The Importance Of Failure In The Necklace By Guy De Maupassant

As Michael Jordan, a former basketball player, once said while speaking about failure, “ I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” This statement means that even though there may be a chance of failure, you must always try your best. In “The Necklace”, Guy de Maupassant shows readers of the importance of perseverance. In Maupassant’s work of literature, Madame Loisel is a poor, unhappy woman because she is unwealthy. She believes that she deserves more than she can afford. When her husband brings her tickets to a gala, she is less than happy. Madame Loisel exclaims that she does not have a suitable dress, so her husband uses the money, which he had saved to buy a new rifle, to buy her one. Later, Matilde

Before Matilde was required to work to solve her problem, she was a lazy, irritable woman. As she begins doing back-breaking labor such as, “...the laundry, washing shirts and dishcloths ...; she took the garbage down; took the garbage down to the street every morning and carried water upstairs, stopping at every floor to get her breath” (pg. 341), Madame Loisel slowly starts to grasp onto the value of work . Matilde had never worked a day in her life, so by her hard work, she is slowly showing her perseverance. As Madame Loisel works, she changes her old ways of just lounging and being lazy. Madame Loisel became a woman of diligence through her dedication to work. As Matilde’s work ethic changes, so does her ethical

Madame Loisel took ten years to pay everyone back, and in those ten years, she could have given up and forgotten to pay those she owed money to. Madame Loisel could have easily left her husband to fend for himself, but she did not. Instead, Matilde took responsibility for her actions and paid all the money that she owed “...including the usurious rates and the compound interest” ( 341). Madame Loisel could have easily neglected to pay the others back considering she had already given the necklace back. By paying everyone back, she shows that her former behavior has become ethical. The “old” Matilde would have most likely deemed that paying everyone back would have been too much effort and not worth her time. Yet, this “new” Madame Loisel has a different perspective and changes her ways. In addition to an attitude change, Matilde also sacrifices so