Maupassant’s The Necklace

Mathilde Loisel lived the life of a painfully distressed woman, who always believed herself worthy of living in the upper class. Although Mathilde was born into the average middle class family, she spent her time daydreaming of her destiny for more in life... especially when it came to her financial status. Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, tells a tale of a vain, narcissistic housewife who longed for the aristocratic lifestyle that she believed she was creditable for. In describing Mathilde’s self-serving, unappreciative, broken and fake human behaviors, de Maupassant incorporates the tragic irony that ultimately concludes in ruining her.

Mathilde lives in an illusive world where her desires do not meet up to the reality of her life. She yearns for the status of being upper class, and she believes that her beauty and charm are worthy of much more. Mathilde spends her life doing everything in her power to create the dream life she has always imagined, to be beautiful, rich, and admired. Her husband provided her with a well-off lifestyle that she neglected and treated poorly due to her selfishness and greediness, and took advantage of his hard work at the first chance possible. When presented with the invitation to the party, she immediately rejects the request due to her fear of others judging her “middle class appearance”. But her loving husband offers her the hard earned money he had been saving up so she can treat herself to a brand new dress for the party. Her actions are centered around the happiness of herself, and have no good intentions towards her husband or

her marriage, resulting unfortunately by portraying her true colors of being greedy and unappreciative of the little money her family had.

With her...

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...re the human behaviors of an unappreciative and broken lifestyle. Together the two look up the the high class and luxury lifestyle with beliefs that they deserve to be apart of it. Taking advantage and looking past the hard working families that they come from, they force themselves to live miserable lives that others dream of. Both authors use a specific detail that the characters lives through to find happiness in their illusive lifestyles; For Mathilde is the diamond necklace, and for Paul is the escape to the theatre arts. Mathilde and Paul were both ashamed of their belongings and where they come from, but both collected joy from societies mistaken vision of the wealth that they portrayed. Although both characters had minor human behaviors that varied, Mathilde and Paul both shared the desire for the aristocratic lifestyle which fundamentally dilapidated them.