Regret

Kate Chopin was born Kate O’Flaherty in St Louis, Missouri in 1851. Her mother was a descendant of French settlers who came to America around 1700. This culture in St. Louis and Louisiana would later become known as Creole, a term that first referred to New World–born French and Spanish colonists and later to the multiracial culture on the US Gulf Coast. Her father had immigrated from Ireland and married her mother when she was only 16, a practice common among the Creoles.

Chopin’s family spoke French at home, though she had a good command of English when she was young, and it seems she only ever wrote in English. Her mother’s gentility and confidence and her father’s calmness and self-reliance were strong influences on her. Her father was actively involved in St. Louis and the Catholic Church, where he supported the church’s intellectual endeavors and charity work. He died in 1855 in a train accident. Chopin then lived in a more somber household run by female relatives, all of whom were widows and highly religious.

Chopin’s great-grandmother became an instrumental figure in her life in the wake of her father’s death. The woman would tell vivid stories about the history of St. Louis and its founders, which would later influence Chopin’s own writing. In 1870, Chopin married her husband, Oscar, who was descended from a Louisiana French-Creole family. They moved to New Orleans and had six children together. Eventually, out of economic necessity, they moved to a small French village in Northwest Louisiana. In 1883, Chopin’s husband died, leaving Kate a widow at the age of 30. She carried on running her husband’s cotton plantations for a year, but she moved back to St. Louis at her mother’s urging. She and her mother were very close, but her mother died a few years later in 1885.

Chopin had always read widely, including current scientific and philosophical works. She was encouraged to write fiction by her obstetrician, who was impressed by the literary quality of her letters. He also thought writing fiction would help alleviate her despair and provide her with a means of financial support. Chopin began to write poetry and short stories with varying success. During this time, she discovered her greatest literary influence, Guy de Maupassant. Maupassant wrote in the popular realism style, which focused on true representations of reality and common life. Realism included regionalism and local color, which dealt with particular settings or segments of society. In regionalism and local color—terms often used interchangeably—there is a focus on unique locales, the vernacular of various regions, societal rules and norms, and social classes, which are thought to add a sense of realism to short stories and novels. This literary trend was popular from the end of the Civil War to the end of the 19th century.

Maupassant’s realism involved strict adherence to a fictional “reality” that could be observed as opposed to psychological exploration or romantic flights of fancy. Observable details and facts were paramount in his stories and novels. Chopin’s “Regret” is influenced by this narrative style. In Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography, Per Seyersted compares Chopin’s “Regret” with a similar story written by Guy de Maupassant: “Reine Hortense.” It appears Chopin was inspired by the themes of his stories, whether or not she was conscious of how closely she mirrored his plot and spinster character in “Regret.” Seyersted makes the case for Chopin’s version when he compares it to Maupassant’s “Reine Hortense,” observing how Chopin “could take a Maupassantian theme and transform it into her own, surpassing the master in technique and in depth of vision, and making the tale into a truly moving experience” (125).

As her later novel, The Awakening, demonstrates, Chopin was particularly interested in realistic portrayals of men’s and women’s impulses, particularly relating to love and sexuality. She wanted a freer expression of these impulses in literature, not one hemmed in by morals, religion, and proscribed roles. Although Chopin herself was a wife and dutiful homemaker, she strove to explore the entire scope of the human experience in her writing. She read the works of writers, particularly women, who pushed against traditional boundaries and mores, and she began to explore various types of female protagonists in her stories. These protagonists included more traditional “feminine” heroines as well as emancipated heroines who wished to be active in their own lives and to live outside convention.