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In “The Necklace,” a female character, Mathilde, is living in Paris during the 19th century. She is poor, yet undyingly wishes she was wealthy. One day the woman is invited to a prestigious ball within her city. She immediately she contacts a rich friend and borrows a fabulous necklace. Once the night is all said and done and she returns from the ball, she realizes that the borrowed necklace is lost. She reacts by lying about the necklace and buying her friend a new one. With her financial situation the way it is she goes spiraling into debt and never recovers. Later, once Mathilde admits to her friend that she lost and replaced the necklace, it is revealed that the borrowed necklace was a fake worth very little.…
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In the nineteenth century, money was a symbol of power and wealth, for the amount of money a person has defines their social status. In “The Necklace”, the setting plays an intricate role in the decisions that Mathilde makes, and the consequences that come along with her actions. In “The Necklace”, Guy de Maupassant uses the setting to further display and develop Mathilde’s greed.…
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In “The Necklace,” GUY DE MAUPASSANT character loisel Mathilde who is a very greedy and selfish woman, believes that she was born for every delicacy and luxury there is and feels that she was made for all beautiful jewels and clothes, which cause her emotional…
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In Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Necklace”, he explores the theme that greed and envy can lead to self-destruction. In this story Matilda Loisel is a very envious wife whom always dreamed for a better existence. She was a beautiful but very discontent woman who thought that she must have been born into the wrong life, since she had no way of being recognized and courted by a rich and powerful man.…
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He, a lowly clerk at the Ministry of Education, provides Mathilde with a comfortable life, but just not enough for Mathilde. She dreams of more than modesty. Mathilde feels burdened by her poverty and regrets her station in life. She often spends hours daydreaming of extravagance. Even while her husband expressed pleasure at the dinner she prepared for him, she dreams of a fancy feast on china. When her husband presented her with an invitation to a formal party hosted by the Ministry of Education, she was angry, annoyed and irritated, as she had nothing nice to wear. When asked how much a suitable dress would cost, she told him 400 francs might do it. Her husband silently protested, as he was saving that amount to go hunting with friends the following summer, but gave it to her anyways. As the day of the party drew near, Mathilde was clearly upset. When approached by Monsieur Loisel she said she had no jewelry to wear. Monsieur Loisel suggested fresh flowers, but she balked at the idea. Then it dawned on Loisel for Mathilde to ask her friend Mme. Forester. Mme. Forester agreed to lend her some jewels for the party. When Mme. Loisel comes across the diamond necklace and Mme. Forester agrees to lend it to her, Mathilde is overcome with joy at the site of it around her neck in the mirror, kisses her friend and ran off to show her husband. At the party, Mathilde is the most beautiful woman there, and is noticed by everyone and she adores the attention. At 4am she finds her husband sleeping in another room. He drapes her shoulders with her wrap and asks for her to wait inside while he fetches a cab. Mathilde is too embarrassed by her wrap and follows him outside instead. They walk for a while and finally hail a cab. It is not until they arrive home that Mathilde discovers the necklace is no longer around her neck. Panicked, she waits at home as…
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After the party, Madame Loisel loses the necklace, resulting in tireless work, loans, and night jobs for her and her husband in order to pay back the equivalent of the price. The couple finally succeeds when all the money is paid ten years later, only for Mathilde to discover that the necklace was ironically a fake, and worth a very small percentage of what the couple paid. The theme of this story is that an overemphasis on material wealth can shrink the spirit and leave one open to the changeability of fortune. The situational irony highlights this moral because the Loisels would never have had to exhaust themselves if Madame Loisel wasn’t so obsessed with riches and wealth. From the very beginning of the story, she wastes her time dreaming of luxuries such as fine silks, beautiful furniture, and gourmet feasts. Even when she is at Madam Forestier’s house to try on necklaces to borrow, she is never satisfied until she has seen the very best. Madame Loisel’s preoccupation with appearance clouds her judgment as well. As soon as she realizes that she has lost the necklace, she should simply come clean to Madam Forestier. Instead, she is too concerned with how her reputation will be affected, so she keeps quiet. She later pays the price for this when she discovers that the necklace is “false [and]…worth five hundred francs at most.” The life that she gets instead as punishment during the ten years in debt is even more difficult and meager than her life to begin with, which stresses how fame and fortune is so fleeting and unimportant in the scheme of…
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Not So Gracious " [S]he was simple since she could not be adorned; but she was unhappy as though kept out of her own class;" (Guy De Maupassant, 1). As beautiful as she was, she was still not pleased. This sentiment from The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant proves that he believes women can be ungrateful and materialistic. This is shown through the character Madame Loisel with.…
