The Necklace Literary Analysis

Formulating an opinion out of a first impression is wrong, stopping to analyze things in depth can and will prove this. Della and Mathilde, respectively from the stories The Gift of the Magi and The Necklace, are, indeed, characters with very diverse characteristics overall. As someone proofreads the stories they seem to have quite different priorities and ways of achieving their goals. For such reason the tendency is to develop the idea that they are not alike at all. However, that's only a first impression. As the characters are analyzed in depth and compared to each other, similarities are made very clear. Even their personalities, that at first sight come across totally divergent, turn out to be similar somehow. Nevertheless, the biggest …show more content…
Della's conformity with her husband is justified by the fact that she cries for not being able to buy Jim a nice present and also by the resolution of the story, which reaffirms her love's capacity to get through any issues she and her husband might have as one. Mathilde, on the other hand feels superior to her husband, making their relationship unhealthy, as proven by "She was an unhappy woman, like any woman who has married someone she thinks is inferior to herself" (de Maupassant). Meanwhile, her greed is proven by "Mathilde suffered endlessly, feeling she deserved to enjoy every delicacy and expensive luxury" (de Maupassant) and by her mind trip to a world where she's rich and lives a luxurious life in the fourth paragraph of the text "The Necklace". The second clear difference between the characters is the way they deal with other people. Mathilde is cold in the way she uses others, especially her husband. She makes him sacrifice his wills in order to make her happy and fulfill her big desires. On the whole, she makes others sacrifice for her sake. This is made clear by the way she despises all the trouble her husband went through to get the invitation by just saying she won't go because she's got nothing to wear and also when she makes her husband sacrifice his savings for a gun in order to buy her a dress. Della, on the other hand, clearly puts her husband's interests above her own ones. As proof of that is the fact that, she sells her biggest good, her beautiful brown shinning curls, in order to be able to buy Jim a nice present. She values his happiness over hers. In contrast to Mathilde, she makes sacrifices for beloved ones' sake. The last big adversity between them is the way they deal