In “The Necklace” Guy de Maupassant tells the story of Mme. Loisel who is materialistic and cares how she is perceived by others people in specification to money and looks: “She had no dresses, no jewelry, nothing. And she loved nothing else; she felt herself made only for that” (para.5). This is something that is still common today, and most likely will be important to society for another hundred years.
Mme. Loisel feels genuinely jubilant with her appearance the most when she is at the party, and all of the attention is on her. Society tells us we need to be glamourous, have expensive clothing, and accessories for us to fit in. For example, the Kardashians live an accelerated lifestyle everyone wants, and they want to wear the clothes that the Kardashians are wearing, even though most likely they cannot afford to live like them. Although Mme. Loisel feels good about herself for a while she soon goes back to her old ways by not wearing the wraps M. Loisel offers
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Loisel wonders how differently her life would have been if she had not lost the necklace, and had to pay back so much debt. Mme. Loisel sees Mme. Forester with a child and describes her as still looking young and beautiful: “She perceived a woman walking with a child. It was Mme. Forester, still young, still beautiful, still seductive” (Para. 107). This interpretation of Mme. Forester that Mme. Loisel gives shows, although she has gone through changes appearance and money are still important to her. Mme. Loisel thinks she has taken on this new role of working with grace and has acted like a hero throughout it all: “Mme. Loisel learned the horrible life of the needy. She made the best of it, moreover, frankly, heroically” (para. 98). Although she had to go from not working to paying off debt and living in poverty there are still people who have it worse. Just because someone does not have expensive clothing or products does not mean they are needy or any less happy than someone who does have
She explains to the community that the current cycle that her father and the adults created is not going to work out forever. While under the current cycle, many outsiders snuck their way inside the community and stole money and food. Not only that, the watchers noticed that the thieves carried guns. She mentions to the crowd about her recurring nightmares where she is levitating and flies toward the door of her room.
which explains well how she had a finite amount of money and thought material wealth was more important than happiness. If she only knew before that she would spend the next decade working off her debt, she would have never asked for the necklace and she would have had a happy life. Furthermore, wealth isn’t the only thing that brings happiness to life. With an easy explanation, it explains how having material possessions doesn’t matter, because the moments we have are more valuable.
Do you have a problem choosing wants over needs? If so, you are not the only one! Everyone whether they realize it or not, 95% of the time, chooses their wants, rather than fulfilling their needs. Many people get caught up in the decision of putting their wants before their needs.
It was Mrs. Forrester herself who had changed. Since her husband’s death she seemed to have become another woman. For years Niel and his uncle, the Dalzells and all her friends, had thought of the Captain as a drag upon his wife; a care that drained her and dimmed her and kept her from being all that she might be. But without him, she was like a ship without ballast, driven hither and tither by every wind. She was flighty and perverse. She seemed to have lost her faculty of discrimination; her power of easily and graciously keeping everyone in his proper place. (130)
The relationship between the lead characters, Niel and Mrs. Forrester, is built upon idealizations and unspoken expectations, most of which are never met. Mrs. Forrester’s moral descent alternately is seen with both sympathy and disapproval as Niel and the narrator cannot seem to
Echoing what Catherine MacKinnon states, Mrs. Forrester forfeits her sexuality, which is entirely hers to forfeit, in hopes that she can gain sovereignty in her own life following her marriage to a millionaire man that was murdered by another man. This cyclical male dominance in her life is indicative of the patriarchal oppression that women of the early twentieth century would have felt. A Lost Lady revolves around Marian Forrester’s sexuality and beauty, which are on display throughout, as she is described as an angelic “white figure” (Cather, 11) and “lovely, just lovely” (30). These descriptions come from Niel Herbert, a young male law clerk, that has been enamored by Mrs. Forrester since he was a young boy.
They both looked everywhere and could not find it. Instead of informing Mme. Forestier the truth, they both decided to replace it. The Loisels figure out the cost to replace it was 36,000, however, they still managed to pay it off. Mathilde payed the price and experienced the worst kind of labor of her life doing heavy housework for the next ten years.
While she gave most of her life helping others, this is not necessary for most people. Humanity can simply mean caring for one another. Volunteering time to the poor and the disabled are just a few ways an individual can provide humanitarian work in his or her lifetime. In the article it states, “It is important to understand that we are extremely lucky to have what we have.”(Daga) In my opinion, many people do take this fact for granted.
Although Mrs. Forrester is able to end her life as a happy person, before that the reader witnessed a huge shift in her attitudes toward life. In large part, was due to the difficult transition from the Old World to the New World that Mrs. Forrester endured. At first, Niel finds Marian as the ideal women who represented the Old World but failed to realize it was a false image. With that, he is at a lost when he cannot save the “old” Mrs. Forrester. Mrs. Forrester leads to becoming what the reader knows as the acclaimed lost lady who confronts the realization that times have changed especially as Mr. Forrester passes.
Mother Teresa should have helped the poor for three reason. Mother Teresa was called to minister to the poor by God, she would help the children of the poor, and she would reflect the love of Christ to the outside...
It is said that “everything that shines isn't gold.” A difficult situation can result a vast illusion that is not what one thought it would be, which leads to disappointment and despair. Just like Guy De Maupassant stories, “The Necklace” and “The Jewel.” In the first story, the protagonist, Mathilde Loisel’s need for materialistic fulfillment causes her hard labor which ends her natural beauty. In the second story, the husband Monsieur Latin ends up living a dreadful life due to the passing of his wife and her admiration for jewels. “The Necklace” and “The Jewel” both share many similarities such as the unconditional love each husband haves toward their wife, the necessity each wife haves towards materialistic greed, the beautiful allurement
It took ten years for Mathilde and her husband to pay off the debt of buying a new necklace. Those ten years were not spent with the luxuries she experienced so many years ago at the party, nor were they filled with the simple things she once owned and despised. She came to know “the horrible existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with sudden heroism.” When passing her rich friend again in the street, she was barely recognizable. Who she was the day she ran into her friend was not who she was the night she wore that necklace.
It gave the audience kind of a Cinderella approach. The reason I say this is because of everything she has to do before going to make herself fit in. She had to borrow a necklace from a good friend named Jeanne and her husband gave her money for a gown. Madame Loisel then looses the necklace and has a difficult time finding it. Since she was unable to find it and was very poor, it took her ten years to replace it. This caused many hardships and trials. She never told her friend that she bought a new one to replace the one she lost. That is until they met up ten years later. That is when the truth is revealed as to the true value of the
To help out, she gets a job and helped her husband pay off the debt in ten years. In those ten years she had lost her beauty and had not seen Madame Forestier face to face in danger of feeling ashamed in front of her rich friend because of her poverty. After they had paid off all the debt, she finds Madame Forestier down the road and talks about what had happened in her lifetime since the last time they had meet. They start talking about the necklace and the incident that happened the ball night. Mathilde talks about hardships that had taken her to pay off the debt of about twenty thousand francs. And suddenly Madame Forestier says “But mine was fake. It wasn’t worth more than five hundred francs.” ( Maupassant 179 ). This mesmerise Mathilde’s brain and the story ends.
One day Mathilde was walking in a park and stumbled across a lady walking with a child, it was her rich friend.