Literary Analysis Of The Necklace

In "The Necklace," Mathilde is very selfish throughout the story. Mathilde shows her selfishness when she longs to be rich and live in a nice home, wear expensive clothing and wear flashy jewelry with her clothes. "These…show how materialistic Mathilde is and how selfish she is for caring only about gaining these things for herself," says one critic (Directessays). Mr. Loisel provides the basic necessities for her to live a good life, but she wants more than just the basic necessities.

* We find out that Leah’s father has died of cancer and they are tracing the coin for him, because he was really curious about where the other half of the coin is.

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.

Her husband tries and tries until he comes up with a great idea to give her an invitation to a ball. She cheers up a little until she realizes she can’t afford a dress. Her husband asks how much and had given her the money to purchase herself a nice dress. She has the dress but still doesn’t feel pretty nor happy after she put the dress on. She wanted more than just the dress which was jewels but didn’t have any. Someone suggested that she should use flowers, but didn’t find happiness in the flowers. Madame Forestier offer Mathilde to borrow her diamond necklace, which gave her the emptiness that she needed to feel happy. She had a great night and was on her way home when she went to feel for the necklace but found that it was gone. She started to panic and retraced her steps but couldn’t find it anywhere. She and her husband went from jeweler to jeweler to find the exact necklace and to replace it. They worked and worked until they had paid it off and returned it to Madame Forestier. She was a little annoyed since she had got it a few weeks after the ball. Eventually she admitted to what she had done and was surprised with what she was told. She was informed that the necklace was a fake. That it was costume jewelry. In this story the Madame was an outsider towards Mathilde. Mathilde didn’t know who she was and had taken the necklace to wear for the

The fact that she is not only able to pour her heart out to the beggar but also make note of something like the jewelry he is wearing makes this conversation a bit more interesting. She recognizes the jewelry as resembling something belonging to Odysseus and finds it a little strange that this beggar could own such a

Hours later Jillian tosses and turns because she is afraid of the dark and being alone for only a reason that Jillian knows. She grabs her drawing pad and finishes her final sketch. Then she takes her 24k gold necklace that her great grandmother gave her, kisses it then puts it in a

belongings that she had her for almost all of her life such as, her swimming hole, the singing tree, and the rest

Thereafter, by learning a lesson from her doings there was a great transformation in Mathilde’s character from beginning to end of the story. After giving the diamond necklace to Forrestier she knew they have to live a “horrible” (5) life “of the needy.” (5) . Thus “with sudden heroism” (5) she decided to repay the debt taken for that necklace and “dismissed their servant, changed their lodgings and rented a garret under the roof.” (5) The woman who valued her youth and beauty the most lost it and became the woman of “impoverished household-strong and hard and rough.” (5) But sometimes she

The next event is the theft of her purse. While she is in the bathtub the janitress knocks and comes in, needing to inspect the radiators. When she gets out of the bathtub to get a cigarette from her purse, it is gone. She knows that the janitress has taken the purse. Her purse made of gold cloth symbolizes all property. The purse represents the difference between the haves and the have-nots. As she is going over whether or not to confront the thief she thinks it would cause "a great deal of ridiculous excitement." She again decides to "let it go."

When Mrs Loisel realises she has lost the piece of

The thieves continue on their journey, they finally get to where they have to get off their boat and use a rope to climb a huge cliff. When they get to the top of the cliff they realize Buttercup’s true love is climbing the rope they cut it. After awhile of the thieves running with Buttercup they are all slowly picked off by her true love.

Mathilde's daydreaming and longing for a wealthy lifestyle starts to not only affect her, but her friendships and her relationships around her as well. Mathilde's husband is considered a middle class clerk in the Ministry of Education and seems to be perfectly happy with his average lifestyle. Even when things were considered out of his financial reach, Mathilde's husband was always trying everything in his power to please her.

pg.609) Necklace.

When she goes to the party, she wants to be seen in the most expensive stuff. Before the day of the party, she goes to a friend for jewelry and finds the most beautiful necklace. She asks to borrow it and wear it to be the prettiest woman at the party. “He brought her wraps so that they could leave and put them around her shoulders – the plain wraps from her everyday life. She felt this and wanted to escape quickly so that the other women, who were enveloping themselves in their rich furs, wouldn’t see her. “(Maupassant 338) She was embarrassed about her wraps from her everyday life and she didn’t want the rich women and men to see what see was wearing. She didn’t want them to know that she wasn’t really

Mathilde is shown around and was being shown off by Madame Ambassador, as if Mathilde