The Necklace Analysis

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

People who are driven by greed end up focusing on what they do not have instead of being grateful for what they do have. This is relevant in the short story “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant because Mathilde Loisel ends up losing everything she owns just because she lets greed drive her decisions and get the best of her. When receiving an invitation to an extravagant ball, she declines because she says she does not have anything nice to wear. In the beginning of the short story she says, “There is nothing more humiliating than looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women.(Maupassant).” The reader sees how she puts value in possessions and what others think of her. After finding a dress and then borrowing a necklace that she thought

Feeling trapped in a life that she does not want or appreciate because she lacks the finer things already presents the negative impact it has on her. Her life is comfortable, yet the appearance of her walls and furniture is not high-class enough for her, damaging not only her happiness but also her own self worth. Another description of Mathilde states, “She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that; she felt made for that. She would so have liked to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after” (1). Mathilde not only wants to have money to selfishly better her own social life but in her dreams of being wealthy, she does not seem to want to do anything more impactful with it. Her focus on the material things such as dresses and jewels traps her in a bubble where she can only be the person she aspires to be if she has items that can be acquired with more money. This will never bring her true happiness or fulfillment because even if she does become incredibly wealthy, she will always want more or to be at a higher class. Mathilde’s dreams become especially impossible to reach when she accidentally loses her upscale friend’s supposed diamond necklace and goes into debt buying an identical one to return back to her friend. Mathilde’s life turns into days full of labor trying to earn back the money and the narrator states, “That dreadful debt must be paid.

In Guy De Maupassant’s “The Necklace” a couple faces the struggles of materialistic envy. Mathilde’s desire for a more lavish and luxurious lifestyle and her husband’s attempt to give that to her bring out emotions that ultimately strengthen their relationship. Believing that she is deserving of a higher social rank, Mathilde refuses to embrace her lesser lifestyle that her husband provides. Her envy for materialism shows great threat to her marriage as well as to her pride. Maupassant’s story explains the desires beyond one’s control, while showing the immense dedication a couple must use to work hard and overcome any possible threat to their lifelong decision of marriage.

Mathilde finds herself dissatisfied with her life. She craves for riches and glamour. Instead of appreciating what she has, Mathilde craves for jewels and high class commodities. One day, her husband receives an invitation to a formal party, which would give Mathilde a chance to experience the luxuries of high society. However, she seems upset because she does not own a formal dress to wear to the ball. Mathilde’s husband feels compassion for her and gives her his savings to buy a new and elegant dress. The night before the ball, we noticed Mathilde’s greed when she complains that she has no ornament to put on. She arrogantly tells her husband, “It's so mortifying to look poverty-stricken among women who are rich” (Maupassant). For this reason, he then advises her to borrow some jewelry from her friend, Madam Forestier. Blinded by greed, Mathilde follows her husband’s advice and borrows what looks like a diamond necklace. At the ball, she has a great time. However, when she and her husband get home, she realizes she has lost the diamond necklace. Worried by the consequences of losing a diamond necklace, Mathilde’s husband decides to buy a new necklace by using his inheritance, getting loans, and borrowing money from acquaintances. They return the necklace to Madam Forestier and focus on paying their debt. After 10 years of hard labor and misery, they eventually pay all their debts. At the end of the short story, Mathilde finds out that the diamond necklace she borrowed was fake. Ultimately, we see how greed drove Mathilde to misery and

This financial pressure Hester brought upon herself is also sensed throughout the family, explaining the constant whispers of “we need more money”. In comparison to “The Necklace”, the circumstances described through the setting of Mathilde’s life is very similar. Mathilde has a very comfortable life- always having food on the table and having her own servant. However, like Hester, she is not content with what she has and desires more, always comparing herself to others’ financial state. Guy de Maupassant describes Mathilde’s situation to be neither wealthy nor part of social class. She feels as though she deserves to be a member of the more lavish society. Thus, does everything in her power to create a wealthier lifestyle for herself as “she was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees” (Maupassant, pg.1).This shows Mathilde’s confidence in herself to believe she was born to be wealthy. However, “She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and distinguished” (Maupassant, pg.1). In the first couple of lines of the story, Guy De Maupassant introduces Mathilde, whom internally believes is destined for a wealthy and luxurious life. Yet, Mathilde was born in a middle class family and is unsatisfied with her lifestyle

Money can definitely equal happiness as seen is “The Necklace”, my personal life, and in the world today.