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When Mr. Loisel brings home an invitation to the ball, Madame Loisel doesn’t thank him for the work he did to get it. Instead, she complains about how she has nothing to wear. After he gives her money to buy a new dress, she still is not content and complains about not having an jewelry. After she loses the necklace, Madame Loisel doesn’t go with her husband to help find it. Their relationship also shows dishonesty. Rather than confessing the lost necklace to Madame Forestier, Mr. Loisel encourages his wife to lie. This story teaches us that relationships should not have dishonesty and discontentment, and that negative relationships bring a life of hard work and…
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Both “The Necklace” and “The Gift of the Magi” have plots that depend in large measure on the use of situational irony to create a surprise ending. “The Necklace” tells the story of Madame Mathilde Loise, a lowly clerk’s wife, who, in an effort to appear more debonaire than she is, borrows expensive jewels from Madame Jeanne Forestier, a wealthy friend. After the inevitable loss of the jewels, Madame Loisel and her husband secretly replace the jewels. Years later, Madame Loise, now impoverished, encounters Madame Forestier on the streets of Paris and admits to the secret. Madame Forestier, shocked by the change in Loise, explains that the necklace was merely costume jewelry. The situational irony that both the reader and Madame Loise experience…
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“Boule de Suif” is a short story formed upon a prostitute and her experiences while escaping from her city during the Franco-Prussian war, while “Jewelry” is a story based upon the experiences of a widower as he realizes his dead wife’s misdeed. Both stories take place during the late 19th century in France, resembling the historical aspects of the country during that period. While both short stories take place at a different setting and situation, the common aspect which the author convincingly conveys in both plots are the selfish behavior of human beings. In “Boule de Suif”, the author centralizes his main motif on the real difference between the nobles; considered as a superior being with a prostitute; a profession considered as the lowest of all. In the story, Maupassant clarifies the sacrifices made by the prostitute for the sake of the nobles, while the nobles…
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Moss, Joyce and George Wilson. “Overview: ‘The Necklace’.” Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them. Vol. 2: Civil Wars to Frontier Societies (1800-1880s). Joyce Moss’ “Overview: ‘The Necklace’” is a brief article and it tells the story of the Parisian life in the 1800s. The article describes the life of the society and the limitation on women’s lives during the time “The Necklace” by de Maupassant was written. Moss’ article analyzes de Maupassant’s views of women and their place in society at that time. Most importantly, Moss emphasized on how Parisian society treated and bordered women from men - not giving women rights nor acknowledging them. According to Moss, in the 1800s “men recognize only one right in women: the right to please.” This statement shows Moss’s views on how men viewed women as property, lower-situated than themselves and unequal members of the Parisian society at that time. The key concept of the article is the connection between women and their social status; this is being accomplished by bringing the importance of jewelry in women’s life; jewelry as a symbol and sign of social and financial status. Women in that era sought jewelry as a way to classify their status to the public. The reader is told that women followed a certain trend, which in other terms meant finding a husband who was wealthy. Moss writes: “jewels were a widespread symbol...by a diamond necklace.” By this, Moss explains that bourgeois status was upheld if a woman owned a diamond necklace. Even though women were devalued in this era, a social status amongst society and other families of wealth could be reached once the woman found a man to provide for her and buy her expensive clothing and jewelry which could be afforded only by the wealthy; thus – securing a certain social status for…
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“The Necklace” weaves a tale about Madame Loisel who has always dreamed of the finer…
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Mathilde, the main character in Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Necklace”, begins as an ungrateful, greedy young woman, then she becomes a diligent working class woman, and finally transforms into an older, more mature woman, who doesn’t like to take responsibility for some of actions, due to a change in setting. In the beginning, Mathilde demonstrates being ungrateful by complaining about her house being shabby, even though she has a maid and does nothing all day. She lets her husband do all the work and earn the money, but complains that, “She had no proper wardrobe, no jewels, nothing. And those were the only things that she loved-she felt she was made for them,” (de Maupassant 2). Mathilde does not work, yet as shown in this quote,…
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Throughout the 19th century people were defined by their wealth, social status and beauty. Mathilde/ Madame Loisel is a lower middle class woman, who has a strong desire to be in the upper class. Her husband, Monsieur Loisel, works as a clerk and is happy with his place in society. In Guy de Maupassant’s, “The Necklace,” the theme of appearance vs. reality is revealed through the complexities of human nature and society.…
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Guy De Maupassant's "The Necklace" is a story about a woman who suffers morally, emotionally, and physically because she believes she deserves than what she has. Mathilde was a young woman born in a low-class family. She dreamed and fantasized about having riches. Her lowly husband who was the only clerk finally was able to give her the chance to experience an elegant ball. She worried as she had nothing to wear.…
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