Regret
A contented spinster who never wanted children spends two weeks caring for a neighbor's brood and is left aching at all she chose to live without.
Mamzelle Aurelie is fifty, strong, self-sufficient, and has never once regretted refusing marriage. Then her neighbor's four children are suddenly left in her care, and the days they spend together rearrange something she thought was settled. When they go home again, the silence they leave behind tells her what she missed.
What happens
Mamzelle Aurelie is a robust, independent woman of fifty who lives alone on her Louisiana farm, having declined her one marriage proposal and never looked back. When her neighbor Odile is called away to a dying mother, she leaves her four small children in Mamzelle Aurelie's reluctant care. At first the spinster is bewildered by the children, treating them with the same brisk command she gives her farm, but over two weeks she learns their small needs, their bedtimes, their fears, and their affections. The work is hard and unfamiliar, yet the children steadily soften and fill her solitary life. When Odile returns unexpectedly and gathers the children home in a rush of joy, the farm falls abruptly silent. Mamzelle Aurelie stands in the empty, disordered house as dusk falls, and the absence overwhelms her. She puts her apron to her eyes and weeps, not with the dainty tears of a girl but with great, broken sobs, mourning the life and love she will never now have.
Timeline the story arc, beat by beat
- setup A settled woman
Mamzelle Aurelie lives alone at fifty, content and never regretting her refusal of marriage long ago.
- rising The children arrive
Neighbor Odile, called to a dying mother, leaves her four small children in Mamzelle Aurelie's reluctant charge.
- rising Bewilderment
Unused to children, she manages them at first with the brisk authority she applies to her farm.
- turn Learning to love
Over two weeks she learns their habits and tenderness, and the children fill her solitary days.
- climax Odile returns
The mother comes back suddenly and sweeps the children home in a flurry of reunion and joy.
- falling The silent house
The farm goes abruptly quiet and disordered, the children's absence pressing in as dusk gathers.
- resolution She wept
Standing alone, Mamzelle Aurelie covers her face with her apron and weeps with deep, broken sobs of regret.
Characters and how they connect
Mamzelle Aurelie
Protagonist
A strong, independent fifty-year-old spinster who discovers, too late, the maternal love and life she gave up.
Odile
The mother
Mamzelle Aurelie's young neighbor, who entrusts her four children to her care when summoned to a dying mother.
The four children
Catalysts
Odile's small children whose needs, fears, and affection awaken in Mamzelle Aurelie a longing she never knew.
Ponto
Companion
Mamzelle Aurelie's faithful dog, the loyal but insufficient companionship of her solitary life before the children.
The narrator
Voice
Chopin's restrained third-person narrator, who lets the final, wordless grief carry the story's full emotional weight.
Character map who connects to whom, and the themes that bind them
Themes what the story is really about
Regret and the road not taken
Chopin builds the whole story toward the moment a woman recognizes the love and motherhood she deliberately refused and can never reclaim.
Independence and its cost
Mamzelle Aurelie's prized self-sufficiency is shown to carry a hidden price, a solitude she had not measured until the children left.
Maternal awakening
Caring for the children rouses a tenderness she did not know she possessed, revealing a capacity for love long left dormant.
The suddenness of self-knowledge
A settled identity is overturned in a fortnight, and the story insists that one can be wrong about oneself for decades.
Symbols & motifs
The empty house
The sudden silence and disorder embody the void at the center of Mamzelle Aurelie's life, made unbearable now that she has felt it filled.
The apron
A working garment of her farm life, raised to hide her sobbing face, it marks the collision of her hardy self-image with raw grief.
The children's belongings left behind
Scattered traces of the departed children stand for everything she briefly held and must now relinquish.
Dusk
The gathering evening mirrors the lateness of her realization, a life turning toward dark with the lesson learned too late.
Recurring motifs
Command versus tenderness. Mamzelle Aurelie's brisk, managerial manner repeatedly gives way to gentler care, charting her transformation.
Noise and silence. The children's bustle and the quiet they leave behind frame the story's emotional arc through sound.
Small daily rituals. Bedtimes, meals, and comforting fears recur as the humble acts through which love quietly takes root in her.
Conflicts
Person vs. self
Mamzelle Aurelie confronts a buried longing for motherhood that overturns her lifelong belief in her own contentment.
Person vs. circumstance
The children's temporary stay and inevitable departure impose a loss she is powerless to prevent or undo.
Person vs. time
Her awakening comes at fifty, too late to choose differently, pitting her new desire against an irreversible past.
Literary devices
- Characterization
- Chopin sketches Mamzelle Aurelie's brisk independence early so her final breakdown lands with shocking force.
