Pride is a word that we all know very well, and rarely admit if it 's a characteristic we posses. In the short stories "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "The Necklace," the two main characters have a strong sense of pride. In their own way each woman is manipulative, deceitful, and judgmental. As we read the stories we can tell how each woman only cared about only themselves and their happiness.They both live simple and ok lives but are not happy with what they have. Both not caring about the consequences, will do anything to get want they want. Although, pride can be seen sometimes as something positive, if used in the right way. In each particular story, we see how being prideful can turn your life from something positive into something negative.
The Grandmother in “A
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Mathilde had a loving husband, who provided the necessities for her and a decent home. But that was never enough for her. In her head, she felt she was born to live a life of luxury. When her husband tells her he has an invite to a ball, she refuses to go because she has no clothes: “…have no dress, and, for that reason, cannot go to the ball. Give your invitation to some fellow-clerk whose wife is better provided than I am." (de Maupassant) Mathilde 's pride and shallowness will not allow her to be grateful and just go to the ball. She manages to manipulate her husband into buying her a dress, and also borrowing a fancy necklace from a friend. After losing the necklace, Mathilde decides to just lie to her friend, and go into debt by buying a new one. After ten years of working hard and downgrading things in her life. To repay the debt of the necklace. Mathilde and her husband are now poor and struggling to make ends meet. Her greed and pride got her to where she is at the end of the story. Even going through what she went through, she still fantasizes about her desire for wealth and
In “The Necklace”, Mathilde feels she has been born into a family of unfavorable economic status. She’s so focused on what she doesn’t have. She forgets about her husband who treats her good. She gets too carried away being someone someone
To start off with, Mathilde had many conflicts she had to face during the story. First, she was poor and low in the social class. In the textbook it says, “she dressed plainly because she could not afford fine clothes.” She does not have money to buy new clothes because she is poor. Secondly, she got invited to the ball but had no evening clothes. “Only I don’t have an evening dress and therefore I can’t go to the affair.” Mathilde is poor and does not own an evening dress and can’t afford a dress she thinks she can’t go to the ball. Next, she has no jewelry to wear. . “It’s embarrassing not to have a jewel or gem-nothing to wear on my dress. I’ll look pauper.” She has no jewels or gems to go with her dress. Finally, she overcame many conflicts
Being prideful can be very easy. It's natural to think that you are superior, and that you can do everything. However, this is not always correct, and sometimes pride can lead to negative effects. These instances are shown vividly through the short stories, “To Build a Fire,” and “The Scarlet Ibis.” In the end of these stories, the main character’s pride caused regret, or even death. In”To Build a Fire,” by Jack London and “The Scarlet Ibis,” by James Hurst, the authors both conveyed the common theme that pride can have negative consequences.
When considering the connotation of pride and whether it is a good or bad characteristic it is important to consider the definition applied. Pride, according to the Oxford Press Dictionary, is defined as “a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction that you get when you or people who are connected with you have done something well or own something that other people admire.” While this definition does not insinuate a faulty or sinful perception, and a healthy measure of pride is acceptable, there is a line of demarcation that cannot be crossed. Pride has become a customary and unquestioned value that has been ingrained in culture because society the structure and precepts of God have been removed from the worldview. Pride has evolved beyond a beneficial characteristic and, for some, has morphed from an acceptable satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, to an unreasonable desire or love of one 's own excellence.
When it comes to pride, when do we know that we have too much? A perfect example of having too much pride lies in the Greek tragedy, Antigone. In my opinion, it is the perfect example because the main character, Creon, is dealing with all the things that are happening because of Antigone’s decision to go against his law and many people are telling him that he is wrong, but he is too confident in his own choice that nothing bad will happen.
... both had to work very hard to pay off their debt; this shows that it is essential to find a job to make a living. People have an ego that they do not want to be frowned on. We tend to have a desire to be accepted by the society because we do not want to look like an outcast. Mathilde did not want to be “humiliat[ed] by looking poor” (4). Instead, we should buy accessories that be are capable of affording because life is difficult when we run into major debts. She had an opportunity to “Wear a flower…For ten” (4) but she refused, which led her and her husband into ten years of hard work. It is important to live a lifestyle that we can survive in.
