Guy de Maupassant, a French writer, was born in August 1850 and died in July 1893, during which the Franco-Prussian war took place. Subsequently, many of his narrations were set during this war to describe its meaningless and disastrous aftermath to countless innocent people whose experiences were changed forever. He was known as a master of short stories and belonged to naturalist school of writers, in which he described human lives, along with society, in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms. A signature in his style is begining with ironic and ending with twist, which is also the basis for “The Necklace”, wrote in 1884. In this short story, Maupassant uses third-person objective point of view with cleverly contrast and ironic setting but also figurative background accross the plot to paint a picture of a typical low-paid clerk’s family in 1880s French society. The protagonist, Madame Matilda Loisel, throughout the story has demonstrated a theme of disparage societal position based on money, fame and glamour. As said before, one of Maupassant’s signature style of writing is filling the story with constrast, irony, sarcasm and some twists to set up “The Necklace” background and to emphasize his view of a deceitful wealthiness in a culture distorted by money and fame. He starts with the prettiness of Madame Matilda Loisel, so enchanting that “if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks” (380). It portrays a steoreotype a beauty woman must come along
The short story“The Necklace” by Gui de Maupassant follows Madame Loisel and her husband who are living in the middle-class during the rise of the middle class in Paris, France.There are many different examples of irony throughout the short story, demonstrating Maupassant's talent at commenting on the society in which he was immersed in. The theme of “The Necklace” is revealed through the character Madame Loisel, irony, and symbolism.
The necklace serves as a symbol for greed. When Mathilda Loisel loses the necklace that she believed was worth forty thousand francs, she desperately retraces her steps and gets her husband to help her find it as well. It ends up taking ten years to pay off the debt. The ten years were hard on Mathilda Loisel and her husband, and Maupassant told the reader that she “looked old now… with hair half combed, with skirts award, and reddened hands” (6). However, even after the long ten years of manual labor all because she lost the necklace, she “sat down near the window and though of that evening at the ball so long ago, when she has been so beautiful and so admired” (6). The necklace symbolizes that when greed controls emotions and decisions, it never leads to good results.
Guy De Maupassant is recognized as one of the finest writers of the modern short story. Maupassant’s literary career began in 1880 in France. He was a marvelous writer of short stories which were based upon the aspects of the French Society, frequently touching sensitive subjects such as social and moral principles. The beauty of Maupassant’s stories is the unpredictability of them, quite identical to life, where things do not always turn up the way one may expect. The short story, Jewelry by Guy De Maupassant is an insightful piece, with a compelling theme of appearance versus reality and that the life is full of irony.
In Guy de Maupassant’s story the necklace, Madame Loisel’s is a women in the middle class who’s unsatisfied with her lifestyle and envies the upper class lifestyle. Her personality takes her through a irony filled roller coaster throughout the story. The story shows three different types of irony in the story which are verbal, situational, and dramatic.
‘The Necklace’ is a morality tale written by Guy de Maupassant where he portrays the life of a beautiful but dissatisfied girl named Mathilde who desires to live a luxurious life despite being born into a clerk’s family and marrying a clerk too. Mathilde’s discontentment in life instigates her to pretend someone rich that she is not. Moreover, it leads her to severe trouble that caused ten years of hardship to Mathilde and her husband. So, this suffering is a punishment for Mathilde which taught her a lesson and changed her dramatically over the course of the story by making her a person of completely different personality for whom appearances
In Guy De Mauspassant's `The Necklace," the author examines the theme of how learning a difficult lesson about honesty can impact someone for the rest of their life. The author also examines the theme through the use of his title, the characters who act out the events, and the plot.
