Theme Of The Necklace

Borrowing objects and items from people is a very common occurrence in everyone’s life. From shoes to kitchenware, most people will admit to borrowing something from someone. Every once in awhile though, commandeering other people’s items temporarily can lead to the worst case scenario happening. In “The Necklace,” by Guy de Maupassant, a bored housewife named Mathilde gets the opportunity to live her dream of being an upper class socialite through her husband’s work. After begging for an incredibly expensive dress and other accessories for the evening, she decides that she needs an equally costly necklace to complete her outfit. Luckily, her neighbor lets her borrow an extravagant necklace with huge jewels on it. After the party is said and

Through simple observation of Mathilde’s actions and choices, there is an underlying theme of obsession and the want to impress those who are more well off than others. Mathilde dreams of lavish parties and begs to be taken out by her husband when he can because she believes that she deserves a spot in the elite social groups. Once she captures her night to be noticed, she does more than ensure that she looks and feels exactly how she wants to on that night. Everything she does, from forcing her husband to buy her an entire outfit to putting herself in crippling debt so she doesn't upset her neighbor, all happen because of her obsession with making everything perfect. Even when she is in times of turmoil, such as putting herself in debt to replace the costume jewelry, she still recalls the one evening of living extravagantly and being different from her normal life. Mathilde would have much rather replaced an expensive piece of jewelry than admit that the necklace was unfortunately lost, which shows that she has pride in her appearance and personality to the public. Mathilde's pride and obsession with being perfect was what ultimately caused her to be anything but because it consumed all of her time and energy, just like her obsession with her how her persona to the public is

We both became more comfortable with concealing the truth and hiding what actually happened to save ourselves instead of revealing what really happened. I resonated with Mathilde’s want to have everything work out for her in the end, and would have rather lied about breaking my Mom’s glass originally. Thankfully, I now am way more honest when I accidentally mess up and break something, but I will always remember to never take the route of guilt and shame while trying to fix an almost unfixable problem, just like Mathilde decided to do with her neighbor’s necklace. While Mathilde and I had very different objects and outcomes of our stories, we both learned that honesty and admitting to mistakes may sometimes cause the most positive