Karla Salazar
September 28, 2013
ENG M01B
The Necklace: An Analysis On Vanity
In the short story “The Necklace”, by Guy de Maupassant, the protagonist, Mme. is also the antagonist. Loisel is obsessed with vanity, so much so, that this causes her to be her own worst enemy. The struggle the story represents is her vs. herself. The question the author leaves the audience with happens to be the climax of the story. Mme. Loisel realizes the necklace she borrows was worth much less than she believed after borrowing “thirty-six thousand fancies”. She worked laborious jobs, lived a humble life, and after several years paid everything back. The evidence in the text suggests that Mme. Loisel realizes that materialist objects are not as important as she originally thought. Once she was trying to be vain about herself because the way she sees other woman around her and she thinks it’s worth it to be vain than to look normal. She is very obsessed about appearances rather than personality. Mme. Loisel wanted to become wealthy and beautiful with the presence of jewelry and fashionable dresses to wear in order to grab other people attention. She does this she can feel like she’s glamorous, but she always complains that she wanted to have expensive dresses and necklace to wear, but her husband only bought her a dress and she whined about not having it. In the beginning of the story she didn’t realize how can those items can be worthless. Perhaps she was obsessive over these pricey obsessions because of her own internal vision of herself. She wanted to look like the other women attending the party. She went to lask her friend if she had some jewelry to borrow because she knows that her friend has some because she’s rich. If Mme. Loisel knew how hard she would need to work in order to look like she was rich, she may have realized it’s not worth it. It wasn’t until she actually had to work for the fine jewels she wants to wear, that she realizes the cost to look pretty by her standards are extremely unrealistic. Her behavior reminds me of a small child who wants a puppy, but doesn’t know how much energy, time, and responsibility are required to take care of it. She loses the necklace and realizes she has one of two options. Tell her friend she lost it or replace it with another one that looks the same. She chooses the latter, and learns a valuable lesson. She can’t afford any expensive jewelry and now she has to look for various laborious jobs to pay for the necklace. “Mme. Loisel learned the horrible life of the needy” (pg.5). Now she needs to be responsible for necklace. Since she realizes that she lent her the necklace and now she had to give back the same exact necklace to her friend. Mme. Loisel was worried that her friend was going to find out in the event she notices something about her necklace. Now, she realizes the necklace was worth more than her vanity because she didn’t know that materials can have worth. She had to work for the necklace’s payment because it was extremely expensive, just like a black and orange Range Rover car and it cost about thirty-six thousand fancies. From now on she has to start working in laborious job to pay off the necklace’s price. She has been working every single day in the morning, as well as night. She started to move in and old, dilapidated room and she had to live with another stranger in the house because she can’t afford to pay for house or apartment. She had to wear a commoner’s clothes to work and she had no time to travel or put beautiful dresses on or wear any kind of fancy jewelry that would meet her vain standards. She was very busy, being a hard worker for several years and she said,” What would have happen if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? She got to work as a housekeeper for several years and she can be embarrassed from people looking at her what have she has been doing and how she worked. They thought she was rich and she shouldn’t be working like this