- Imagery
- The disordered, dusk-lit house and the apron pressed to her eyes render her grief vivid without explaining it.
- Irony
- A woman certain she never wanted children weeps hardest of all at their loss, undone by the very thing she dismissed.
- Contrast
- The children's joyful, noisy reunion is set against the silence and emptiness that immediately follow, sharpening the ache.
- Understatement
- Chopin lets a single image of weeping carry the climax, trusting restraint to deliver the emotion more powerfully than commentary.
Important quotes
“She had never thought of marrying. When she was eighteen she had been in love, but that was so long ago.”
“And it was very, very long before the children at Odile's farm forgot to ask Mamzelle Aurelie to come and see them.”
“She did not notice Ponto licking her hand.”
“She let her head fall down upon her bended arm, and began to cry. Oh, but she cried! Not softly, as women often do. She cried like a man, with sobs that seemed to tear her very soul.”
When Odile returns and gathers her children home, the farm falls silent and Mamzelle Aurelie is left alone in the disordered, dusk-lit house. She walks back inside, and the absence of the children she has spent two weeks loving crashes over her. She lays her head on her arm and weeps, and Chopin specifies that she does not cry softly as women often do but cries like a man, with sobs that seem to tear her soul. This is not grief over a brief inconvenience ended; it is the regret of the title, the sudden, total realization that in refusing marriage and motherhood she walled herself off from a love she was fully capable of and now will never have. The story ends on the sob rather than any resolution, leaving her, and the reader, inside the irreversible recognition. There is no comfort offered, only the honest weight of a life understood too late.
Common misreadings
MythMamzelle Aurelie always secretly wanted children.
ActuallyThe story is clear that she never thought of marrying or regretted it; her longing is newly discovered, which is exactly what makes it tragic.
MythThe title refers to regret over taking the children in.
ActuallyThe regret is for the life of motherhood she refused decades earlier and now grieves, not for the fortnight of care.
MythThe ending is hopeful because she can visit the children.
ActuallyChopin ends on raw, soul-tearing sobs with no resolution; the loss is framed as permanent and the realization irreversible.
Test yourself
1. Why do Odile's children come to stay with Mamzelle Aurelie?
Odile leaves the children in her neighbor's care when summoned away to a dying mother.
2. How does Mamzelle Aurelie feel about marriage before the children arrive?
The story states she had never thought of marrying and never regretted refusing her one suitor.
3. How does the story end?
Alone in the silent house, she cries like a man with sobs that seem to tear her very soul.
Mamzelle Aurelie is a tough fifty-year-old woman who lives alone on her farm and always said she never wanted to get married or have kids. When her neighbor has to leave suddenly, she ends up watching the neighbor's four little children for two weeks, and even though it is hard at first, she slowly falls in love with taking care of them. Then the mother comes back and takes the children home, and the house goes completely quiet and empty. Standing alone, Mamzelle Aurelie finally realizes how much she gave up by never having a family, and she breaks down crying harder than she ever has.
Ask the story
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Compare & connect the story universe
The Story of an Hour
Chopin's twin study of a woman's sudden, overwhelming self-realization compressed into a single emotional turning point.
A Pair of Silk Stockings
Both reveal a woman confronting a neglected self, here through loss rather than indulgence, and the cost of her choices.
A Respectable Woman
Another Chopin portrait of a woman discovering desires and longings that her settled life had hidden from her.
The Necklace
Both end on a hard, late realization that reframes a woman's whole life around what she failed to grasp in time.
Discussion & essay prompts for class, or your next paper
💬 Discussion questions
- What is the meaning of Regret by Kate Chopin
- Why does Mamzelle Aurelie cry at the end of Regret
- What is the theme of Regret by Kate Chopin
- How does Regret explore the theme of regret and the road not taken?
- How does Regret explore the theme of independence and its cost?
- What is the central conflict in Regret, and how does it shape the ending?
✎ Essay prompts
- Analyze how Kate Chopin develops the theme of regret and the road not taken in Regret. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
- Examine the significance of the empty house in Regret. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
- How does Kate Chopin use characterization to shape the reader’s experience of Regret?
- Some readers assume that mamzelle Aurelie always secretly wanted children. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.
Key questions students ask
- What is the meaning of Regret by Kate Chopin
- Why does Mamzelle Aurelie cry at the end of Regret
- What is the theme of Regret by Kate Chopin
- What does Mamzelle Aurelie regret in the story
- How does Kate Chopin portray independence in Regret
- What does the empty house symbolize in Regret
Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. Quotations are from Kate Chopin's Regret (1894), which is in the public domain.