Instant Resources for Regret by Kate Chopin!

Whether you're looking for a short story to pair with the novel you're teaching, or you need a 2- to 3-day sub plan to use with the stories in your textbooks, Prestwick House Instant Short Story Packs go beyond basic comprehension to help students learn how to analyze literature. 

Each downloadable pack addresses key skills through 5-10 standards-based analysis questions by guiding students through a series of scaffolding graphic organizers and in-class activities. 

This Instant Short Story Pack for Regret by Kate Chopin:

• Scaffolding graphic organizers and in-class activities
• Standards-based objectives
• Introduction and pre-reading notes
• Complete short story text
• Rigorous analysis questions
• Detailed teacher's answer guide

About Regret

The title (“Regret”), a simple plot (a childless woman is recruited to babysit her neighbor’s children), and the main character arc (the independent woman who has never been in love grows to love her neighbor’s children and misses them when they go home) all suggest that this story departs from Chopin’s typical theme of strong women desiring independence. “Regret” seems to be almost a repudiation of the ideas suggested in other Chopin stories.

In Dr. Peggy Skaggs’s study of Chopin’s work, she seems to agree: Skaggs writes, “Mamzelle Aurélie, lacks that important part of a woman’s life, the maternal relationship.” Other critics disagree, pointing out that Mamzelle Aurélie is not the children’s mother and should not be defined by expectations of motherhood. Chopin suggests that when Mamzelle Aurélie first receives the children, she views childcare as not very different from tending to farm animals.

It is through her interactions with the children, learning to fill their emotional and physical needs, that she grows to love them. When the children go home, and Mamzelle Aurélie cries, it is likely that she is crying because she recognizes the overall loneliness of her life, not simply because she feels she has lost her chance to fulfill her destiny as a woman.