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The Necklace Rise

Decent Essays

The Rise and fall of The Privileged
In the story of “The Necklace” Guy de Maupassant shows the rise and fall of a woman using subtle glances of this woman’s downfalls. Guy uses these downfalls with the usage of themes through her personality. These smaller themes in the story of “The Necklace” work collectively together to form the larger spectrum of the story with using Greed, Truthfulness, and Pride.
During the late 1800s women were shown as still the homemakers to cook, clean, and be child bearers for the husband. In the story we are introduced to our main character Mathilde who right off the back shown that Guy eludes that she “…Settled for a marriage with a minor clerk in the Ministry of Education” (Roberts 187). Through this we are …show more content…

Though greed is predominant we are introduced to the plentiful of lies she continues to speak. The earliest of signs was when she went to the party and acted like the rest of the guests there thinking that she was apart of that culture as well. Lying is a long process and usually doesn’t have many great outcomes to begin with.Bott elsudes to that "making a choice about which lie to use is a difficult job and contributes to the longer time needed to tell a lie (Bott 14). When Mathilde lost the necklace her husband immediately told her to lie to her friend without a sign of hesitation (Roberts). Mathilde wasn’t alone in the web of lies through the reading. Yet the biggest lie of them all was the lie that the necklace was real to begin with. Her friend gave this necklace away with no hesitation knowing what it was yet Mathilde didn’t ask any questions at all. Causing the ultimate end result of Mathilde losing her livelihood and not being able to have the privileges she was able to have before. Both Mathilde and her husbands lying caused them to get into the predicament they were in to begin with, If one had spoken up then maybe both would've been saved from the harsh life that fate had dealt …show more content…

Through pride we are shown the story biggest twist that could have been avoided to being with. By Mathilde and her husband being too prideful and not wanting to admit that they lost the necklace caused their ultimate fall. If they had told her what had happened they wouldve only owed only five hundred francs rather than owing the thousands they came to pay. Mathilde saw herself above the place she was in by saying she needed another dress and needing more in her life rather than seeing that she was in a great place to begin with (Roberts). It is shown by Taylor that "pride is vicious because the proud man regards himself as above other men"(32). Mathilde on multiple occasions showed that she had too much in herself thinking that she belonged in a higher class of society and wanting to be above where she thought mediocrity lies. When pride takes hold of a person's personality it causes one to not see the clear and best options in life. These falling outs caused the life of Mathilde and her husband to crumble and shows the failure and cracks in her inner

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