Guy de Maupassant's story The Necklace

Mathilde Loisel is an attractive woman who does not have any of the "good things" in life she believes that she should have. She feels cheated by life. She is not happy living a plain life, and believes that she would be happy if only she could live her life as a fancy woman. The story is about the chance that she gets to do so, although she lives that fancy life only for a single day, and it costs her and her husband dearly.

Mathilde is from "a family of clerks" and she "had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded by any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to a little clerk at the Ministry of Public Instruction" (1131). In other words, she does not love her husband, but marries him only because she believes she can do no better than him.

Maupassant stresses the fact that Mathilde believes her "proper station" should have been much higher in life. Instead, she is a "woman of the people." She thinks that she belongs among "the very greatest ladies" and if only she had the external, material signs of success and class, she would be happy and would be where she belongs.

Mathilde is not a woman who once in a while wishes that she had more in life. To the contrary, she

suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the l

t what she is saying to him, because he is paying most of his attention to watching her every move, as before: While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. . . . She held one of the spikes [of the railing], bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease (790). He looks at her as if she were a religious painting, perhaps a painting of the Madonna. In any case, he does not look at her or think about her as if she were a real flesh-and-blood female standing next to him and talking to him. He must have said that he was going to go, because she says to him, "It's well for you" (790). Then he says he will get something from the bazaar for her if he goes. Having said that, the bazaar Araby is all he can think about from that point on, until the actual night of the bazaar. Earlier in the story, thinking about the girl as he went through the marketplace, he "imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes" (790). This means that he sees his lo