Regret

Foreshadowing, which is a hint of what is to come, has a complex presence in this story. The title of the story, “Regret,” seems to alert the reader to watch for exactly that. The word “yet” in the early description of Mamzelle Aurélie also hints at the same outcome: some 30 years ago, the woman “promptly declined” a marriage proposal, and she has “not yet lived to regret it” (241). A straightforward reading of the story suggests that the foreshadowing is direct: Mamzelle Aurélie, by the end of the story, indeed regrets declining the proposal, as she is now left childless and too old to ever rectify that. However, given Chopin’s other body of work, a less straightforward reading seems possible too. The foreshadowing could be read as misdirection: “regret” is what society believes Mamzelle Aurélie should feel. What she actually feels, however, goes unnamed and may be far more nuanced: grief; loneliness; the strain of trying to claim a complex identity in a society that allows for only one single kind of woman, strictly defined by religiosity and cultural norms.

In Mamzelle Aurélie’s conversations with Odile and Aunt Ruby, casual and informal speech is used in order to bring a sense of realism to the text. At the time of Chopin’s writing, local color was valued in fiction. Local color refers to the inclusion of customs and speech that could reflect characters’ locale, ethnicity, and class. Writers tried to precisely emulate authentic speech patterns using slang, respelling words, and apostrophes.

Odile is Cajun. Cajuns were descendants of Canadian French who immigrated to Louisiana in the mid-18th century. They spoke an archaic form of French. In her plea to Mamzelle Aurélie, Odile’s speech is presented with missing consonant sounds and the shortening of the verbal phrases among other techniques.French expressions are used, such as Dieu sait (God knows) and alive encore (still alive) (241). When Mamzelle Aurélie addresses Aunt Ruby, her speech is portrayed as being similar to Odile’s, suggesting she is also Cajun. Aunt Ruby responds in a speech style that is even more nonstandard English. It is heavily inflected, reflective of a cultural heritage that is different from that of Odile and Mamzelle Aurélie. Many words are respelled in a way that are nonetheless clear when read aloud.

In using colloquialisms, Chopin suggests the uniqueness and importance of each of her characters in their cultural milieu and the world of the story. She strives to stay faithful to the world as it is rather than attempting to adjust the world for the sake of easy reading and interpretation.

Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration in order to bring more power to a description or statement. For example, it is used in describing the approaching group of children in the scene near the beginning of the story, when it is said “they may as well have fallen from the sky” (241). This statement exaggerates the unexpected nature of their arrival and presence in the setting of Mamzelle Aurélie’s farm. The fanciful statement depicts the magnitude of Mamzelle Aurélie’s sense of shock. In a summary of Odile’s explanation regarding her need of Mamzelle Aurélie’s help, hyperbole is used to portray the intensity of her sense of need and desperation: “Her husband was away in Texas—it seemed to her a million miles away” (241). In her exasperation, Mamzelle Aurélie tells Aunt Ruby she would rather manage a dozen plantations than four children. A dozen plantations is an extreme number to manage, but it emphasizes the extent of her difficulty in managing a few children. In the final scene depicting Mamzelle Aurélie alone and without the children, she cries with “sobs that seem to tear her very soul” (244), a hyperbolic expression that portrays the depth of her grief.