The Description Of The Story "The Necklace" By Guy De Maupassant
The story that I decided to write about is called The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant. The story starts with our protagonist a lady by the name of Mathilde Loisel that gets married to a little clerk at the Ministry of Public Instruction. They both get invited to the ball, but instead of rejoicing she becomes very frustrated and irritated because she was not well equipped for the ball. She eventually asks for some for money from her husband in order to go get herself a nice dress for the ball, but even after getting the dress she is still not fully satisfied because she does not have any jewelry. Eventually she realizes that she could just ask her best friend by the name of Mme. Forestier to borrow some jewelry for the ball.
The antagonist of this story is the superb necklace of diamonds that she borrowed from her friend. After getting the necklace, she was ready to go to the ball, but right after the ball was over and they have arrived home she was surprised by the fact that the necklace that was around her neck has disappeared. The two of them looked everywhere for the necklace, and when they lost all hope the husband decided to tell his wife to lie to Mme. Forestier about how she accidently broke the necklace during the ball and that it was getting repaired.
This lie gave them enough time to collect enough money to buy a new necklace that cost thirty-six thousand francs. Mathilde Loisel then goes and gives her friend Mme. Forestier the replaced necklace which was taken back with no questions asked. Mathilda and her husband spent the next ten years paying of the debt of necklace that they had replaced. Now that she had paid of the debt of the necklace she had enough courage to go up to her friend Mme. Forestier and tell her about what actually happened that time she borrowed her necklace. At first her friend Mme. Forestier does not even recognize Matilda because of how much the laboring years have changed her, but then she tells her that the necklace that she borrowed was made of hand cut diamonds and that it only cost her about 500 francs.
The theme of this story is that honesty is the best policy and that pride can sometimes get in the way of telling the truth. The theme of this story shows that if Mathilde Loisel and her husband were honest and not prideful they could have avoided buying a necklace that cost thirty-six thousand francs, which would rather have come at a cost of admitting that she lost the necklace. Even before she lost the necklace we can see that she was prideful and did not want to go to the ball unless she got a nice dress to go in. In this story a Man vs Self conflict can be seen because once she losses the necklace she lies about repairing it because she is prideful and fearful of ruining her reputation.
At the end of the story Mathilda can also be seen prideful of the work she accomplished and maybe that’s why she eventually told her friend about what really happened to the real necklace. The story itself was told from a 3rd person point of view which helped me as a reader to understand the characters in the story a little better because of the way that they depicted the characters. Many life problems can be avoided if we as people were not prideful and honest with others and most importantly ourselves.
Pride leads to selfishness and that is what can be seen in the story because Mathilde Loisel is always not satisfied and needs more and more, but when she lost the necklace we can see that the pride of looking good is the same pride that stops her from telling her friend the truth about losing the necklace at the ball. It would be interesting to actually see how the whole story ends up after she tells her what happened to the real necklace.
