Mathilde Loisel, the protagonist, in "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant does not like her circumstances. Mathilde is a young, attractive woman who daydreams about living a stylish life. She dreams of serving tea on beautiful china and wearing fashionable clothing. Unfortunately, that is not Mathilde's life.The Loisels were not poor but middle class. They did have one servant which obviously Mathilde did not appreciate. While Mathilde might have been enjoying her life, instead she choose to be miserable and whine away her time wishing for more and better things.Mathilde describes her husband as a "little" clerk in the Ministry of Education. His personality is bright and pleasant. He loves his wife and knows that she is unhappy with her circumstances. …show more content…
She borrows a beautiful necklace from a friend.The necklace is lost after the party. Poor Monsieur Loisel goes out alone and searches all night and day for the jewels but has no luck. Loisel comes up with a plan to buy another necklace and return it to Mathilde's friend.This is quite a man. He takes his inheritance from his father; then, he borrows the rest of the money. They return the necklace. But that is just the beginning. For the next ten years, the Loisels work together to pay for the replacement necklace. Monsieur Loisel works a second job at night. They even give up their apartment. Both of them age tremendously over the years. Mathilde is no longer beautiful. She has hardened:She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dish-cloths, and hung them out to dry on a string; every morning she carried up the water.The author never lets the reader know if Mathilde appreciated her husband for taking care of her. They did accomplish something together, and she did rise to the occasion and do the hard work of the home. In reality, the hero of the story is Monsieur Loisel who worked alongside his wife to pay back the money for
This story is about Matilda and her husband. Matilda receives an invitation to attend to a party, but she has no jewelry to wear, so she borrows one from a rich friend. Unfortunately, Matilda loses the necklace at the party and has to buy a new one worth thirty-five thousand francs. She works for years to repay all the money she borrowed, but when she finally gets all the money, she finds out the necklace was worth “No more than five hundred francs.” This story has two unexpected twists in it: she loses the necklace and she works for years to pay it off, only to find out it is less than one sixth of what she paid. How Matilda deals with finding out the price is left to the reader’s imagination, but it shows that when Matilda loses the necklace she deals with it relatively calmly, borrowing money to buy a new one and later working for years to pay it
The story begins with a middle class girl who dreams of being rich, and cannot achieve this so she lives in a utopian world she creates. Then in an attempt to please his wife, M. Loisel comes home with an invitation to a party, which Mathilde does not want to attend, only because she does not have a dress. When she is given money to buy a dress, she then lusts for fancy jewelry. She also does not have a necklace to show off to the guests at the party. Her husband suggest her theater dress and she does not want to wear that one, her husband also suggest a few roses but again she insists on a necklace. It is her greed that fuels the entire story plot, and it is her greed that causes the decline in social status in the
5. (CP) Madame Loisel borrows seemingly expensive necklace to satisfy her arrogance and attend a party that was way above her social class, only to lose it. She has been blessed with physical beauty, but not with the lifestyle she desires. She may not be the ideal protagonist, but she went through a tough time after she lost the necklace and had to make money to replace it.
She comes from a good family that works for what they have. She marries a good hard workingman. But, Mathilde is not happy the way she is living and she daydreams about having the glamorous life. From having fancy tapestries, grand banquets to tall footmen. One day her husband, M. Loisel, comes homes extremely excited to show his wife an invitation that he has received to go to a fancy ball. She is not happy because she has nothing to wear and she doesn’t want to show up looking ugly with house full of rich people. She got the dress she wanted but then was not happy because she needed jewelry to go with this dress. Mathilde went to her rich friend to borrow jewels from. Of course she went with the most extravagant piece of jewelry, a diamond necklace. Showing up to the fancy ball with everybody adoring what a beauty she is, Mathilde was finally satisfied. When she got home after the fancy ball, she noticed that the necklace she borrowed was missing. Looking franticly for weeks, Mathilde then decided she had to replace the necklace. Replacing the necklace took everything they had and more. Mr. and Mrs. Loisel then became extremely poor with no money to there name. They then had to sell everything had and both now had to work. This went on for about ten years. Mathilde had no beauty to her anymore, she had to work, and do the house keeping. The
Other details in the story also have a similar bearing on Mathilde’s character. For example, the story presents little detail about the party scene beyond the statement that Mathilde is a great “success” (7)—a judgment that shows her ability to shine if given the chance. After she and Loisel accept the fact that the necklace cannot be found, Maupassant includes details about the Parisian streets, about the visits to loan sharks, and about the jewelry shop in order to bring out Mathilde’s sense of honesty and pride as she “heroically” prepares to live her new life of poverty. Thus, in “The Necklace,” Maupassant uses setting to highlight Mathilde’s maladjustment, her needless misfortune, her loss of youth and beauty, and finally her growth as a responsible human being.
