Maupassant’s The Necklace: The Cupidity of Mathilde Loisel Greed is a vice that cannot be satisfied; the intense desire of material objects often leads to hardship and regret. Mathilde Loisel, a middle class woman, desperately wishes that she was a higher class, so she can experience the luxuries of life. In Maupassant’s short story The Necklace, avarice corrupts Mathilde’s expectations of life as well as her state of mind. Despite only being born into a bourgeois family, Mathilde laments over the notion that she was “born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries” (Maupassant). Though Mathilde is born into a lower class, she is in no way poverty-stricken.
Her husband is a clerk that works at the Ministry of Public Instruction and makes
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Instead of being grateful for not only having an invitation to the ball and a new and extravagant dress to wear, she continued to be ungrateful. Mathilde visited her childhood friend, Mme. Forestier, to find a necklace to go with her dress. She picked out “a superb diamond necklace” that caused her to “remain lost in ecstasy at the sight of herself” (Maupassant). The necklace that she borrows from her friend shows just how vain Mathilde really is. Her infatuation with herself, as it was shown in the later parts of the story, had dire …show more content…
Mathilde, instead of telling Mme. Forestier the mistake she made, and her husband decided that the best course of action would be to buy a new real diamond necklace. Loisel was forced to use all eighteen thousand francs that his father left him as well as borrow the rest from various banks and unsavory figures. The Loisels had to work her debt off with her bare hands. She then began to understand how lucky she was to have a modest, humble home that was her own. Working for ten long years made Mathilde age considerably, for “she had become the woman of impoverished households- strong and hard and rough”
That is to say that in “The Necklace,” Mathilde’s perception of herself as a woman of higher social standing lead to her losing the one thing she had going in life, her true beauty. “It is Madame Loisel 's desire to be part of the upper class which sets the story 's events in motion” (Hatboro and Horsham). Mathilde is described as a beautiful woman who finds her life to be not up to her standards because she is not a part of the higher class. “She had no
In "The Necklace," Mathilde is very selfish throughout the story. Mathilde shows her selfishness when she longs to be rich and live in a nice home, wear expensive clothing and wear flashy jewelry with her clothes. "These…show how materialistic Mathilde is and how selfish she is for caring only about gaining these things for herself," says one critic (Directessays). Mr. Loisel provides the basic necessities for her to live a good life, but she wants more than just the basic necessities.
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
What drives someone to feel greed? Mathilde, a beautiful, young French woman, always believed she belonged somewhere else. She felt she should be experiencing the finer things in life. This desire to have more and be more drove her and her husband to a place of despair. In Guy de Maupassant’s tale The Necklace greed and selfish desire forced Mathilde deeper into the lifestyle she desperately wanted to escape.
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
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
Mathilde wanted to be rich and live a luxurious life. She did not just want to be rich but she thought that she deserved to be rich. Before she got married she was living a decent lifestyle,she even had a maid for the house “She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born every delicacy and luxury.” (1). One night Mathilde and her husband got invited to go to a fancy ball. But she did not have any jewelry to wear so she borrowed a necklace from her friend. After the party she realized that the necklace was gone. She and her husband had to go out and buy the same necklace but for thirty six thousand francs. They had to be in debt for more than ten years. One day she decided to tell the woman that she borrowed the necklace from that she lost her original one and this is another one. ‘“Oh my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at very most five hundred francs!...”’(8). Mathilde and her husband were in debt for most of their lives and lived in poverty. The irony in the story is Mathilde wanted to be very rich but ended up the poorest of the poor and the necklace she lost was imitation and she ended up paying so much more money to replace it than she actually
‘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
Have you ever want too many things even though your life was already fulfilled and lost yourself? Have you ever ask too much and regret for what you did? Every desire, ambition, selfishness and a bit of extravagant of a human being was carefully portrayed in this story, “The Necklace”. The story is about a young woman named Mathilde Loisel. Born in a family of artisans, she wasn’t rich, but beautiful and glamor. But she never feel satisfied of what she had and never stop dreaming to have more, to live a luxury life with expensive homes and glittering dresses, and eventually paid hard for her nonsense dreams. In “The Necklace”, Guy de Maupassant uses third person limited narration to show how Mathilde Loisel changes in how she
Mathilde borrows a diamond necklace from her friend, Madame Foreistier for the party but worries that she doesn’t have a dress to wear for the party. She asks M. Loisel to buy her a dress and he agrees. At the night of the party, Mathilde has the time of her life. Seeing Mathilde with a very expensive necklace and dress, all the men in the party hit on her and begin dancing with her. Mathilde enjoys and dances until 4am.
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
The author of Mathilde’s story, “The Necklace,” right from the start, showed readers how prideful Mathilde was, and how her pride led her into the mindset that she should be of the noble class. A passage that expresses this, one taken from the first page of the story, goes: “She suffered constantly, feeling that all the attributes of a gracious life, every luxury, should rightly have been hers” (Maupassant 333). Although not expressive of her pride’s consequences, this passage gives readers an informing amount of insight as to how deeply rooted and corruptive her pride is. Furthermore, Mathilde even went so far as to reject a kind offer from her husband to join him at a noble’s ball, simply because her pride kept her from going in an outfit that was any less than fabulous. One passage that acutely describes Mathilde’s feeling about going to the ball is: “I hate not having a single jewel, not one stone, to wear. I shall look so dowdy. I’d almost rather not go to the party” (335). Moreover, the most prominent consequence Mathilde goes through because of her pride is the losing ten years of her life to repay a debt that stemmed from her overflowing pride. Before going to the ball, but after her husband had spent a gigantic portion of their saving into buying a dress, Mathilde buys the necklace
Mathilde Loisel lived the life of a painfully distressed woman, who always believed herself worthy of living in the upper class. Although Mathilde was born into the average middle class family, she spent her time daydreaming of her destiny for more in life... especially when it came to her financial status. Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, tells a tale of a vain, narcissistic housewife who longed for the aristocratic lifestyle that she believed she was creditable for. In describing Mathilde’s self-serving, unappreciative, broken and fake human behaviors, de Maupassant incorporates the tragic irony that ultimately concludes in ruining her.
In " The Necklace" the main character, Mathilde, allows for the desire of materialistic things to shape her actions so that she may be able to fit into a higher social class to avoid the fear of not being worthy enough of acceptance. This desire to fulfill
Mr. Loisel was obviously excited the day that The Chancellor of Education had invited them to an exquisite dinner. Surely he thought that this was finally a way that he could provide an outlet for Mathilde's deepest desires. Unfortunately, instead of being thrilled as he had predicted, Mathilde acted like a spoiled child, throwing the invitation on the table. "She had no decent dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but these; she believed herself born only for these" (5). She couldn't have been more manipulative than when she began to cry about not having anything to wear. Of course Mr. Loisel suddenly fell into her trap and suddenly decided to give her all of the money in his savings account to buy her a new dress. Most would assume that she'd be satisfied at this point; her husband has just made a huge financial sacrifice for her. However, as time drew near to the night of the party, she became insecure and restless because she thought she would look poor if she didn't have any fancy jewels to wear; she thought she'd look like a beggar. `I'd almost rather not go to the party (30)", she said.