Contentment of Status
Everyone has heard the saying “be careful what you wish for” at one point or another, a warning to young children about being grateful for what you already have. Guy de Maupassant supports this idea in his short story The Necklace. The story opens to a young, beautiful Madame Mathilde Loisel in her shabby and worn Paris apartment in 1884, a time when class separated people and she wanted nothing more than to be of one higher than the lower-middle placement she was born into. In the short story The Necklace, Madame Loisel struggles to achieve a taste of the upper class status she felt she deserved only to end up worse off than she began. This use of irony and the characterization of Madame Loisel illustrates de Maupassant’s …show more content…
We understand that women which lack in beauty and charm can make up for it with status and such vice versa, and so we come to the conclusion that Madame Loisel was at the same level of a woman of high class with because of her natural elegance. As a result of her weighing so much importance on appearances and thinking of herself so highly when it comes to such she feels she was deserving of more. On the other hand, her husband, Monsieur Loisel, was unaffected by their poverty, and attempts to console his weepy wife with a hard earned invitation to a grand party. Upon seeing this Madame Loisel dismisses the kind actions of her husband and only grows more upset, claiming, “there’s nothing so humiliating as looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women”(de Maupassant). The lady was obviously obsessed with appearances, having almost turned down an opportunity not often offered to someone of her social standard just because she was so concerned with how she was going to be perceived by people. We begin to understand the vanity of Madame Loisel and inner conflict seeded in a desire for …show more content…
The replacement cost them thirty-six thousand francs of life savings and loans, which meant a lifestyle change that was quite a contrast to the one Madame Loisel had dreamed for herself. After ten years of grueling work, the debt was paid off and she was a different person, “Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households”(de Maupassant). The irony of the story truly begins to show through here, as Madame Loisel ends up as the near opposite of what she originally wished, as well as losing all that she originally had. She believed that even though she wasn’t the richest her delicate beauty still made her important, and now she lost whatever riches she had, as well as her beauty. Yet the true irony shines in Madame Forestier’s words when discussing the necklace lost years before, “It was worth at the very most five hundred francs”(de Maupassant). The seemingly costly diamond necklace that had made Madame Loisel feel so worthy, was actually barely worth anything, even though it cost her everything she had. She had changed from a lower middle class status, to an upper class, to an even lower class all within a few years, getting everything she ever asked for and paying for it with all that she
Everyone has heard the saying “be careful what you wish for” at one point or another, a warning to young children about being grateful for what you already have. Guy de Maupassant supports this idea in his short story The Necklace. The story opens to a young, beautiful Madame Mathilde Loisel in her shabby and worn Paris apartment in 1884, a time when class separated people and she wanted nothing more than to be of one higher than the lower-middle placement she was born into. In the short story The Necklace, Madame Loisel struggles to achieve a taste of the upper class status she felt she deserved only to end up worse off than she began. This use of irony and the characterization of Madame Loisel illustrates de Maupassant’s …show more content…
We understand that women which lack in beauty and charm can make up for it with status and such vice versa, and so we come to the conclusion that Madame Loisel was at the same level of a woman of high class with because of her natural elegance. As a result of her weighing so much importance on appearances and thinking of herself so highly when it comes to such she feels she was deserving of more. On the other hand, her husband, Monsieur Loisel, was unaffected by their poverty, and attempts to console his weepy wife with a hard earned invitation to a grand party. Upon seeing this Madame Loisel dismisses the kind actions of her husband and only grows more upset, claiming, “there’s nothing so humiliating as looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women”(de Maupassant). The lady was obviously obsessed with appearances, having almost turned down an opportunity not often offered to someone of her social standard just because she was so concerned with how she was going to be perceived by people. We begin to understand the vanity of Madame Loisel and inner conflict seeded in a desire for …show more content…
The replacement cost them thirty-six thousand francs of life savings and loans, which meant a lifestyle change that was quite a contrast to the one Madame Loisel had dreamed for herself. After ten years of grueling work, the debt was paid off and she was a different person, “Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households”(de Maupassant). The irony of the story truly begins to show through here, as Madame Loisel ends up as the near opposite of what she originally wished, as well as losing all that she originally had. She believed that even though she wasn’t the richest her delicate beauty still made her important, and now she lost whatever riches she had, as well as her beauty. Yet the true irony shines in Madame Forestier’s words when discussing the necklace lost years before, “It was worth at the very most five hundred francs”(de Maupassant). The seemingly costly diamond necklace that had made Madame Loisel feel so worthy, was actually barely worth anything, even though it cost her everything she had. She had changed from a lower middle class status, to an upper class, to an even lower class all within a few years, getting everything she ever asked for and paying for it with all that she