Mathilde represents the innate human nature in us all. We are all presented with opportunities and choices in our daily lives that have the ability to enhance or corrupt us. When she chose to demand and expect things from her husband that was out of their means, she possibly did not realize the cataclysmic chain of events that would result. Their decision to deceive their friend with the replicated necklace sealed the downward spiral of their economic reality. But the small daily decisions of living in her fanciful imaginings were the first small wrong choices she made that started the whole incident. The drab beginnings of her and her husband’s life could have developed into nicer things if she would have harnessed and controlled the seeds

The necklace might be the very first type of jewelry worm by man and woman. Looking back throughout the history of necklaces brings us back 75,000 years: a possible necklace fashioned out of over 40 mollusks was found in a cave in South Africa. A necklace made 30,000 years after was formed of teeth, bones, an88d shells, which were strung onto thread.

The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant is about a middle-class woman, Madame Loisel, who feels as though she is entitled and deserving of the luxuries of an upper-class life. Monsieur Loisel obtains an invitation to a Ministry ball where Madame Loisel is finally able to dress and portray the image of the woman she desires to be. Included in her attire for the evening was a diamond necklace she borrowed from a friend. After returning home at the end of the night, she discovers that she is no longer wearing the necklace. She and her husband search for the necklace, but with no luck decided to buy a replacement to return in place of the original necklace. The couple borrowed around eighteen thousand francs in order to buy the replacement. This put

In Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace,” Mathilde is an unhappy French woman who has an apparent desire to live a more luxurious life. Because Mathilde is unhappy in her marriage, she is not shy to let her husband know that he is not enough to keep her happy. Throughout Maupassant’s story, we can see the transformation of Mathilde’s selfishness, unhappiness, and materialistic nature into a newly found humbleness after an incident that causes her to learn that there is more to life than material things. Throughout the first few paragraphs, Mathilde is portrayed as being obsessed with material wealth, and as being selfish.

Mathilde’s greed and ungratefulness causes her and her husband to go into severe debt, and loose the good life they once had. She complains about the nice things she once possessed and does not appreciate what all her husband does to make her happy. Mathilde does not fully learn her lesson about greed and being ungrateful until she loses her middle class status and goes into extreme debt. Guy de Maupassant tells a valuable lesson about greed and ungratefulness in the short story The Diamond Necklace by showing what happens to Mathilde when she dreams of a better life, receives it for a night, and is still not satisfied.

Happiness will not come to people who are never content with what they have. It is prevalent in society that there are perfect ideals that cannot be achieved, Mathilde is a prime example, for she desired what she didn’t have but would try anything to achieve this ideal. One fateful decision leads her down an unhappy path. In the short story “The Necklace” the protagonist is used as means to teach a lesson. De Maupassant’s story tells the story through the eyes of Mathilde Loisel through what she says and does, through her interactions with other characters, and through events in the plot.

In Guy deMaupassant, “The Necklace”, there were some very descriptive characters. One in particular was Mathilde. She was the main character. Mathilde wanted to be in the upper class and have all of the things that people in the upper class had. That was the kind of lifestyle she dreamed about. In today’s terms, we would call Mathilde a wine taster on a beer budget. Mathilde always misunderstood what she had right in front of her. She was a very selfish woman, materialistic, and extremely vain when it came to the things she thought that she “needed”.

One of the most important values in life is the beauty of freedom that comes with living a simple life, yet many take what they have for granted. “The Necklace”, by the author Guy de Maupassant, written in (1884), is an exceptionally good story about one person who is discontent. A story about a beautiful woman, named Mathilde, who is at the center of this narrative. On another level, it is a story of one person can bring a series of problems for being “discontent”. One day, her husband surprised her with an invitation to a ball. However, Mathilde wasn’t excited about the request because she did not have “suitable attire” to wear to the event, thus she had to buy a brand-new dress. In addition, she borrowed a diamond necklace from her friend, attended the ball, had a memorable experience and by the end of the night she discovered that she had misplaced the necklace. Mathilde, became distressed trying to find a way to replace the necklace, in which it positioned her in a financial predicament. Ten years after replacing the necklace, she learned that the necklace she had borrowed was “fake” and realized that she struggled financially nearly her whole life just to replace the necklace only with a real and identical fine jewel. Her life would have been different if she initially considered wearing the dress she had, and didn’t borrow the diamond necklace. The irony and conflict supports Guy de Maupassant’s, theme of how being untrue and unsatisfied invites misfortune into one’s