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The Necklace Essay

Decent Essays

Everybody wants to be liked and accepted. Appearances are often adopted to please other people especially yourself. These unreliable appearances prove to be the misleading front that masks the reality of situations. Eventually, the falsehood of them leads to negative results. This reality is made clear in Guy de Maupassant’s short storyThe Necklace”. Mathilde Loisel, the main character, longs to be a member of the “high society”. She has always dreamed of a life of leisure however life has found her to be married with a clerk who is not well off financially. When the Loisel’s are invited to a ball, Mathilde becomes very upset insisting that she has nothing appropriate to wear. Her husband bought her a new gown and she borrowed this beautiful …show more content…

She is presented as the pretty girls in a Renoir or Monet painting. Dressed simply, unable to afford anything better, marked her as poor. Like many woman represented during the post- impressionist time, she was a malcontent for she felt that she is intended and “born for every delicacy and luxury”. The belief that she is meant for better things than middle-class forms the core of her personality. Since that is beyond Mathilde’s social reach the only way to escape that status is through marriage. Yet she let herself be married off to a “little clerk in the Ministry of Education”. This developed more of the discontent in her current rank. Despite this, Monsieur Loisel is still tolerant of her behavior and wants to please her. Her excessive pride, materialism and shallowness cause her emotional torture to herself when she feels deprived of luxuries. He realizes this and thinks that presenting her an invitation to the ball will make her happy. To his surprise, he learned that she’ll only be contented if she can give the illusion at the ball that she belongs to the upper class. Society has taught her to desire possessions and as she constantly search for vain fulfillment, she fails to appreciate her social

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