Today's post will be devoted to
some peculiarities of the plot.
This
story is not about jewelry, though judging by the title it should be. It is a
story about a woman with real feelings and problems, about greed, wealth and
suffering. There are several characters
in the story. Firstly we meet Mathilde Loisel, the main character, a middle-class girl who dreams not about the
prince like every girl( she married a little clerk M. Loisel), but about
wealth: “SHE WAS ONE OF THOSE PRETTY AND CHARMING GIRLS BORN, as though fate
had blundered over her, into a family of artisans. She had no marriage portion,
no expectations, no means of getting known, understood, loved, and wedded by a
man of wealth and distinction; and she let herself be married off to a little
clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her tastes were simple because she had
never been able to afford any other, but she was as unhappy as though she had
married beneath her…” So, one day her husband got an invitation to a ball organized
by his boss, the Minister of Education. Instead of being delighted the wife “…flung
the invitation petulantly across the table” because she had nothing to wear. M.
Loisel offered to buy his wife a dress and she agreed. The problem was she had
no jewelry to wear.
Here we got acquainted with another
minor character Madame Forestier. Mathilde asks for some jewelry and borrowed a
diamond necklace: “Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin case, a superb
diamond necklace; her heart began to beat covetousIy. Her hands trembled as she
lifted it.”
So the day of the ball came and it was maybe the best day of Mathilde’s life. “Madame Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling, and quite above herself with happiness. All the men stared at her, inquired her name, and asked to be introduced to her…She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything, in the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a cloud of happiness made up of this universal homage and admiration, of the desires she had aroused, of the completeness of a victory so dear to her feminine heart.” They left about four o’clock in the morning, took a cab and went home, where Mathilde discovered her loss. M. Loisel spent days and nights looking for the necklace but in vain. Together they decided to buy the same necklace; they lost everything they had – youth, money, comfortable lifestyle and I suppose the desire to live.
After 10 years Mathilde decided to tell the story of her troubles and poverty to Madame Forestier and only then found out that the necklace was a fake, it was “ an imitation worth at the very most five hundred franks.”
There are several themes the story is devoted to. The first one is wealth. Madame Loisel during all her life was obsessed with it. She was suffering from the days in poverty which were almost alike and was dreaming about delicacy and luxury: “She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains…She imagined silent antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by torches in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in large arm-chairs, overcome by the heavy warmth of the stove.”
The next problem which is presented in the story is suffering. At the beginning of the story we can see Mathilde suffering from poverty and desire to live in luxury: “She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs» Then after night of success she was suffering during 10 years when she lost her necklace. I can say that it wasn’t Fate or her husband to blame for her unhappiness, I’m sure it was her own fault. If she hadn’t been so egoistic and had listened to her husband, nothing like would have happened.
So the day of the ball came and it was maybe the best day of Mathilde’s life. “Madame Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling, and quite above herself with happiness. All the men stared at her, inquired her name, and asked to be introduced to her…She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything, in the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a cloud of happiness made up of this universal homage and admiration, of the desires she had aroused, of the completeness of a victory so dear to her feminine heart.” They left about four o’clock in the morning, took a cab and went home, where Mathilde discovered her loss. M. Loisel spent days and nights looking for the necklace but in vain. Together they decided to buy the same necklace; they lost everything they had – youth, money, comfortable lifestyle and I suppose the desire to live.
After 10 years Mathilde decided to tell the story of her troubles and poverty to Madame Forestier and only then found out that the necklace was a fake, it was “ an imitation worth at the very most five hundred franks.”
There are several themes the story is devoted to. The first one is wealth. Madame Loisel during all her life was obsessed with it. She was suffering from the days in poverty which were almost alike and was dreaming about delicacy and luxury: “She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains…She imagined silent antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by torches in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in large arm-chairs, overcome by the heavy warmth of the stove.”
The next problem which is presented in the story is suffering. At the beginning of the story we can see Mathilde suffering from poverty and desire to live in luxury: “She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs» Then after night of success she was suffering during 10 years when she lost her necklace. I can say that it wasn’t Fate or her husband to blame for her unhappiness, I’m sure it was her own fault. If she hadn’t been so egoistic and had listened to her husband, nothing like would have happened.
