Mathilde Loisel is a beautiful and charming woman who is married to a poor clerk. She is very proud of her beauty and always thinks of herself as one who should be showered with luxurious and materialistic things. She always daydreams of fancy dresses and jewels, and imagines herself being envied by others. Her pride makes her oblivious to what she does have; a husband who is truly devoted to her. Later in the story she loses her beauty and is not recognized by her friend, Mrs. Forestier because she has been working hard all these years to pay for the necklace.
Sometimes lying and not telling the truth will get you in worse situations. In this story, Madame Loisel, the wife, is going to a party and wants to look like someone that she’s not. Madame Loisel borrows a diamond necklace from her rich friend. While on the way home she loses the necklace and doesn’t tell her friend. Instead she hides that she lost it and bought a new diamond necklace.
After the ball, she couldn’t find the necklace and because of her dignity, she couldn’t bring herself to tell her friend. She ends up buying an identical necklace, which she cannot afford without debt. This causes the Loisel couple to experience the hardship of low-class life. In the end, it is revealed that the necklace is a fake. Mathilde Loisel, instead of being satisfied with her own pleasures of simple life yearns for the luxuries of the wealthy therefore leading her to a miserable life.
In contrast, a couple who is dating would be seated next to each other engaged in a lengthy, spirited conversation. This sets the somber tone in that if their relationship had been different, then the story may have had an alternative ending. The description of the birthday cake uses powerful language, because Brush has a deeper meaning behind the cake. In the 1940s, going out to eat and having a public birthday celebration was reserved for the most monumental Occasion. The cake that the wife bestowed upon him was small and glossy, but had a compelling meaning behind the wife’s loving gesture to the husband.
However, both fathers want their daughters to be married for the sake of love, so both men, have to win the love of their daughters. Both authors create humour by spreading false information about characters, right before the induction. In She Stoops to Conquer, both Marlow and Kate are given information on each other. Kate is informed about Marlow’s generousity “ generous..young and brave… very handsome bashful and reserves “ While the latter throw her off, the whole thing sort of makes her happy. Marlow on the other hand is rather pleased with what he has been hearing about Kate “ well-bred and beautiful”.
It represents her social class. However, since she becomes greedy, it leads to her doom. She borrows the necklace from Madame Forestier for a party, but when she gets home she misplaces the necklace and is forced to borrow a great amount of cash to buy a replacement. The necklace in this story can be deceiving. Throughout the story, all the characters think that necklace is attested, however Madame Forestier reveals at the end of the story that it is actually an imitation.
Charles’s had been saving to buy himself a rifle, but he instead gave the money to his wife to please her. Mathilde was now able to go out and buy a beautiful dress just for the occasion, but once she find the perfect dress she is still unhappy. She now realizes she does not have any fancy jewels to go with her new dress, and they certainly do not have the money for her to go out and buy some. Her husband shows her his selfless manor but even after spending all of their savings she is still not happy, which shows how hard she is to please. Charles suggests borrowing some from a close friend, after some
The short stories “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, “A Doll's House” by Henrik Ibsen, and “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, are some examples that support Mannes observation of men and women. “The Necklace” tells us a story about a women who always imagined herself being in a high social position, but ultimately ended up being in a situation totally opposite of what she had dreamed of. Mathilde married a low income clerk who worked in the ministry of public instruction. Mathilde's husband, Monsieur, brought home an invitation from his job inviting him and his wife to a ball, but when Mathilde read it her reaction was far from what Monsieur thought it would be. Mathilde broke down and started crying, telling her husband the reason shes crying is because she only has no dress to wear to this ball.
The protagonist, Madame Loisel is a, ‘pretty and charming girl,’ we are told who, ‘as she has no dowry or inheritance marries a junior clerk in the Ministry of Public Instruction.’ The story is based around her and the fact that she feels she has married beneath herself, something many people (women especially) of this time would have sympathised with and understood. Mathilde Loisel’s husband manages to get her an invitation to an exclusive ball and she get a new dress and borrows a diamond necklace for the occasion. After having a wonderful evening at the ball Mathilde returns home to find that at some point during the evening she has lost the necklace and it cannot be found anywhere. Mathilde and Loisel then spend the rest of their lives trying to repay the debt they accumulated while trying to replace the necklace. Ironically the necklace was a fake and all their hard work was for nothing.
Guy De Maupassant proved in many of his stories that he thought, “Men were scum, women saints, and if a woman cheated on her man it was only because he was weak and worthless and unable to give her the love and support a woman needs” (Bernardo.) After getting invitations to the party, Mathilde believes they aren’t rich enough to even attend the party. So, her husband uses the money he’s saved up to buy a gun he had wanted for the longest time to buy her a new dress for the party and she still wasn’t satisfied. Her need for some kind of flashy jewelry was necessary to even go because according to her, “there’s nothing more humiliating as looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women.” (Maupassant 2) Mathilde ended up going to her wealthy friend’s house to borrow something and of course, she took the diamond necklace. Having her new dress and new necklace, it made her look like the belle of the ball, and she acted like at it as well when, “She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything, in triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a cloud of happiness made up of completeness of a victory so dear to her feminine heart” (Maupassant 3).