Death, Death And Imagery In The Jewelry By Guy De Maupassant

In The Jewelry, Guy De Maupassant introduces us to a happy couple that lived a happy life together. There are many themes explored this short story such as, irony, happiness, and how looks can deceive. Through the character’s characteristics, death, and debt we are shown the irony behind their happiness and just how much looks can deceive a person.

The Jewelry is a story of M. Lantin and his wife. Lantin is the chief clerk at the office of the Minister of the Interior, with a salary of three thousand five hundred francs a year, a typical midlevel bureaucratic wage. His wife, who remains nameless throughout the story, was the daughter of a poor country-tutor. Lantin immediately fell in love with the young woman who “seemed to be the very ideal of that pure good woman to whom every young man dreams of entrusting his future” (69). Throughout the first six years of their marriage they were happy. Lantin tells us that she governed their home to make it seemed as if they lived in luxury. She lavished her husband with love and affection. Lantin says, “six years after he married her, he loved her even more than he did the first day” (69).

There were only two faults that he found within her – theater and false jewelry. Lantin didn’t share her love for theater. After attending many performances with her, he finally begged her to go with some lady friends. Her love of theater brought about her love of fake jewelry. Sometimes she would bring out her jewelry in the evenings just to look at them. The theater and jewelry didn’t seem to be affecting them financially in anyway, so why not let her indulge herself in them. She was happy and he was happy.

One winter’s night, his wife came home from the opera freezing. She had be...

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...a good upstanding woman that made his life miserable. Because he is now miserably rich and remarried, this proves to the readers that, in this case, money cannot buy happiness.

The moral of the story is that looks can be deceiving. Lantin’s first wife was praised by all, but was unfaithful. Lantin was originally a decent man and was ashamed of himself when he tried to sell the false jewelry. He became a man that didn’t care either way sold all of it even though it was received by dishonest means. So, what was the author really trying to say? Was he questioning morals against happiness? It seems that even though his first wife was unfaithful, he was still a happier man than when he married his second wife who was “the most upright of spouses” (75). Is being happy by untruthful morals worth monetary gains, or is unhappiness by truthful morals worth the pain?