The conflict of the short story "The Gift of the Magi" is an external conflict in which Della wants to get Jim a gift that would perfectly match him and his watch and vise versa, but Della had to sell her most prized possession to afford the gift, her long beautiful hair. The hair that would make the queen of the poverty stricken town jealous. The time frame and setting in which both Della and Jim live in, is a town riddled with poverty along with the poor citizens, including Della and Jim. "A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had the word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad" (Henry 3). Besides the poverty, most of the citizens with low amounts of incomes, "Now, when the income
