“Regret”—Summary and Opinions

It might be too late to know something, and you will blame yourself for not having sought for the answer in the first place. It should not have resulted with the sadness you are enduring but simply because you were not brave enough or too dumb to comprehend something that was already so obvious.

“Regret”, a piece written by Guy de Maupassant, tells stories of an old man, Monsieur Saval, who was still a bachelor at the age of sixty-two.

The story starts with descriptions of Monsieur Saval’s life which has been so sad and empty. The author drew out his life as meaningless and colourless; he didn’t have great pleasure, success, and satisfaction of life. Perhaps he should have had a better life if he had grabbed good opportunities. He didn’t know that opportunities had already knocked on his door, but he unknowingly let it go. He used to fall in love with a married woman, the wife of his old friend, at first sight, but he dared not go beyond the friend relationship but keep it with him until this age.

The author creates an opportunity for Saval to learn about Madame Sandres’ feeling toward him. Monsieur and Madame Sandres and Saval together in three went for a picnic at the riverbank, and when M. Sandres fell into asleep after lunch, Madame Sandres and Saval took Saval’s arm and walked along the riverbank. She leaned gently on his shoulder and she asked him if she were as pretty as the wreath of flowers. However, M. Saval could not comprehend her actions, and he ended it without allowing a start.

Now, at this age of sixty-two, in this morning, he started recalling his past. Never before had he recalled and understood what had happened at the riverbank on that day. He could not help leaving this world without clarifying his doubt why she had acted like that. He rushed to her house to obtain an answer to his heart.

Madam Sandres was already fifty eight years old and she was still that pleasant and welcomed Saval as her friend. Saval took out his courage and asked her what if he had asked her for her hand, what would she have said? Madame Sandres’ answer would have been ‘I agree’. She had understood how he felt for her since the first time they had met, and she had given opportunity to him, yet he didn’t realize. Now that he had known the truth—the fact that he had let go of opportunity that would have changed his life.

The theme of this story is to tell us to beware of opportunities which might just knock on your door. Be smart and notice how others feel toward you. Be bold to say what you feel toward someone because s/he may feel the same way. You may torture your heart for years, and you will leave youself without anything else besides regrets once you know that you shouldn’t have had to be so. However, it’s not advisable to have an affair with someone who is married, and I don’t know why the author organised the protagonists in this way. All in all, we ought to fight for our love. To love secretly is useless because s/he will never realize it until it’s too late. Say it out and give her/him choices so that regrets will never exist.

Jane Eyre

Of late, I’ve been reading several novels, one of which is ‘Jane Eyre’ that I got interested in. The story was written by Charlotte Borntë and first published in 1990.
Jane Eyre is a poor, plain, and simple girl whose life is full of hardship and misery. Losing of parents since she was born, she became an orphan and had to live with her aunt, Mrs Reeds, who and whose children dislike her and always treat her worse than a maid without a reason. She is always scolded at and punished. At the age of eight, when her aunt wants to get rid of her, she is sent away to a charity school where she has to live on herself without support from a family. Although the living there is quite poor (less food, less clothes, strict rules…), she likes it since it’s much better than where she is from. She learns the knowledge and manages to survive. She stays there for ten years. After that, she leaves the school and works as a governess of a girl in Thornfield House, where she meets her true love, Mr. Rochester, around 40 years old, the owner of the house. They are in love with each other. However, the secret of Mr. Rochester breaks off their marriage. Taking us by surprise, Mr. Rochester has got a mad wife who is locked inside the house. His wife inherits the madness from her family, and Mr. Rochester never knows it until they are married and live together. Mr. Rochester had been very sad and is always in bad temper. He has always been looking for someone who he can truly love. When he meets Jane, he knows she is the one. Therefore, he proposes marriage to Jane, and she agrees. On the day of her marriage, Jane knows the secret and leaves the house with sadness and helpless no matter what Mr. Rochester says. She has no where to live and she has no job. When she is dying of hunger, she is rescued by a family consisting of two sisters and a brother. Later, they find out that they are cousins when their uncle, John, who is also Jane’s uncle, dies and leaves Jane with $20,000. She divides the treasure into four and shares with her cousins who have saved her life. She is proposed to marry by her cousin, but she refuses him because deeply in her heart, Mr. Rochester fully occupies. Therefore, she goes back to Thornfield House to see him. Unexpectedly, when she is there, the House is never there; it’s just a pile of rock and ruin. Everything is burnt down by a fire caused by Mr. Rochester’s mad wife. Mr. Rochester, who managed to save all people in the house from fire, is badly injured. Sadly, he has lost one of his legs and becomes blind; still, he couldn’t manage to save his wife who jumped from the window and died. In the end, Jane comes back to Mr. Rochester, marries to him, and serves him because she knows he is the only one she loves and loves her. Luckily, one of his eyes is able to see again after years of treatment. They have got a child and live happily ever after.
I love this story much since it teaches us to struggle for life, to look for happiness by ourselves, to forgive and forget, and to think positively even we are facing a problem. Of course, there are many things that we can learn solely from a novel, and it’s also the reason that I like reading it. I hope all of you start to love novels and learn the moral it tries to give to us.