Mentalism In The Necklace, By Guy De Maupassant

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

Guy de Maupassant and Chinua Achebe show their opinions on materialism through the thoughts of their characters in their stories. In “The Necklace”, Mathilde, an avaricious and narcissistic character, believes she possesses “...no dowry, no hopes, not the slightest chance of being appreciated, understood, loved, and married by a rich and distinguished man” (de Maupassant 373). The author, Guy de Maupassant, mocks Mathilde’s attitude towards her life, claiming “...She suffered constantly, feeling that all the attributes of a gracious life, every luxury, should rightly have been hers” (de Maupassant 373). By showing Mathilde’s thoughts, the author shows how materialism can cause someone to unappreciate the life that they have, even when it is exceptional compared to

In Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" is the story of Mathilde Loisel, who resents her "station" in life. Mathilde Loisel is shown to be a vain and ungrateful person who believes that she was born to have a better life. She feels that she has married beneath her, in spite of the fact that her husband is a hard working and dependable man. Mathilde is unable to recognize and appreciate the

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.

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.

In The Necklace, the setting of Paris in the late 19th century is a world of elegance and wealth. If not born into a wealthy family, one would have two options: marry into a wealthy family, or stay in their social class. That is just the case for Mathilde Loisel, who is endowed with beauty but born into a family of clerks. She was born free and could have had a plentiful life because of her beauty. However, she was held back by the chains of her social status and forced to marry her wealthy husband Monsieur Loisel. Together they have an awkward relationship consisting only of their need for marriage.

‘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

The Necklace, a short story written by Guy de Maupassant, is about a greedy woman in poverty, who learns that being selfish can hurt her and others around her. Her greedy behavior indicates that she has been struggling during her years in poverty. When she scrambled to find out her purpose in life, she portrayed anger and malevolence towards others.

“The Necklace” Guy de Maupassant, the author of “The Necklace”, describes how Mme. Mathilde Loisel’s attitude, appearance, and perspective on life changes. Her life is drastically changed when she borrows a necklace from a friend and loses it. In the beginning of the story, Mme. Loisel is somewhat snobby.

Evidence shows that women in the nineteenth century had to rely solely on men, preferable husbands for materialistic things. She depended on her husband for her social mobility, making her seem ungrateful for the dress that he had already purchased her because she requested more things soon after. Maupassant sees Mathilde and her husband as " victims of the society in which they live," meaning that they were born into this state of need and that they felt they had to be accepted by society, no matter the cost. The story mentions how, " Mathilde still felt cheap after she put on the dress," explaining how it seemed to be worthless ( The Necklace). Mathilde was shown to be greedy by placing her husband under pressure by searching for a way to obtain a necklace in order that she could be happy, rather than settling for what she had been given. Furthermore, Maupassant uses a device that allows him to, "lay bare his characters inner life," meaning that what they feel inside is what tends to be the cause behind the character's choice of actions (Bell). This ultimately demonstrates that Mathilde might not have been able to control her wants or limit

During this time period, women’s role in society was that of a submissive, powerless position. They often relied solely on their husband for direction, allowing the husband to make decisions and take lead no matter what. In the story of The Necklace, Maupassant illustrates these

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

Status in society is dictated by the comforts and power that one holds in his life: the higher the status, the more the power. This statement applied to mainly men, as women at the time were still seen as lower class than men, and had little to no power in the social workings of their communities outside the home. Class mobility was very difficult at the time, as one has to work hard all of his life for the potential to get a raise and move up in the world. Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” expresses the value that the ownership of objects, or pieces of clothing, has on how one is seen to others of higher class, and how the possession, or lack of possession, affects status and power. This short story also introduces the idea that class mobility is not just about hard work and dedication but also about the appreciation and attitude one has about his current state.

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

“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.