As shown in the short story “The Necklace,” everyone occasionally makes mistakes that lead to difficult times. The main character, Mathilde, loses a extravagant diamond necklace borrowed from a close friend. After laboring tirelessly to earn off the expensive jewelry, Mathilde realizes the true values that are important in life. The song “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay has a similar theme. A story about a king cast down from his throne and forced to work in the streets resembles Mathilde’s situation. The stories both tell a tale of an individual who has lost their status and becomes a lowly servant. While Mathilde was not a king, both stories include a tragic story as each tries to cope with their new lifestyle. From “Viva La Vida,” “I used
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
The quality of one’s emotional life changes over the years. But the basic instincts and desires, greed and hope, seem to remain constant. In short story “The Necklace” written by Guy de Maupassant is about a woman by the name of Mathilde. She’s described to be average in the physical sense and was married to a clerk by the name of Loisel. The couple get invited to a ball and shortly after, Mathlide complains that her wardrobe was too embarrassing to wear to the ball. Loisel buys his wife a gown and suggests she borrows a necklace from her friend to complete the outfit. Mathlide falls in love with a necklace from the collection. “She threw her arms round her friend's neck, kissed her passionately, then fled with her treasure” (Maupassant 44). The night of the ball Mathlide realized she had lost the necklace. The couple decide to replace the necklace ad work ten years to pay off the debt, finally finds out the original necklace was a fake. This short story created a perspective for who to blame for the outcome of the situation, which in this case is Mathlide.
In both these stories, the authors portray two very different yet alike women who have trouble accepting their fate and are trying to reject the life of women of their class. Mathilde Loisel and Louise Mallard are very alike because they dream of something they do not have, then their dreams come true, but destiny plays a fatal role in both stories, and ladies lose everything they had. In both stories, ladies have caring husbands, whom they do not appreciate .Unfortunately, the endings 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
Do you know a materialistic person, who only cares about money? Do you like this person? Usually, people like this are not so friendly, just like Mathilde was. But in this case, Mathilde was able to change, and we can see this by some facts in the text; she was arrogant and materialistic, then became a motivated and comprehensive, and also she was lazy, but in the final she became a very hard worker woman. Mathilde actions and attitudes changes are very complex, but with these two things as support, it is possible to make this change very clear to understand.
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
‘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
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
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.
Guy De Maupassant's short story "The Necklace" remarkably demonstrates how misfortune can lead to self improvement through the character Mathilde Loisel. Madame Mathilde was one of those beautiful and delightful young ladies with not very many high expectations, achievements, and no way to be accepted into the elaborate society and lifestyle in which she finds herself daydreaming about day and night.
“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.
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breaths away”-Maya Angelou. This quote demonstrates that life isn’t about the amount of things one has or can do, but the time one spends with joy and fun, appreciating what they can do and have. In the short story, “The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant, the main character does the exact opposite of what this quote represents, she learns the hard way. Madame Loisel, the main character, doesn't appreciate her ways of living and wants something to represent the lifestyle she wants to live. Madame borrows a diamond Necklace, loses it and rather than telling the truth, she lies and buys another. She ends up wasting 10 years of her life working hard to pay off debt. Madame then finds that the diamond necklace was nothing but paste though the replacement was real. Maybe if Madame had been grateful for who she was and what she had, she would’ve lived a better life. De Maupassant uses multiple internal and external conflicts to teach the reader that people should just be grateful for who they are,what they have and what they can do.
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18) - It would be difficult to find an aphorism that better describes the fate of the main character in Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”. Set in Paris in the late 1800s, Maupassant’s story shows the costs of pride. The main character, Madame Loisel, borrows a diamond necklace from her rich friend, Madame Forestier, to wear at a ball hosted by the Minister of Public Instruction at the Palace of the Ministry. To her dismay, Madame Loisel loses the necklace, and she and her husband spend the next ten years paying back the loans they had to take out to replace the necklace, only to discover that the necklace was fake. Her pride plunges both her and
The late Irish poet Oscar Wilde once stated, "In the world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” This quote accurately describes human nature to the extent that man is never fully satisfied with his current possessions. In fact, most people who rely on materialistic items for happiness are typically desolated and miserable. This story is based on an archaic view on women, where women have no caste or hierarchy. The people grade women based off their looks and beauty. Money “practically makes nobility” (Shmoop). It “enables the user to pay for the high life” (Shmoop) and confine the person with luxurious items known to man. Money controls the life of people,