We often wonder what if. What if we had more
money? What if we had a different life? Why are we always inclined to want
something that we cannot have? In “The Necklace”, Guy De Maupassant uses
imagery, symbolism, and irony to uncover that not everything is as real as it
may seem. The author uses very little space to make an interesting story
along with an unexpected twist ending.
This story is about a woman in the middle
class married to a clerk that gets invited to an exclusive ball. Mathilde, like
any woman in her situation, dreams of the fancy life. This story is very similar to a fairy tale
like Cinderella. She refuses to go at first because she has nothing fancy to
wear. So her husband, this is essentially where the fairy godmother enters,
gives up the money that he had saved up to buy a gun to give it to her so she
could buy a fancy dress.
There is another challenge that our main
character faces. As the date approaches she is sad again because she does not
have any jewelry to accompany the fancy dress. She asks a rich friend to lend
her some jewelry to make her outfit complete and ends up with the most gorgeous
diamond necklace. After a great night at the party she loses the necklace and
spends the next 10 years of her life trying to pay for the replacement necklace
only to find out that it was a fake all along.
Maupassant makes it clear how cruel life can
be. Because of her pride she could not tell her friend that she had lost the
necklace. She and her husband would not have borrowed a lot of money to replace
it. If it was not for Mathilde’s
dissatisfaction with her common life, she and her husband would not have to
have suffered for 10 years. She also would have not wasted her life and beauty
on regrets. She did learn a valuable lesson on how much worse it was to live
like the poor.
The author uses imagery to make us aware of
her living situation. The extent of her envy is clearly pointed out when she
dreams of “thought of a noiseless, hollowed ante-room, with Oriental carpets,
lighted with tall branching candlesticks of bronze and… of a long drawing-room
hung with ancient brocade, of a beautiful cabinet holding priceless curios, of
an alluring, scented boudoir intended for five-o’clock chants with intimates
(Gale).” She is very specific in what exactly it is that she is missing. One
might question whether she is a greedy person because she is not contempt with
what she has.
The necklace itself symbolizes wealth and
beauty. It's so flashy and beautiful, and so seemingly valuable. Despite its
convincing outside, it turns out to be "false." It's all show, in
other words, with no substance. Like "wealth," the necklace is the
object of Mathilde's mad desire. Maybe the falseness of the necklace itself at
the end is meant to mirror her false dreams of wealth. Having
wealth is not worth the trouble, any more than the false necklace was worth ten
years of poverty. Although, having wealth does have its advantages: it does seem to do wonders for Madame, for
instance, while poverty ruins Mathilde’s.
The author does a very good job in adding a
twist to the ending. The irony of this story is that the necklace was in fact a
fake. If Mathilde just swallowed her pride she and her husband would not have
been in this predicament. The fact that the necklace is a fake may or may not
have some kind of moral meaning. We could take it to mean that wealth, or
appearances more broadly, are false. Being poverty stricken may ruin her
appearance, but it forces her to become responsible and hardworking, and
perhaps makes her appreciate what she had before.
We could all learn a lesson from this story.
We should be happy with what we already have or, we should work extremely hard
to get what we want. Not everything comes easy in life and sometimes we have to
earn what we want. Whe never know what hardships taking the easy way out could
bring. Take the necklace for example, everything is not as real as it seems.
Works cited
De
Mapassant, Guy. “The Necklace.” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and
Writing. Ed. Edgar V Roberts. Boston: 2012. 200-05. Print.
“Explanation
of: ‘The Necklace’ by Guy De Maupassant.” LitFinder
Contemporary Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2000. Litfinder. Web. 8 Apr. 2013
1 comments:
nice blog.
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