Exegesis Of The Necklace

“The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant is a story about a woman, Madame Loisel, who throughout her entire life has always felt as if she deserved more than she had. Mathilde is so convinced she’s meant to be wealthy that she detests her real life and spends all day dreaming and despairing about the fabulous life she’s not having, when one day she loses what she thought to be an expensive diamond necklace, leaving her and her husband in poverty. Guy de Maupassant uses characters such as Mathilde to show that characters evolve as a result of their experiences and interactions with others. Universal ideas such as greed, fear of perception, and maturity are significant in the transformation of Mathilde’s circumstances from a pretty and charming middle-class woman, to an unrecognizable woman living in abject poverty.

In “The Necklace”, Mathilde Loisel is a woman who cannot tolerate her lower-class status, believing “herself born for every delicacy and luxury”(82). Mathilde’s vain materialistic goals, make her bitter and unhappy. The main point of irony in the story is the fact that Mathilde borrows the necklace and looses it. The necklace was very expensive, or so she thought, so she ended up in poverty

She realises that she has been living with a stranger, since the whole marriage is a charade to fulfil the expectations of Victorian society.

In the beginning of the story, Matilda begins by being lazy and falling back asleep after her mother demands her to wake up this instant. She wakes up and finds that their serving girl Polly hasn’t arrived yet and then were introduced to the Grandfather and Eliza. At the end of Chapter 2, Matilda finds that Polly has passed and at the end of Chapter 3 Matilda and her mother Lucille argue about Matilda going to Polly’s funeral. Mother says, “The girl was our servant, not a friend.” (16). This shows that maybe Lucille and Polly might of had a rocky relationship. And towards the very end of

Around the world, values are expressed differently. Some people think that life is about the little things that make them happy. Others feel the opposite way and that expenses are the way to live. In Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, he develops a character, Madame Loisel, who illustrates her different style of assessments. Madame Loisel, a beautiful woman, lives in a wonderful home with all the necessary supplies needed to live. However, she is very unhappy with her life. She feels she deserves a much more expensive and materialistic life than what she has. After pitying herself for not being the richest of her friends, she goes out and borrows a beautiful necklace from an ally. But as she

Have you ever want too many things even though your life was already fulfilled and lost yourself? Have you ever ask too much and regret for what you did? Every desire, ambition, selfishness and a bit of extravagant of a human being was carefully portrayed in this story, “The Necklace”. The story is about a young woman named Mathilde Loisel. Born in a family of artisans, she wasn’t rich, but beautiful and glamor. But she never feel satisfied of what she had and never stop dreaming to have more, to live a luxury life with expensive homes and glittering dresses, and eventually paid hard for her nonsense dreams. In “The Necklace”, Guy de Maupassant uses third person limited narration to show how Mathilde Loisel changes in how she

Matilda in The Necklace was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted. She was self-aware in the sense that she knew she was beautiful, and she wanted to feel beautiful at all times via things like fancy necklaces and elegant dresses. Because she lived in the middle-class, though, she couldn’t have the shiny things she desired. This was not the problem. The problem was that the author portrayed her in such a way that made her seem vain, rude, and just overall awful. Just for wanting pretty things. There is absolutely no problem with wanting nice things and wishing you had the money to buy them. That’s called human nature. People always want more than they have, and Matilda is no different. As if that wasn’t enough, the author went and made her compare herself to other women. She

Gervayse Pyncheon, just like any other Pyncheon, shows greed over the deed and money. He brings in Matthew Maule to tell him where the deed was, as he once worked on the house when it went missing. He asks for Alice and he sends her to him because his will to give up anything to find the inheritance. Matthew ends up hypnotising Alice and turns her into his slave. Gervayse Pyncheon now cannot obtain the deed and also loses Alice through greed as a consequence of his.