He borrowed “asking a thousand franc from one , five hundred from another” (Maupassant 3) to spend the next ten years of his and Mathilde Loisel life to repay the thirty thousand to everyone they have had borrowed from. After completing the long and dreadful ten years of hard labor Mathilde Loisel quiensidently ran into Mme.Forester to only find out that the necklace she had worn that night was fake and worthless. Being a female that has absolutely no authority over her assets and has no say what so ever in where the are placed thus meaning that she is practically worthless. Realizing all of this it is no longer astonishing that Mr.Loisel went out of his way to borrow 36 thousand francs in loans without the permission from his wife Mrs.Losiel. She understand the fact that they would have to repay these outstanding loans and had spent the next ten years of her youthfull life paying back all the money that was owed. In efforts to pay of this debt Mrs. Losiel works around the house and does her daily duties with no intensions of having control over her finances and accepts that the debt of her husbands is a debt of
The story starts out by describing Mme. Loisel and the contrasts between the world she lives in and the one she dreams of. Her life consists of simple clothes, a plain household full of functional things, and simple, healthy food. She has one servant in her house, her husband holds a good, if unglamourous, job, and they are in general a middle class family. This life is...
“The Necklace”, narrated by Guy de Maupassant in 3rd person omniscient, focuses the story around Mathilde Loisel who is middle class, and her dreams of fame and fortune. The story is set in 19th century France. One day, Mathilde’s husband brings home an invitation to a fancy ball for Mathilde; to his surprise Mathilde throws a fit because she doesn’t have a dress or jewelry to wear to the ball. M. Loisel gets her the beautifully expensive dress she desires and Mathilde borrows a diamond necklace from Mme. Forestier, a rich acquaintance of Mathilde. Mathilde goes to the ball and has a night she’s dreamed of, until she gets home from the ball at 4 A.M. to find
In conclusion, the story of “The Jewelry” gives clarification to Madame Lantin’s characteristics. Guy De Maupassant not only gave us clarification of Madame Lantin’s characteristics, but did an excellent job of backing these characteristics up with certain events in this story. Clarification of her character traits included admiration, modest and strong willed. These character traits will leave not only a lasting impression on the readers but also made the story mysterious with an unexpected twist at the end.
Over the course of the short story, The Jewelry, written by Guy De Maupassant, the main character, M. Lantin, goes through a clear change in personality, behavior, and values. At first M. Lantin is very content with his life and seems to love his wife, Madame Lantin. Then, after her death, M. Lantin is extremely depressed and filled with grief over his wife, however by the end of the story M. Lantin 's personality appears to change completely as he forgets his grief and is able to move on very quickly after being presented the money from the jewelry he sold.
The development of a character on paper is key to being able to create that character on stage. The development of character on paper is also key to understanding it in our imaginations. I read and understand stories and novels much the same way that I read a play script…through character analysis.
Furthermore, the lifestyle both women want ends up in disaster however, one ends in death while the other in hard labor. In "The Necklace", the wife ends up losing her friend’s expensive necklace which causes her to work hard to earn enough money to pay of a new one. Due to all the work she loses her beauty. In contrast, whereas in "The Jewels" the constant attendance of the opera house during the winter causes her to die of inflammation which resulted a deep sorrow towards the husband. Both wife’s lived life differently. Both tries to find the best way to fulfill their desire for the good
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.
In the short story “The Necklace”, the main character, Loisel, is a woman who dreams of greater things in her life. She is married to a poor clerk who tries his best to make her happy no matter what. In an attempt to try to bring happiness to his wife, he manages to get two invitations to a very classy ball, but even in light of this Loisel is still unhappy. Even when she gets a new dress she is still unhappy. This lasts until her husband suggests she borrows some jewelry from a friend, and upon doing so she is finally happy. Once the ball is over, and they reach home, Loisel has the horrible realization that she has lost the necklace, and after ten years of hard labor and suffering, they pay off debts incurred to get a replacement. The central idea of this story is how something small can have a life changing effect on our and others life’s. This idea is presented through internal and external conflicts, third person omniscient point of view, and the round-dynamic character of Loisel. The third person limited omniscient point-of-view is prevalent throughout this short story in the way that the author lets the reader only see into the main character’s thoughts. Loisel is revealed to the reader as being unhappy with her life and wishing for fancier things. “She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries.” (de Maupassant 887) When her husband tries to fancy things up, “she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry which peopled the walls…” (de Maupassant 887) As the story goes on her point of view changes, as she “now knew the horrible existence of the needy. She took her part, moreover all of a sudden, with heroism.” (de Maupassant 891) Having the accountability to know that the “dreadful debt must be paid.” (de Maupassant 891 ) This point-of-view is used to help the reader gain more insight to how Loisel’s whole mindset is changed throughout her struggle to pay off their debts. Maupassant only reveals the thoughts and feelings of these this main character leaving all the others as flat characters. Loisel is a round-dynamic character in that Maupassant shows how she thought she was born in the wrong “station”. “She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station.
Guy de Maupassant is a realist whose claim to fame is the style in which he conveys political and socioeconomic themes in his literary publications. He achieves his writing style by putting small unfortunate life events under a spotlight. His literary performance is described in his biography from Cambridge, the writer says “He exposes with piercing clarity the small tragedies and pathetic incidents of everyday life, taking a clear-sighted though pessimistic view of humanity” (Halsey, par. 1). Guy de Maupassant’s story The Necklace is a great representation of the style he uses. In The Necklace the main character Mathilde Loisel a beautiful but impoverished woman married to a clerk is in conflict with her lack of wealth and desire to acquire