“The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant has situational irony. This story, as the title suggests, focuses on the necklace. In “The Necklace” necklace is given the symbolism of wealth, royalty, friendship, self-respect and at last an ornament. Mathilde Loisel is beautiful and married women, she was born in a middle class family and desired to be rich. Once she had a chance to attend the ball, her dream came true, she was living the dream of being rich by wearing beautiful dress and a “diamond” necklace. For Mathilde the necklace symbolizes vanity and concealment; ironically necklace takes a decade of her life. As for many people, being rich is the purpose of their life and their answer to happiness. Mathilde had the parallel mentality of being …show more content…
She doesn 't notice that necklace was lost until she reaches her home in the early morning of next day. Couple tried to trace back the necklace in a hope to find it but were unsuccessful. They planned to replace the old diamond necklace with the new diamond necklace. They decided to go to the jewelry store and look for similar diamond necklace Mathilde had borrowed from her friend.De Maupassant lets the reader know the price of the new necklace, “ The price was forty francs. The store will let them have it for thirty-six thousand” ( 177). Monsieur uses all eighteen thousand francs his father gave it to him and borrows rest of the money from his friends and promises them to pay back as early as possible with a healthy interest rate. in order to compete with their financial need Mathilde gets a job to help the couple pay up the debt. After ten years the couple is out of debt and one day Mathilde meets Forestier. Forestier does not recognize are Mathilde went from middle class to poor after the incident and beauty had faded away. As Mathilde tells the truth about the necklace incident. Immediately, Forestier reacted by saying, “‘But mine was fake. It wasn’t worth more than five hundred francs’” (Maupassant 179). Best part of the story was spoken and situational irony had …show more content…
Mathilde had made that mistake by concealments of hiding her status. She always wanted to be rich and finally one night she had chance she nailed it by looking gorgeous at the ball and getting attentions of everyone at the ball. After losing the necklace she didn’t wanted her social status to look horrible as many would have thought that she didn’t lose the necklace instead she just stole it. Mathilde had maintain the status of being rich and had paid the price for her fake status by working and paying of her unwanted debt. As De Maupassant describes Mathilde one more time but not as the person she wanted to be known as.”Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the sort of woman often found in poor household: tough, grasping, and coarse” (178). Her life would have been a lot easier if Mathilde had not faked the incident and had confessed the truth to Forestier and would only had to five hundred
...only to find out years later that the necklace was not made of real diamonds but glass. This story shows the social pressure put on those of lower classes and how they wish to be a part of the better group. Maupassant uses Mathilde’s obsession to drive her into poverty and shame. For the time, this story analyzes how hard one had to work to even attain any bit of fortune.
She suffered all those ten years just for a necklace that she absolutely had to have. It’s ironic because she suffered and worked for a necklace that was not worth all of that at all. The author didn’t reveal this until the very end of the story. “Oh, my poor Mathilde? Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth at moat five hundred francs” (Maupassant 558). This is situational irony in the short story The
Other details in the story also have a similar bearing on Mathilde’s character. For example, the story presents little detail about the party scene beyond the statement that Mathilde is a great “success” (7)—a judgment that shows her ability to shine if given the chance. After she and Loisel accept the fact that the necklace cannot be found, Maupassant includes details about the Parisian streets, about the visits to loan sharks, and about the jewelry shop in order to bring out Mathilde’s sense of honesty and pride as she “heroically” prepares to live her new life of poverty. Thus, in “The Necklace,” Maupassant uses setting to highlight Mathilde’s maladjustment, her needless misfortune, her loss of youth and beauty, and finally her growth as a responsible human being.
Situational irony occurs throughout most of The Necklace; it appears when Madame Forestier lends Madame Loisel a diamond necklace since “[she’s] upset because [she] haven’t a single piece of jewelry or a gemstone or anything to wear with [her] dress.[She’ll] look like a pauper. [She] almost think[s] it would be better if [she] didn’t go” and lets her borrow it for a ball one night so Madame Loisel can fit in; however, she ends up losing the necklace(174).Madame Loisel was not informed of the fact that the diamond necklace was actually fake. In a panic, Madame Loisel and her husband work hard and pay the loans off for many years trying to replace the necklace only to find out it wasn’t real; they gave up their decent lifestyle and had to save up for ten years. The situational irony is the fact that Madame Loisel thought that if she borrowed the diamond necklace it would help her become closer to the life she wanted, but the necklace ended up putting her and her husband into poverty and without the life that she longed for, instead. The ten years of poverty that Madame Loisel and
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
Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" In "The Necklace," Mathilde dreams of nothing more than a rich and first-class lifestyle. For one night of her life, she gets to experience everything she has longed for. From going to an elegant ball, to losing what she thought was an expensive necklace, one can see how appearance versus reality lands Mathlide working her life away to pay for a fake piece of jewelry.
It uses irony to contribute to the theme of the story by helping give out the moral that honesty is key. What contributes to this is when Madame Loisel and her husband are invited to the teachers ball and doesn’t want to dress as people in her class are expected to, so she says she’s going to buy a nice dress for about four hundred francs. She feels that the dress isn’t enough, so she goes to Madame Forestier, a close friend of hers, and asks if she can borrow what she believes is a diamond necklace. She goes to the ball, then leaves in a hurry later. When she gets home, she realizes that the necklace is no longer around her neck, and so she and her husband search the streets and call the cabs to see if they could find it, but had no luck.
