A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Guy De Mauspassant
Pride is a tough thing to swallow. Everyone wants to be the best they can be and never be wrong, yet that isn’t how life works. People have good pride, which is the pride that shows confidence, success, and wisdom while bad pride shows arrogance, ignorance, and self-deceit. Mathilde, In “The Necklace”, by Guy de Mauspassant shows her bad pride through her dreams of living the high life similar to The grandmother in “A good man is hard to find” by Flannery O’Connor, which highlights the grandmothers manipulative and controlling ways. Although the stories are in different settings and different time periods, they both are able to clearly show the bad pride that both the grandmother and Mathilde have throughout each of the short stories. After
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comparing the behavior of the grandmother from “A good man is hard to find,” a self serving grandmother who is similar to Mathilde who is an ungrateful wife in “The Necklace. These women show that pride really can get the best of you and those around you.
In “The Necklace”, the setting is seemed to be in Paris due to some of the dialogue as well as the pastries she describes throughout the story and in the time period around late 1800s around the time this story was written. Mathilde is a proud women who craves to live in the high life. The story the author explains that “she suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these things, which another women of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant.” (Mauspassant) She wants the fancy dresses, nice homes, and the flashy jewelry but instead her husband is just a regular clerk. She hates this life and is so caught up in the places she should be as well as how beautiful she is. She believes is well above her status as well as her husband. Her husband tries to make her happy with an invitation to a ball but when he presents this invitation and looks sad, the husband asks what is wrong and she replies with “Nothing. Only I have no clothes, and in consequence I cannot go to this party. Give your card to some colleague whose wife has a better outfit than I.” (Mauspassant) Instead of being grateful about having this opportunity, she becomes mad and can only think about the negatives like how she is going to look in the eyes of others.
The grandmother is opposed to going on the trip to Florida and uses the excuse of “The Misfit”, a dangerous criminal.
She uses this more in a way to get them to not want to go and instead take the trip to Tennessee that she wants to take. This is just the first case seen of her pride always being the one in control and being manipulate. Her style of manipulating others is not direct but would beat around the bush and guilt people in to changing their mind. The grandmother has found a way to get the kids excited about seeing an old plantation because she wants to see it. She knew that Bailey wouldn’t want to make this stop but she gets her way by going through the kids. She tells them “There was a secret panel in this house and the story went that all the family was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found.” (O'Connor) This gets the kids into going which in turn is the way for them to go so Bailey didn’t have to argue with them. The grandmother leads the way but half way through realizes that the plantation is actually located Tennessee. Even with realizing this half way through she still doesn’t say a word because she didn’t want to look stupid. Then they got in an accident that flipped the car so they had to wait for a car to come and then finally one did. Right when the man got out of the car she knew it was “The Misfit” and tries to reason with him. This didn’t work and he killed everyone except for her because she was trying to convince him not to kill her until she tried to reach to him. When she reaches to him and calls him her child, he shoots her in the chest three times. Her pride of not admitting that she was wrong lead to her and her family ultimate
downfall.
The two are very different in many ways. The grandmother is very old and is very subtle with the way she gets what she wants. Mathilde is very young and when she wants something she just says it. The two are from different time periods and are located in two different countries. They were similar in the fact that they both were very controlling and let their prides get in the way of the important things in life.
comparing the behavior of the grandmother from “A good man is hard to find,” a self serving grandmother who is similar to Mathilde who is an ungrateful wife in “The Necklace. These women show that pride really can get the best of you and those around you.
In “The Necklace”, the setting is seemed to be in Paris due to some of the dialogue as well as the pastries she describes throughout the story and in the time period around late 1800s around the time this story was written. Mathilde is a proud women who craves to live in the high life. The story the author explains that “she suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these things, which another women of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant.” (Mauspassant) She wants the fancy dresses, nice homes, and the flashy jewelry but instead her husband is just a regular clerk. She hates this life and is so caught up in the places she should be as well as how beautiful she is. She believes is well above her status as well as her husband. Her husband tries to make her happy with an invitation to a ball but when he presents this invitation and looks sad, the husband asks what is wrong and she replies with “Nothing. Only I have no clothes, and in consequence I cannot go to this party. Give your card to some colleague whose wife has a better outfit than I.” (Mauspassant) Instead of being grateful about having this opportunity, she becomes mad and can only think about the negatives like how she is going to look in the eyes of others.
The grandmother is opposed to going on the trip to Florida and uses the excuse of “The Misfit”, a dangerous criminal.
She uses this more in a way to get them to not want to go and instead take the trip to Tennessee that she wants to take. This is just the first case seen of her pride always being the one in control and being manipulate. Her style of manipulating others is not direct but would beat around the bush and guilt people in to changing their mind. The grandmother has found a way to get the kids excited about seeing an old plantation because she wants to see it. She knew that Bailey wouldn’t want to make this stop but she gets her way by going through the kids. She tells them “There was a secret panel in this house and the story went that all the family was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found.” (O'Connor) This gets the kids into going which in turn is the way for them to go so Bailey didn’t have to argue with them. The grandmother leads the way but half way through realizes that the plantation is actually located Tennessee. Even with realizing this half way through she still doesn’t say a word because she didn’t want to look stupid. Then they got in an accident that flipped the car so they had to wait for a car to come and then finally one did. Right when the man got out of the car she knew it was “The Misfit” and tries to reason with him. This didn’t work and he killed everyone except for her because she was trying to convince him not to kill her until she tried to reach to him. When she reaches to him and calls him her child, he shoots her in the chest three times. Her pride of not admitting that she was wrong lead to her and her family ultimate
downfall.
The two are very different in many ways. The grandmother is very old and is very subtle with the way she gets what she wants. Mathilde is very young and when she wants something she just says it. The two are from different time periods and are located in two different countries. They were similar in the fact that they both were very controlling and let their prides get in the way of the important things in life.