Using literary devices like imagery, diction, and point of view, the author characterizes Madame Loisel as remorseful and desperate, it helps the reader understand how regretful and weary Madame Loisel is after carelessly losing her friend’s necklace after a long-lasting night. “The Necklace” is written in the point of view of third person omniscient. This point of view allows the reader to view the story from many different perspectives, enabling them to understand each character’s thoughts and feeling as well as the motive for their actions. Guy de Maupassant emphasizes the remorse shown by Madame Loisel through diction. After 10 taxing years of working to pay off her debt she was left with, “Her hair untended, her skirts askew, her hands
In “The Necklace”, Guy de Maupassant uses different literary elements to help the reader connect to and better understand the story and characters. Three literary elements that Guy de Maupassant uses in the story are dramatic irony, where Mme. Loisel manipulates her husband to get her a dress for the party invitation, irony, where Mme. Loisel spends so much time not caring about anyone and trying to seem wealthy and it all just turns into her working for ten years being very poor, and finally, imagery, where Guy de Maupassant uses descriptive words to bring images to your mind to help you better understand and connect to the story. For a second, imagine that you saw a pair of shoes that you really liked and you felt like you actually needed them to live, but you did not have enough money to buy them. Would you just walk away, or get in debt, or would you try to steal them? Everyone can be greedy and selfish, but you should not let that guide you in your decisions and actions, instead think about why you want them and if you really needed them. Mme. Loisel just wanted to look wealthy, but she had a lot of good things in her life like her faithful husband, her beauty, and food on the table, but she threw it away because of her
In the short story, "The Jewelry", written by Guy de Maupassant, there is an eventual ironic twist that ends up enhances the main character's characterization. The plot is that a young woman, whom is adored by many, is married to a clerk, who earns a modest salary each year. Together the Lantins live quite happily, despite their financial situation seems to lack the ability to provide a lavish lifestyle. However, Mrs. Lantin has a trick; she dresses up her dull clothes with "fake" jewelry that could fool anyone into thinking they were pure gems. Later in the story, Mrs. Lantin dies, leaving Mr. Lantin in a struggle to stay afloat. In an effort to scrap up some extra cash, the man goes to jewelry stores and asks for the necklaces to be appraised. Controlled by utter shock of how much the jewels are worth, Mr. Latin starts living the lavish lifestyle he's always wanted, spending money carelessly. This eventually attracts his second wife: a woman who makes him miserable. "The Jewelry"'s events show that Monsieur Lantin is characterized as a round, and dynamic character, who shows traits through indirect characterization.
The internal conflicts established in “The Necklace” were a result of Madame Loisels perception of happiness. Because of her ungrateful and dejected views on life, she didn’t realize nor recognize true merriment. In the text, Guy De Maupassant shows how Madame “..was one of those pretty and charming girls born as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of
In Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, Madame Loisel is described as a self-absorbed woman with an elevated dignity, since she cares only for her own enjoyment but not her husband’s feelings. Near the beginning of the story, when Madame Loisel’s husband hands her the invitation, she tells him, without compassion, to give it someone else. At that point, the narrator describes Monsieur Loisel as “heart-broken” (2). She does not value her husband’s effort at all, and her sharp words of rejection not only wound her husband’s feelings, but also implicate her cold-heartedness and self-centeredness. When she finally agreed to go to the ball, she dresses herself to be the most elegant woman present. After the party ends, however, the narrator
In “The Necklace”, Guy de Maupassaut uses the irony with the necklace to criticize Madame Loisel’s need to make a false impression and her equally false desires. Madame Loisel shows her desire for everything throughout this short story. Guy de Maupassant uses an angry tone showing the reader he disapproves of Madame Loisel actions and need for attention. In the beginning of this short story, Guy describes Madame Loisel as “one of those pretty and charming girls born” (CITATION). Guy de Maupassant immediately lets the reader know Madame Loisel is incredibly beautiful. Her husband even says “Why the dress you go to theatre in. It looks very nice to me” (CITATION), yet Madame Loisel does not care. Madame Loisel needs to make a false impression
The nineteenth century French writer, Guy De Maupassant, tells an intriguing story in "The Necklace." He depicts the painful life of a beautiful woman, unhappily born into an average family of clerks. She felt that she was destined to marry into wealth but sadly found herself settling as she married an average copyist. Unlike the women of today, women in the nineteenth century were not fortunate enough to have a career of their own; they were either born into a wealthy family or married a man with money. In "The Necklace", Guy De Maupassant creatively reveals Mathilde Loisel's dreams of a decadent lifestyle. As her struggles start to unravel, it becomes obvious that her heartache is solely
Some people experience specific conflicts throughout their lives that can affect the way they view themselves and others. An example of this is in the short story The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, where Madame Loisel is constantly suffering the mental battle of wanting everything she does not have. Jewels, necklaces, and riches - all the materialistic things that Madame Loisel sought after her whole life, cause her to display an ungrateful attitude towards herself and her husband. Once she finally receives something that she wanted, a beautiful necklace borrowed from a friend, she loses it and in order to replace it, she becomes forced to borrow more money from friends. Consequently, she had to spend many years of her life to pay back every person she borrowed money from, when in result, the necklace was a replica and was much cheaper than what she had thought. Madame Loisel undergoes a series of external and internal conflicts, causing the idea that it is important to remain truthful and appreciative to be discerned.
“She was one of those pretty and charming girls, born, as if by an accident into a family of clerks” this is what Guy de Maupassant started “The Necklace” off by saying (Maupassant 221). Also, this helps describe the main character and to give the readers a visual of Mathilde Loisel. “The Necklace” is a short story that Mathilde Loisel, the main female character, wants to be a higher class than she really is. Mathilde’s life drastically changes one night after she loses the necklace. Guy de Maupassant incorporates his use of the social class into the short story.