Both Guy de Maupassant and O. Henry, the authors of “The Necklace” and “The Gift of the Magi”, are considered two of the best short story writers to have ever lived, and they both use irony to develop a complex theme in their stories. They both deal with young, poor couples who face certain trials, and are surprised by an unexpected, ironic event – although in different ways. In both of these stories, the authors create suspense and humor to create an enjoyable story. In both stories; there are several main themes including wealth, sacrifice, pride, and love; that can be seen in both “The Gift of the Magi” and “The Necklace.” One of the most noticeable pieces in both stories is the amount of wealth, or lack of wealth, that the couples have. The authors set the characters in an uncomfortable, drab environment. This can be seen in “The Gift of the Magi,” in lines 11-13 as, “a furnished flat at $8 per week (…) did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad” (Henry, 11-13), and in “The Necklace” in lines 13-15 as, “shabbiness of her apartment, the dinginess of the walls, the worn out appearance of the chairs, and the ugliness of the draperies” (Maupassant, 13-15). The Youngs are a low working class couple, while the Loisels are part of the middle class before the they lose the necklace. Altogether, it is clear that in

“She so much longed to please, be envied, be fascinating and sought after” (de Maupassant 67). The main character desires to be at the center of attention, she wants to be coveted by others. In his fictional short story titled, “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant writes about how the lusting for more may cause people to be blinded and unable to see/value the treasures they already have. The story begins with an introduction of a lady who daydreams about the happiness that materialistic yearnings can bring her, forgetting her situation and social class. After taking her husband’s recommendation to borrow jewelry, specifically a diamond necklace, from her close friend Madame Forestier to wear alongside her dress at the evening reception, the main character later discovers that she had lost the necklace. Following their failure to find the necklace, Madame and Monsieur Loisel devise a plan to borrow money to replace the necklace with another and in doing so, fall into years of debt. Moreover, Maupassant uses direct characterization, imagery and situational irony to further depict why you should be grateful for what you already have before it’s too late.

She combs Ms. Peebles’s clothes, but she will not rummage the drawers because she “[will feel] worse doing it” (Munro 70). Edie knows that looking through Ms. Peebles’s belongings is wrong, but she goes through her closet anyway—it will be harder to tell that she was there than in the drawers. When the family finds out that Edie may have been intimate with Watters, they ask her if they had sex, but she does not actually know what that is; when asked what she thinks it means, her only answer is “kissing” (Munro 80). When she was younger, Edie and her friend Muriel Lowe would “watch [Muriel’s] sister and her sister’s boyfriend saying goodnight” (Munro 76). She and Muriel liked to watch the two of them kiss and imagine what it would be like to have to someone to kiss.

Mathilde Loisel lived the life of a painfully distressed woman, who always believed herself worthy of living in the upper class. Although Mathilde was born into the average middle class family, she spent her time daydreaming of her destiny for more in life... especially when it came to her financial status. Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, tells a tale of a vain, narcissistic housewife who longed for the aristocratic lifestyle that she believed she was creditable for. In describing Mathilde’s self-serving, unappreciative, broken and fake human behaviors, de Maupassant incorporates the tragic irony that ultimately concludes in ruining her.

Prompt: In “The Necklace” how does the symbol of the necklace change throughout the story? Leonardo da Vinci states, "The greatest deception men suffer from is their own opinions. " In Guy de Maupassant's ” The Necklace”, Mathilde, a middle class woman, and her husband receive an invitation for a ball, however, Mathilde feels that she must not go because she is poor and simple compared to the rest of the invitees. She convinces her husband to buy her a new dress, and she borrows an expensive-looking diamond necklace from her friend, Madame Forestier.

Originating in France, ‘The Necklace’ is a short story written by French writer Guy de Maupassant in the late nineteenth century, the period where literary movements realism and naturalism dominated French fiction. Maupassant played an important role in both the realist movement and the naturalist movement through his depiction of the setting as well as the character’s decision. The short story reflects upon the rigid patriarchal society during the late nineteenth century, demonstrating how the wealth of a person can lead to their generosity and greed; thus affecting their lifestyles. Through ‘The Necklace’, Maupassant aims to depict the conflicts between the upper-class and the lower class, how their inner desires vary. This essay will analyze

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breaths away”-Maya Angelou. This quote demonstrates that life isn’t about the amount of things one has or can do, but the time one spends with joy and fun, appreciating what they can do and have. In the short story, “The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant, the main character does the exact opposite of what this quote represents, she learns the hard way. Madame Loisel, the main character, doesn't appreciate her ways of living and wants something to represent the lifestyle she wants to live. Madame borrows a diamond Necklace, loses it and rather than telling the truth, she lies and buys another. She ends up wasting 10 years of her life working hard to pay off debt. Madame then finds that the diamond necklace was nothing but paste though the replacement was real. Maybe if Madame had been grateful for who she was and what she had, she would’ve lived a better life. De Maupassant uses multiple internal and external conflicts to teach the reader that people should just be grateful for who they are,what they have and what they can do.