“The Necklace”, narrated by Guy de Maupassant in 3rd person omniscient, focuses the story around Mathilde Loisel who is middle class, and her dreams of fame and fortune. The story is set in 19th century France. One day, Mathilde’s husband brings home an invitation to a fancy ball for Mathilde; to his surprise Mathilde throws a fit because she doesn’t have a dress or jewelry to wear to the ball. M. Loisel gets her the beautifully expensive dress she desires and Mathilde borrows a diamond necklace from Mme. Forestier, a rich acquaintance of Mathilde. Mathilde goes to the ball and has a night she’s dreamed of, until she gets home from the ball at 4 A.M. to find
Mathilde eventually pays the price for her extreme self-admiration. “Mine Loisel looked old now.” “She had become the woman of impoverished households…. With Frowsy hair, skirts askew, and red hands….” Because Mathilde was always so full of herself, she suffered the consequences. Mathilde is torn apart when she realizes she had been working so hard for something fake. She realizes the last ten years of her life were a waste when Mme. Foresier says, “Oh my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth at most five hundred francs!” I think this was the hardest thing for Mathilde to hear at this point because she has faced so much since the night she lost the
Ten years of suffering is the cost of having pleasure for only one night! In “The Necklace,” by Guy de Maupassant presents Mathilde Loisel, an attractive, charming but vacuous and selfish middle class lady transforms to selfness, poor, satisfied and hard-working lady. Even though, Mathidle owns a comfortable home and married to a faithful and kind husband, Monsieur Loisel, who seeks her happiness and satisfaction; she was ungrateful to the things that she had been given, because her greed and desire of wealth had captured her thoughts and blurred the real meaning of happiness in her perspective. Mathidle spends most of her time surfing in her day dreams of being wealthy and suffering from accepting the reality, because her imagination was more than she could not afford. One day Mathidle’s husband brought his wife an invitation for a fancy party, but as a result of their low income, Mathidle’s was ashamed to wear flowers as decoration, so she decided to borrow an expensive looking necklace from a friend of her, Madame Forestier. After attending the fabulous party and spending a memorable great time looking stunningly beautiful, Mathidle discovers that she had lost the expensive necklace that she borrowed, so she decides to buy a similar copy of the necklace to her friend after loaning an enormous amount of money and narrowing the house outcome. The author surprises his readers with a perfectly detailed twist at the end of the story. Losing the necklace was a turning point in Mathidle’s life and the best thing that ever happened to her.
Between misplacing priorities and self-absorption Mathilde Loisel is created in the story, “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant. Mathilde has just about everything a woman could want: remarkable beauty, a loving husband, and a comfortable lifestyle. Material riches are the only category in which she believes she is inadequate to other women. This one factor sets up the conflict present in the story. Throughout the turmoil she must endure, due to her egotistical ways, one would think she would have a change in heart and mindset. Mathilde has a dissatisfied disposition that does not evolve even as her situation does; she is disgruntled being in the middle class, as well as attending a first class event, and ultimately being in the working class.
From the beginning of the story Mathilde seems to have a chip on her shoulder as if she has been done an injustice because of who she is married to. The time period, in which this story was set, the only way a women could move up the class scale was to marry a man who came from wealth. Ironically, Mme. Loisel’s husband is a clerk just like her father was. She longs to be rich. Her mind is concentrated on being in the social circle and living a life surrounded by everything that is fine and exclusive. She is greedy and unhappy with her modest but still quite tolerable lifestyle. It is illustrated beautifully in the passage where she describes her intolerable “worn out chairs” and “ugly curtains.” In the very next breath she speaks of her “little Breton peasant who does her humble house work” (Maupassant 178). When her husband comes upon the opportunity to go out for an evening to a ball, he assumes his wife would be overjoyed. Instead, she relishes in thoughts of looking poor among the rich. Try as he might there is no pleasing his deprived wife.
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.
Immediately, Mathilde realises necklace is not on her neck anymore it is lost. They checked the cab, but could not find it. Monsieur follows there step back, but unfortunately he could not find it. They decide to go to the jewelry store and look for similar diamond necklace Mathilde Loisel was wearing. De Maupassant let 's reader know the price of Necklace, “ The price was forty thousand francs. The store will let them have it for thirty-six thousand” ( Maupassant 177 ). Monsieur made some arrangement for the money. He had Eighteen thousand franc which his father gave to him and the rest he had to borrow from other people and promised to pay them as early as possible and with a healthy interest rate. They successfully replace the new necklace and went to Mathilde friend 's house to return it. give to her friend. And start paying up people they loaned money
The Necklace also displays distinctive realism in the use of socioeconomic influences which are essential to the plot. The major conflict in the story would be absent and the theme would not be obtainable without Mathilde Loisel’s insecurity about her own socioeconomic reputation. An example of Loisel’s self-deprivation nature is presented when she realizes she does not have a necklace, she says “I shall look absolutely no one. I would almost rather not go to the party” (Maupassant, sec. 3). Another example of the self-conflict caused by social pressure is Loisel’s immediate attempt to replace the necklace and her reluctance to speak to her friend Madame Forestier about the necklace for ten whole years. If she were not conflicted by societal pressures she might have avoided the whole situation altogether. The Necklace establishes a realistic difference in value between the necklaces and proposed clothing. Her husband proposes flowers which were valued 10 franks so in any case if she had chosen the flowers there would have been an insignificant economic loss. Her decision not to tell her friend about the necklace ends up costing her seven times the worth of the original. The roses symbolize the simpler things in life to the theme of the story. Mathilde Loisel’s withered appearance at the end