The main characters in The Necklace, Eveline and The Hand are all female. Each of these stories details the life of a woman who is discontent. Mathilde Loisel, Eveline, and the newlywed bride in The Hand are all unhappy women due to their surroundings and/or family life. All of these short stories use symbolism to convey the despair of the heroines.
Mathilde Loisel is very dissatisfied with her life. She has married herself off to a “little clerk” and believes she is entitled to enjoy the luxuries of the “highest lady” in the land (32). Despite her simple but loving husband, Mathilde is very depressed over her poor condition in life. We see that de Maupassant uses many symbols to convey her abject sense of despair over her meager surroundings. She suffers due to the “mean walls”, “worn chairs” and “ugly curtains” of her poor house, but these images are meant to symbolize her utter despair over being poor. This despair that will cost her dearly when she and her husband have to work their entire lives to replace a borrowed necklace she loses so she could feel rich.
In Eveline, Eveline is a woman who is excited about the prospects of escaping her abusive and oppressive home life. There are many symbols that symbolize this yearning for escape in the story. One of them is Eveline’s intended husband, a man who symbolizes everything she has never known and would like to know. Another symbol is her father. Eveline’s father symbolizes a life of entrapment and thankless domestic servitude much like the life her mother knew. Together these two powerful symbols take hold of Eveline and motivate her to plan to leave in secret with her lover, “In her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. She would not be treated as her mother had been” (2). However, as much as her boyfriend symbolizes escape, Eveline views her home as a symbol of
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