King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: Regret

author: Kate Chopin

genre: short story fiction/classics

source: http://www.americanliterature.com/

first line: MAMZELLE AURÉLIE possessed a good strong figure, ruddy cheeks, hair that was changing from brown to gray, and a determined eye.



Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening' is a favorite classic, so when I came across this short story online, I was eager to read it.


Fifty year old Mamzelle Aurélie lives on her farm with no one but her dog Ponto and her fieldhands. Aurélie never married and never regretted it.

Mamzelle Aurélie had never thought of marrying. She had never been in love. At the age of twenty she had received a proposal, which she had promptly declined, and at the age of fifty she had not yet lived to regret it.

Her neighbor a woman named Odile asks Aurélie to watch after her four young children for two weeks while she tends to her sick mother. Soon enough the children are making a mess of the home, playing and running and just doing what children usually do. Aurélie does get used to the kids and you even get the sense that she starts to love them.

It took her some days to become accustomed to the laughing, the crying, the chattering that echoed through the house and around it all day long. And it was not the first or the second night that she could sleep comfortably with little Élodie's hot, plump body pressed close against her, and the little one's warm breath beating her cheek like the fanning of a bird's wing.

I felt sorry for Aurélie. She never had children of her own and seems to never have realized how lonely she was. The story ends with her sobbing at her kitchen table after the children leave with their mother. Her dog Ponto is licking her hand but Aurélie doesn't notice.
She doesn't bother to clean up the mess the children left behind, almost as if she wants a reminder that they were there in the first place.
The main theme in this short story is regret, and you do get a feel of Aurélie's sadness and remorse.

Kate Chopin was an American author of short stories and novels. She is now considered by some to have been a forerunner of feminist authors of the 20th century.

I read Regret online here.