Have you ever noticed that your actions/choices affect how and where you end up in life? In the stories, The Necklace and The rights to the Streets of Memphis the character’s choices, and how well they make them, depend on how the characters end up. While some may say the characters were affected more by chance, the characters in The Necklace, and The Rights to the Streets of Memphis were ultimately affected by their actions because when Richard chose to man up and stand up for himself in front of the boys he got his money back, Richard decided he did not want to stay out in the streets until he fought those boys just like Madame Loisel decided she did not want to live a poor lifestyle for any longer , and Madame Loisel's greed and desire for wealth ironically caused her to live a poor lifestyle. In the story The Necklace, Madame Loisel and her husband were poor and not wealthy. But Madame Loisel did not enjoy being poor and wanted to live a rich and wealthy lifestyle. While her husband did not mind living the poor lifestyle they lived and did not care if they were rich or not. In the story her husband got both of them an invitation to a party and needed a nice outfit and jewels to wear but Madame Loisel had neither. So they both decided to borrow some of Madame Forestier’s jewels. They lost the necklace before they could return it to Madame Forestier and decided to buy a real diamond necklace for 30,000 francs (which they could not afford) instead of confessing to
In the necklace the girl wanted to go to a dance but she had know dress or jewelry to addentend the dance. “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 felt like she was nothing without the jewels even no that is not something she needed but wanted. She felt as if she would have gotten made fun of for being poor or lower class. As shown in the quote… “No… there is nothing more humiliating than to look poverty-stricken among a lot of rich women.”
They leave in a rush because Mathilde doesn't want the other ladies to her in a "modest, everyday wrap" while they were wearing expensive furs. When they arrive home they realize the necklace is gone, so they retrace their steps trying to find it. When they have no luck, they buy the necklace for thirty-six thousand francs borrowing every cent from people. They spend ten years repaying everything back including interest. When it is over, Mathilde confesses to her friend and receives the shocking news that the necklace was costume jewelry and only worth a mere 500 francs at most.
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 took her husband and the all the things he provided for her for granted. Mathidle was not satisfied with just a new dress, she had to have jewels to go with it. “’It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single stone, nothing to put on. I shall look like distress. I should almost rather not go at all.’” She also did not care how much money the dress and the jewelry would cost. To her, all that mattered was if she looked good enough to fit in with the wealthy. She was fortunate enough to be able to borrow the perfect necklace from her wealthy friend. “All of a sudden she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb necklace of diamonds; and her heart began to beat with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her throat, outside her high-necked dress, and remained lost in ecstasy at the sight of
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
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, 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.
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
In The Necklace, the main character, Mme. Loisel, has a very materialistic view on happiness. She owns all of these nice things, but is not content in her life. When she sees more elegant items that she wants, she becomes more dissatisfied with her life until she can get it. By the end of the story, she becomes poor from having to repay a large amount of debt. In the end, she learns that money does not equal happiness, and that she should have been grateful for the smaller things in her life that made it
First of all it’s extremely ironic that she never knew that it was a fake necklace until she had bought the real one. In paragraph 89 it states “ Madame Loisel cam to the know the ghastly life of abject poverty. From the very first she played her part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid off. She would pay it. The servant was dismissed.They changed their flat , they took a garret under the roof.
The Necklace illustrate be careful what you wish for. First of all, O. Henry describes Madame Loisel: “she dressed plainly, and she was unhappy about that she couldn’t afford fine clothes. She daydreams about being rich” (80). Also mention about her beauty by “All the men turned to see her. They asked who she was and begged to meet her.” (O.Henry 82) Yet, she lost the necklace and she has to replace back so
The short story The Necklace by Guy De Maupassant, is a story about Mrs. Loisel and how she shows the horrible trait of greediness. Mrs. Loisel is a beautiful woman but she is very financially distraught and she is not used to luxury or anything nice, which is strange because she is greedy to a point of disbelief . So one day she receives an invitation in the mail,“Instead of being delighted as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation down and said ‘What do you want me to do with that?”. Mrs. Loisel is so greedy that her own husband thought that she would be happy instead she exceeded her husband's expectations on her high level of greediness and threw down the invitation.
Many people are often encouraged since youth to be honest, even when you have broken or lost something. Mme. Louise's goes against this encouragement after she loses a necklace that had been loaned to her. This difficult scenario occurs in Guy De Maupassant's short story “The Necklace.” Mme. Loisel is a selfish and materialistic yet charming young woman who yearns for a more lavish life. She is invited to a ball, and in order to feel like she belongs among the rich, is loaned a necklace from a friend. At the dance, she loses the necklace and is forced to work 10 years of difficult labor to pay it off, only to discover after several years that it was merely paste. Mme. Loisel causes her own downfall because she was selfish, envious and materialistic.
Madame Loisel’s pride demands more: “It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single stone, nothing to put on. I shall look like distress” (Maupassant 2). Ironically, it is Monsieur Loisel who suggests that his wife borrow jewelry from Madame Forestier, and subsequently has to spend the next ten years borrowing money to replace it. As May puts it, “Her husband exhausts his meager inheritance and then borrows the rest, mortgaging their life away to buy a replacement for the necklace” (May 7). Monsieur Loisel sacrifices everything to salvage his wife’s pride.
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.