her crops and workers.
Mamzelle Aur'elie assumes an even more military air when she is confronted with the unfamiliar task of caring for the children. At first sight of the "small band of very small children" (461) she is as shocked as if "they had fallen from the clouds" (461). Their approach is "unexpected," "bewildering," and "unwelcome" (461). She contemplates the children with a "critical eye" and a "calculating air" (462) like a drill sargent viewing a set of new recruits. The course of action she determines is "identical with a line of duty" ( 462), and calling on her experience as husbandman, she feeds them. It is easy to picture her doing this while wearing her old blue army overcoat and topboots. Her "loud and commanding tone of voice" (462) that so frightens Marc'elette, one of the older girls, would also befit a platoon leader. Chopin implies this comparison again when she writes that Mamzelle Aur'elie "ordered them one and all to bed as she would have shooed the chickens into the hen-house" (462). However, Mamzelle Aur'elie soon learns that children are neither little soldiers nor livestock.
The presence of the children have an impact on Mamzell Aur'elie. First, children awaken her maternal instincts. Mamzell Aur'elie is compelled "to unearth white aprons that she had not worn for years," and to take down "her sewing-basket, which she seldom used" (463). She dresses them for bed in their white nightgowns, washes their feet before bed, tells Ti Nomme a bedtime story, and rocks Elodie to sleep. And after a short time, she even begins to enjoy the children. She becomes accustomed "to the laughing, the crying, the chattering that echoes though the house and around it all day long" as well as "the moist kisses" from the little boy, Ti Nomme, and the feeling of the baby's "hot, plump body" (463) pressing against her in sleep.
The contrasting symbols of the story show the changes that have occurred in Mamzell Aur'elie's life. Thus, the symbols of her masculine, independent life, the old blue army overcoat, the topboots, and the gun, are replaced by symbols of her new domestic, maternal role, the white apron and the sewing-basket. Chopin deliberately understates the affection which Mamzell Aur'elie develops for the children when she writes that after two weeks Mamzell Aur'elie "no longer complained" ( 463) of their presence. The time of day when the children come into Mamzelle Aur'elie's life and the time of day when they depart are also symbolic. On the morning of their arrival, "the white sunlight" was beating down on the bleached boards of the old porch, and "some chickens were scratching the grass" (462). Adding to the bright, idyllic atmosphere is " a pleasant odor of pinks in the air, and the sound of Negroes' laughter . . . coming across the flowering cotton field" (462). This fine summer morning is symbolic of the happiness and contentment Mamzell Aur'elie feels before her experience with the children. In contrast, when Oldie returns to take the children away, it is evening. The white sunlight has faded into a "blue-gray twilight" which has "flung a purple mist across the fields" (463). And when Mamzell Aur'elie enters the house, "the evening shadows were creeping and deepening around her solitary figure" (463). The growing darkness as well as the stillness in the old house symbolize Mamzell Aur'elie's newly discovered loneliness.
The "sad disorder" which the children have left is symbolic of the disorder in Mamzell Aur'elie's emotional life. It is almost as if fate has put her in this situation for the sole purpose of showing her how lonely she really is. The cruel irony is that at the very moment when she has come to enjoy the children, they are taken away from her. Her regret is not over never having married, for she could still do so if she wished, but rather over not having had children in her life. In the end, she realizes the void left by the Oldie's children can not be filled by her own at the age of fifty. Now, the once "determined eye" is filled with tears and she begins to cry "not softly as women often do," but "like a man, with sobs that seemed to tear her very soul" (464) Nothing from her past life can bring her consolation, and so she does not even notice her dog Ponto "licking her hand" (464).
Chopin, Kate. "Regret." Literature for Composition. 4th Ed.
Sylvan Barnet et al. New York HarperCollins, 1996. 461-464.
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