Madame Lucy's Tale

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

“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.

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

Now consider the role of Mathilde Loisel in “The Necklace”. She constantly grieves about her simple life and fantasizes about extravagant life style with rich people and food surrounding her. Her husband is a simple man and is satisfied with his life. He appreciates her for the food which is cooked and never complains. Being in the Ministry of Education their lifestyle is modest. Mathilde is not satisfied on the other hand even when her husband proudly announces that they have been invited at a formal party held by the Ministry of Education. The irony in the story is more or less the same with regard to the female characters. Mathilde cries and gets her prize in the form of a dress but she is never satisfied. She wants jewelry as well. The necklace that she borrows from Madame Forestier teaches her a lesson of life. Since she is not familiar with the real jewelry she picks the cheapest one from her collection and wears it to the party why she loses it. Upon not finding the jewelry her husband takes the pain of selling everything out just to purchase an identical necklace worth 40,000 francs which leaves them poverty stricken for the next ten years during which her husband does three jobs and

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

Ciaran Mallory, the coldly passionate Scottish werewolf. She’d spent one single night in his castle as his captive, prey to his every sexual whim.

Socrates once wrote, “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” The quote above shows how envy is able to take a toll on a person’s soul and is relevant to the story “The Necklace.” When Madame Loisel is invited to a prestigious party, she borrows a seemingly priceless necklace. Mathilde misplaces the incomparable necklace; thus Madame’s envy for the fame of the party and the accessory she desires causes her to plummet into deep poverty. She works and sacrifices for 10 years, suffering to pay off the immense the debt she dug for herself. Within the short story “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, Madame Loisel presents many negative characteristics including greed, the importance of status, and insecurity through her desire to look wealthy and prestigious. She offers all she has to please those traits within her, to mute and cover the echoing voices that come from within.

She thinks that she deserves better and is too good for the life she has. She finally gets her wish one day when she is invited to a ball. She was very excited about it, but did not have the things to wear, so her husband gave her money to buy a dress. She also went and borrowed a very nice necklace from her neighbor. While she was at the ball she had a great time, but when she went to leave she could not find the necklace anywhere. She went and told her neighbor and told her she would pay her back. In order to pay her neighbor back, her husband had to get another job and she had to get one herself. After ten years, she and her husband had finally saved up enough money to pay back the neighbor for the necklace. This story is ironic because at first she is a middle class women who thinks she deserves to be in the upper part of society, but at the end of the story she is in the lower class of society because her and her husband had to spend all of their money to pay back the neighbors for the necklace only to find out it wasn’t even worth that much.

In the story, she overlooks how good her life is and constantly mopes that she doesn’t have better possessions. Not only does she have a loving husband who would do anything for her, she even has her own maid and cook. Even after all of this, she’s still not happy with her life. Her husband tries to make her happy by getting her an invite to an exclusive party, but it seemingly makes her worse for a moment. To go to the party, she tells her husband she needs a new dress, so he buys her one. The dress is still not enough, however, so she goes to her wealthy friend and borrows one of her necklaces for a while. After the party, she realizes she’s lost the necklace and tries to delay getting it back to her friend until she can find a replacement. Her and her husband buy a replacement that takes 10 years of multiple jobs and major budget cuts to pay off only to find out the necklace she lost was actually a fake necklace worth $500. Sometimes, greed yields more drastic results than this

The party was at its fullest holler the moment Lucy Ames stepped into the house. The lurid sound of people bellowing filled the auricles of her ears, drowning every perspective of leaving as her best friend’s hand shot out, gripping her own as she dragged them forward. The gut-wrenching sight of two teenagers making out on the sofa awakened the bubbling of her stomach, threatening to gush out of her mouth if she did not look away any sooner.

The moral of this short story, “The Necklace” is that everyone should be grateful for what they have, who their dating, and how life is provided for them. The wife was far from grateful, she was greedy. For example, her husband provided her with an envelope with an invitation to a ball and handed her. Her response was unnecessary. She should have been grateful that she got an invitation. “Instead of being delighted as her husband expected, she threw the invitation on the table with disgust, muttering, "What do you think I can do with that?" "But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go anywhere, and this is such a rare opportunity. I had hard work to get it. Everyone is wild to go: it is very select, and invitations to clerks

Money and wealth isn't everything. Madame Loisel from The Necklace by Guy Maupassant has to learn that the hard way. Madame Loisel is a woman who feels entitled to a lavish lifestyle. She is a character who is dissatisfied with her current lifestyle even though she has a caring husband who provides her with everything he can. Madame Loisel is invited to an elaborate party in which she feels she needs a beautiful gown and a diamond necklace. In order for Madame Loisel to attend the party her husband gives her 500 Francs and she borrows a very expensive diamond necklace. After the Loisels attend the party they realize that they have lost the necklace and now their lifestyle must change dramatically so that they can pay to replace the necklace. The Loisels both work very hard for the next ten years to pay back the money they borrowed to replace the necklace. Madame Loisel realizes what a comfortable life she had and how her greed got the best of her. Leading her to a life of misery and hard labor to replace the diamond necklace. Madame Loisel is a complex character because she is both round and dynamic.

Lucy sat through the last minutes of school, thinking time couldn’t go any slower. She was SOO excited for Summer to finally come. She already had plans. Absolutely nothing. Well, those were her plans until she got home.

Greed is one of the main reasons people feel the need to have material objects, and “The Necklace,” by Guy de Maupassant is an example of just that. Mathilde, the main character, valued luxurious items so that she could seem wealthy to others. When her and her husband get invited to a formal event for work, she wishes to look as elegant as she can. Although Mathilde didn’t have a bad life, she still wanted more. “She had no proper wardrobe, no jewels, nothing. And those were the only things that she loved-she felt she was made for them. She would have so loved to charm, to be envied, to be admired and sought after” (Maupassant 374). This quote relates to how even though Mathilde probably did have a dress that would have been

In Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid explores the disillusionment faced by the eponymous character upon immigrating to the United States. The novel's style of narration allows Lucy’s thoughts and emotions to remain hidden. Despite this intense privacy, Lucy's disillusionment is clear. She had hoped that moving around the globe would solve her problems but she still struggles with homesickness and her relationship with her mother. Her move is disappointing. The erasure poem And Coldest also engages disillusionment. The poem suggests the speaker has become disillusioned by observing the world, and indicates their plan to be “shut tight.” The poem inspired me to consider the causes of Lucy’s disillusionment, and her failure to address her own emotions. As a recent immigrant, the causes of Lucy’s disillusionment are somewhat obvious. More enigmatic is her self-avoidant, “shut tight” attitude. In this paper, I argue that Lucy’s disillusionment causes her to avoid the discomfort that comes with self-reflection.