Affects Of Coveting In Maupassant's The Necklace

Effects of Coveting In “The Necklace”

Coveting is the wanting of not only what you don’t have, but what you can’t have as well. Let’s face it, ultimately, almost everyone covets at some point in their life, but at the end of the day, our happiness comes from within, not from our material possessions. If you spend all of your time coveting for better things, then you are just digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole of loneliness and disappointment. Inside the story “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, coveting negatively affects Mme. Loisel by not only altering the reality of her situation, but her perception of the situation as well.

One of the many ways that coveting negatively affected Mme. Loisel was the it caused her to potentially

miss out on experiences/opportunities. The best way to explain what I mean is through the quote, “Give the card to some friend at the office whose wife can dress better than I can” (352). She coveted the clothing of the upper class so much, that she actually felt insecure about the clothes that she had to wear. But the coveting extends further than that, she was actually willing to turn down an invitation to a party, that her husband had spent so much time and effort to acquire, all because of simple material belongings. Furthermore, if she hadn’t let her envy of what Mme. Forestier had get to her head, she could’ve simply admitted to her friend that she had lost the necklace and move forward with life with little to no negative repercussions. Instead, since she didn’t want to seem poor, she gave up her entire life savings, 10 years of her life, along with her beauty to replace it. All of those things, which symbolized everything that gave her happiness in her life, she was willing to give up, to not seem poor in front of someone that she considered to be her friend. If that isn’t taking her envy too far, then I don’t know what is. Sadly, missing out on experiences/opportunities wasn’t the only negative affect of her coveting, her lack of friends may have been attributed to it too.
It can be easily understood that people who constantly covet probably aren’t the best people to hang around, and Mme. Loisel learned that the hard way. The quote from the story that best sums up what I am saying is, “She had a well-to-do friend (Mme. Forestier), a classmate of convent school days whom she would no longer see, simply because she would feel so distressed returning home” (352). If you couldn’t infer, the reason why she would feel so distressed was because of how much she coveted what Mme. Forestier had. The sentiment expressed in the quotation, embodies the view that, Mme. Loisel would sooner get rid herself of her friend, than look past the expensive and beautiful things that her friend had. You can see this trend all throughout the story, when you take note of the fact that Mme. Loisel actually has zero other friends. Her lack of friends throughout the story symbolizes the infinite amount of loneliness and isolation that comes along with coveting for more and not appreciating what you already have. Who would want to be friends with someone who covets a new life, with wealthier and fancier friends? Making you feel unappreciated usually isn’t a quality you want your friends to have. But her covetous ways don’t stop there, there are points in the story where she literally loses sight of her reality.
Being covetous is a natural human instinct, it is everyone’s right to want more, but when your desires begin to consume your entire life and causes you to lose sight of what is real and what isn’t, you’ve taken your coveting too far.

An example of this can be found in the quote, “She would dream of delicious dishes served on wonderful china, of gallant compliments whispered and listened to with a sphinxlike smile as one eats the rosy flesh of a trout or nibble at the wings of a grouse” (352). This quote occurs when Mme. Loisel is eating a dinner of stew with her husband. Her husband on one hand, is perfectly content with the stew and he quite enjoys it, Mme. Loisel on the other hand is not satisfied with the stew and dreams for bigger and better things. If it wasn’t already obvious enough, the stew symbolized the overall situation that Mme. Loisel and her husband were in. Her husband was very happy about the situation was, and he didn’t have any complaints about it. On the contrary, Mme. Loisel wasn’t content with their situation, she wanted more out of life than what she already had. However, the examples do not stop there. Believe it or not, the necklace itself is a symbol of Mme. Loisel’s slight loss of reality. The necklace that Mme. Loisel fell so madly in love with, may have been beautiful, but it was completely and utterly worthless, all a sham. The necklace represented the power of perception, along with the slight difference between fantasy and reality. Even though it was a fake, when she wore the necklace, she felt more wealthy, which in turn, made the people around her believe that she was wealthier too. The fact that the necklace is the result of the complete undoing of Mme. Loisel’s life as she knew it, leads me to infer that the story’s overall message is that nothing good ever comes from the denial of the reality of the

situation.
When it is all said and done, everyone can learn a thing or two from the downfall of Mme. Loisel. She is a prime example of what can happen if you covet everything and appreciate nothing your entire life. Whether coveting causes you to miss out on opportunities or experiences throughout your life, or is the result of your lack of friends, or even causes you to completely lose sight of reality, it is something that all of us need to be cautious of. Even though the examples in the story are a bit exaggerated, every day, there are people who lose everything they own because of their greed. This story is just a warning to the reader; appreciate what you have before it’s gone, or else you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting it.