The Jewelry Maupassant Analysis

Elvis Karenzi

Laura Ighade

English 102-006

October 9th 2015

Secrets

Guy de Maupassant’s “The Jewelry” teaches that people often choose to ignore the perceptions we have in the fear that the reality will hurt us. M. Lantin chooses to see his wife’s good deeds only because she is the main source of his happiness. It is until he is revealed to her shady character that he is subjected to face reality and made to feel pain. Madame Lantin presents herself very well in front of the public but keeps secrets even from her own husband, and this was very common for women in the 19th century when this story is set. The veneer of cosmopolitan behavior expected from females in French society leads to and justifies the blatant dishonesty, the acceptance

of gifts from other men, and the consistent theatre dwelling of Madame Lantin.
The dishonest and seemingly disloyal behavior of Mme.

Lantin was not only ubiquitous behavior among women of her time period, but it was also crucial to the stability of her home. “There were on two points upon which he ever found fault with her—her love of the theatre, and her passion for false jewelry”(P.90). It is interesting to see how the author wants the reader to focus on the details. M. Lantin put his wife on a very high pedestal and yet he was able to find fault in her. The author’s use of the words ‘love’ and ‘passion’ are a subtle way of implying that these gifts and performances meant more to her than she let on. They symbolized the existence of her extra-marital affairs. ‘’Secrecy was thus both deemed necessary to bourgeois notions of privacy and viewed as potentially dangerous to public order’’.(P. 47)

Although accepting gifts from other men made it look like Madame Lantin was cheating on her husband, it helped her maintain the social nature of the upper-middle class woman of the late nineteenth century while supplementing the paycheck of M. Lantin. Women of middle class and of higher stature in 19th century France were often surrounded by men; at the theatre, at dinner parties, salon and so on. The relationship between men and women was not conservative. ”But it also appears that the discreet infidelities of upper middle class women were increasingly tolerated in Paris at the end of the nineteenth

century”(P.532).
Reputation and privacy were highly valued in 19th century France. “She refused for quite a while- thinking it would not look very well to go out thus unaccompanied by her husband” (P. 91, par. 1). During this period in France, more emphasis was put on holding up appearances rather than on the virtue of sin. Madame Lantin was well aware of this, as long as her marriage looked nothing less of perfect to everyone including her husband, then her shady acts were somewhat justified.
In conclusion, Madame Lantin’s action although seen as despicable to some were a social norm for a middle class woman of her time. The relationship between men and women was explicitly sexual and women were less conservative. Nothing was more important than reputation and status and thus explains all Madame Lantin’s secrets.