An Analysis Of Guy De Maupassant's The Necklace

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In Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace (1884), we are shown what happens when people are not grateful for the circumstances they do have. We meet Mathilde Loisel, a selfish, conceited and ungrateful wife to M. Loisel. M. Loisel is not rich, but he does everything in his power to bless his wife, Mathilde, with material things to try and make her happy. What he is unaware of is the toils and trouble that awaits him for bending over backwards for Mathilde. Mathilde is always unhappy where she feels destiny has placed her unjustly. She, in the end, learns the trouble of her ways and thoughts, and becomes the essence of what she told herself she has been given – poor. Mathilde must become humble in order to live her life without fear of being …show more content…

Mathilde is not satisfied until she finds an expensive diamond looking piece. She is ecstatic when she goes to the ball and is swooned over for her beauty. In all of her pride she loses the necklace that was loaned to her. Instead of being honest, she asks her loving and willing husband to go out and search for the necklace. The two of them make an unwise decision to avoid the truth, and took out loans that they would not be able to pay back. Taking out the loans proves to be Mathilde’s demise as she is forced to live the poverty-stricken life that she imagined herself to always have. For ten years she must suffer and work harder than she ever has …show more content…

How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit. This excerpt shows that since the beginning of time, people that are not grateful for what they have and try to get more, only to end up worse off than before. Mathilde ends up worse off than she starts out. What’s more is that her pride has gotten ahead of her, keeping her from being honest with her friend. If Mathilde would just tell Madame Forestier that she has lost the necklace, she would find that the necklace is a fake. She worries that her friend will think that she is going to “be taken as a thief” (De Maupassant, 1884, p.

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