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
Webster defines pride as a “proud behavior or treatment; insolence; arrogance; distain” (Webster’s, 1939). Being proud is acceptable, even good, to a certain extent. Having pride in the way you look, your handwriting, or something you take seriously. People take pride in the little things that are personal and loved individually. Being a little prideful can lead to confidence; however people often mistake arrogance (an exaggerated pride) for confidence. Prideful people seek to prove their superiority in every aspect of their lives Roth provides the reader with a vivid illustration of this exaggerated pride. The initiates in her novel are supplied with multiple opportunities to st...
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
Mathilde marries Mr. Loisel, a minor clerk in the Ministry of Education. She becomes unhappy with the way she has to live. "She suffered because of her grim apartment with its drab walls, threadbare furniture, ugly curtains." (paragraph 3). She owns cheap belongings and still dreams of being rich and having gourmet food while her husband likes plain things and seems rather happy for where he is in life. She dreams these wonderful and expensive things and it frustrates her. A dream come true happens but instead of being happy she is upset and even more frustrated.
Loisel repaid the necklace together with their sweat and tears. Mathilde didn’t have a choice; she had to change from a vain, ungrateful, material, bored wife, into a hardworking proud and loving wife. She even says, right before she runs into Mme. Forestier, “What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How life is strange and changeful! How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!”(39) In that quote I saw 2 things, when she asked herself what would have happened if she didn’t lose the necklace, she doesn’t go into some fairytale about what life she could be living, she just accepts what she is now, even if it’s not the easiest life in the world. At the very end of that quote “How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!”(39) The fact that she added “or to be saved!” to her thought, tells me that she realizes that she was vain and unappreciated and that she lacked character, but now she is grateful, even though it was such a terrible thing, she was grateful that she was able to say that she was a better person now, even after everything that happened to her than she ever “dreamed” of being before. Guy de Maupassant certainly described a very difficult hardship for Mathilde in “The Necklace” but in the end, everything that happened to her, made her a much better and stronger woman inside and out. This story teaches a very important lesson, you have no idea what you can do and who you can become, until your chips are down and you’re put between a rock and a hard
Maupassant delighted me with this story. I especially liked how he present the character Mathilde, she seemed to be extremely ungrateful with her mediocre life. She dreamed of wealth and fame and it seemed like nothing would please her. She focused so much on her desire to have social status that when she got the opportunity to go a social gathering with elite members of society, she would not go unless she had a fancy dress and fancy necklace. For one night, she felt like “somebody”. I found this story to display themes of gross vanity, irony and suffering. Because in the end Mathilde worked hard to replace the necklace that she presumed was real. She was never able to have another day of pleasure or go out to any other events. She made such a big deal of the one event, she lost herself in the feeling of being social accepted by a higher class in society.
“The Necklace” is about a woman of lower class who wants to become different than her true self. At this ball, she acts to be someone who is wealthy for the night to impress those around her because everything for her seems to be about money and fame. The song, “Just a Girl” relates to the story because it shows how she let the money get to her, what she is like when she sees her old friend after many harsh years, what her husband thinks of her, and lastly how she confused where she stood in the class systems.
In “The Necklace,” Mathilde’s internal struggle is with herself. She mentally battled with the physical and financial limitations placed on her, but more with her own soul. She was unhappy with her place in life and could not accept the simplicity of her station, believing it to be truly beneath her. “All those things… tortured her and made her angry. “ Her husband’s blatant acceptance of their place only fueled her frustrations further.
Mathilde Loisel grew up in the working class and had no expectations in life. Mathilde settled for a lifestyle she was unhappy with. When she got married, she and her husband would sit around the dinner table and imagine they were eating a luxurious meal. Together, they had nothing. Mathilde had no clothes, no jewels, and only one friend (who was rich). Mathilde dreamt of wealth, fine clothes, and a beautiful house. She knew that those dreams were unrealistic and unattainable.