Regret By Kate Chopin Analysis

The main character, Mamzelle Aurlie, of Kate Chopin’s short story, “Regret”, expresses her feelings and emotions in that of a way where readers of both genders can understand and connect themselves to the situations that are faced by Mamzelle Aurlie. The reader then is immediately compelled to read more about the lonely woman and how her experiences go with the four children of her neighbor as they spend 2 weeks together, even when Mamzelle Aurlie claims to hate children at the beginning to the middle of the time that she spends with the neighbor’s children. Her claim on her opinion changes drastically over the course of two weeks that she had with them. At the beginning of this short story, Mamzelle Aurlie is introduced to the reader as a

Chopin immediately introduces the other four round characters as she leaves the reader at a point where Mamzelle Aurlie’s neighbor comes to her house to drop of her four kids, Lodie, Ti Nomme, Marcline, and Marclette, due to the neighbor having a family emergency. Mamzelle Aurlie, trying to be respectful, allows the children to stay the two weeks at her house. The following evening, Kate Chopin presents through the ideas of Mamzelle Aurlie that children are useless and that they are the cause of terrasen while she tries to ignore all the noise that they make for the next couple of days (para. 10 - 14). We a straight to the point analysis which is that Mamzelle Aurlie hates kids for they are loud, annoying, demanding, and chaotic. The reader can easily understand the negative meaning that children may hold in her mind because the reader easily feels sympathy for the old woman because she is alone with no one else and their act of kindness draws their true feelings about the topic away from

Mamzelle Aurlie continues her thought process by presenting how she sobbed like a man and not like a woman because her sobs were loud and they shredded her soul and spirit one step at a time. When the author includes this detail into the end of the story to wrap her piece up, I feel very sympathetic and sorry for Mamzelle Aurlie to see that she finally had importance in her life to make her feel appreciated and loved but the loss of the children in her home made every little aspect of her life empty and meaningless. Also, the part where Mamzelle Aurlie’s soul is ripped to shreds makes an image in my mind of how her mind and heart seem so useless in her head. This heavy wordplay leaves a negative and brutal consonance in the tone and it magnifies the real amount of pain that is actually felt by Mamzelle Aurlie by a ton. However, the statement reaches to my heart and I can feel the pain that she feels by losing the very things that gave her happiness and hope for a better life for herself and them. Reading these last few thoughts that Chopin had used to end her writing made me sorrow for Mamzelle Aurlie even more and it has made me appreciate the love and spirit that my household