Regret

Mamzelle Aurélie is a rugged individualist whose decision to embrace her own identity has come at the cost of community. As a property owner, she manages her own land while donning men’s clothes. She lacks a husband and children, the basic 19th-century trappings of a woman, by choice. Her belief in self-determination and individual responsibility set her apart from her neighbors both physically and mentally. However, when her nearest neighbor, Odile, arrives and pressures her into caring for her four children, Mamzelle Aurélie is left shaken by her brief exposure to real love and acceptance.

To endure the isolation that results from her identity, Mamzelle Aurélie practices a certain detachment. She avoids or otherwise has not experienced the deep emotions that result from true connection with humanity. This detachment emerges in the motif of sensory experiences. As her neighbor’s children arrive and she learns to care for them, another world opens up to her, one rife with sound, color, smells, and tastes. The intensity of these sensory experiences represent the rich emotional experiences to be had when immersed in community and embracing the responsibility of caring for others out of love.

Once the children leave, before Mamzelle Aurélie is able to return to the detached but well-organized state of mind that protects her heart, she grieves. Though her character could be read as a simplistic warning to child-free women, Chopin’s body of work suggests a more nuanced critique of society and its treatment of women. Mamzelle Aurélie is not broken at the end of the story. Rather, she ends the story as herself, with her return to her individuality anticipated. She doesn’t cry “softly, as women often do. She cried like a man” (244). And though she “did not at once set about the task of righting” (244) the “sad disorder” the children have left behind, it seems she soon will. Society might name her reaction “regret,” but the word does not appear in the conclusion.