1 Outline THESIS: Mathilde wants to live a "fairy tale": fancy balls, distinguished rich men, gorgeous dresses, and elaborate mansions. Because her life is pretty much the opposite of this, she is in constant depression. Mathilde feels that because she is depressed, she has the right to mistreat other people, especially her kind-hearted husband. It is simply fate's delivery of retribution when Mathilde loses the necklace and is forced to work for the rest of her life to return it. I. Mathilde's idea of an ideal life is a fairy tale. a. Mathilde wishes for a bigger, better house and for more expensive, lavish clothing. II. Mathilde is ungrateful and inconsiderate. a. When her husband snags her an invitation to a fancy ball, Mathilde just mutters "What do you want me to do with this?" b. Mathilde insists that she will not go the ball without a new dress for 400 francs. c. Even after Mathilde buys an expensive dress, she is still upset because she doesn't have any jewelry. d. After Mme. Forestier is kind enough to let Mathilde borrow some of her jewelry, Mathilde ungratefully considers Mme. Forestier's jewelry to be unfit for the ball, and repeatedly comments "Haven't you anything else?" III. Even when Mathilde loses the necklace and guilt rests on her, her disposition doesn t change. a. Mathilde doesn t show any gratefulness to her husband for his willingness to help replace Mme. Forestier's necklace. b. Mathilde acts as if she is a martyr during her years of work, but her husband is truly the martyr because he works even harder than Mathilde. IV. Mathilde deserves the shock she receives when she meets with Mme. Forestier after years of work. a. Even though it wasn't necessary for Mathilde to work all those years, she deserved it because of the way she mistreated people. The incident humbled her at least a little.
2 Olivia Writing Mrs. Lisa Williams January 27, 2014 Mathilde Loisel: A Main Character with a Mean Character What s the best way to lose a friend and ten years of your life? Probably losing a nearly $40,000 necklace belonging to your friend and having to work ten years to pay the debt for replacing the necklace. How would I know this? Because of the short story The Necklace and its selfish main character, Mathilde Loisel. Mathilde Loisel is a generally unpleasant and selfish woman, but she receives retribution for her unkind ways just as all discourteous people eventually receive retribution. You might wonder why I m hating on Mathilde. When the story starts off, it paints Mathilde as this deeply depressed, lamentable woman. Why is she depressed? She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. (2) Basically, Mathilde thinks she deserves the life that the elite of France live. She wants a mansion furnished with rare paintings and fixtures. She wants fancy silks and exceptional jewels. She wants invitations to exclusive balls and requests to elaborate dinners. She wants high-class friends and wealthy secret admirers. Mathilde has none of this. She s married to an unpretentious clerk and lives in a rundown, raggedy house. She has simply one servant and all of her dresses are, at best, sensible. Each night she s usually eating some type of sorry soup. Mathilde s circumstances depress her so much that she just lies around the house, crying and daydreaming. But Mathilde doesn t fully deserve to be pitied. Her husband is well-meaning and altruistic, and he really attempts to cheer up Mathilde. But Mathilde just blows him off and continues sulking. Also, Mathilde does have one wealthy friend (Mme. Forestier, who we ll learn more about later), but Mathilde is so envious of Mme. Forestier that she avoids visits with that particular friend. So there s already two things that prove Mathilde is not entirely the victim of a cruel, unfair life. The rest of the story doesn t really make Mathilde look like any better of a person. When Mr. Loisel, Mathilde s husband, brings home an invitation to an exclusive ball, you d think Mathilde would be ecstatic. I mean, this is what Mathilde wastes her days dreaming about, right? She finally has a tangible invitation to an actual exclusive party! Complete with expensive silks and wealthy men and high-class
3 women and dancing and petty chit-chat. But does Mathilde think of any of this? Nope. Her mind darts past the kind gesture of her husband and directly to the fact that she doesn t have a fancy enough dress for the ball. So Mathilde skips the gracious thank you and bawls I haven't a dress and so I can't go to this party. Give your invitation to some friend of yours whose wife will be turned out better than I shall. (6) Obviously, Mr. Loisel s kind little heart is broken. So he allows Mathilde to buy a new dress for four hundred francs, which is a lot of money for people in the financial situation that the Loisels were in. So here is, once again, proof of Mathilde s selfish, inconsiderate, and ungrateful nature. Even after Mathilde bought this expensive dress, she was still distressed. When her concerned husband asked what was wrong, Mathilde replied I'm utterly miserable at not having any jewels, not a single stone, to wear I would almost rather not go to the party." (8) Here, once again, is an example of Mathilde s ungrateful spirit. Instead of being thankful for her invitation to a prestigious party and her expensive new dress, she was whining about not owning jewelry. Although Mathilde s husband tried to be helpful and suggest that she wear flowers, Mathilde was still distraught. So then Mr. Loisel proposed that Mathilde ask one of her wealthy friends if she could borrow some of their jewelry. And that s where Mme. Forestier comes in. You see, even though she was totally envious of Mme. Forestier, Mathilde still had the impudence to ask Mme. Forestier for a piece of her jewelry. Of course, being a kind and generous woman (or at least she appeared this way), Mme. Forestier allowed Mathilde to pick a piece of jewelry to wear. But instead of being grateful to Mme. Forestier for allowing her to borrow expensive jewelry, Mathilde looked down her nose at Mme. Forestier collection and repeatedly muttered Haven t you anything else? (10) As if Mathilde could talk! She didn t own any jewelry whatsoever, and then she had the nerve to criticize Mme. Forestier s jewelry. This is just more proof of Mathilde s unkind disposition. But, finally, Mathilde found a piece of jewelry that she found suitable: a necklace. Mathilde did thank her friend this time, but she had been inconsiderate by insulting Mme. Forestier s collection of jewelry. So Mme. and Mr. Loisel went off to the ball. In turned out that all the fuss Mathilde made about the ball paid off: She was the prettiest woman present All the men stared at her, inquired her name, and asked to be introduced to her. (11) Mathilde enjoyed herself so much that she was at the ball until four a.m. When Mathilde finally left, she was still basking in the glory of the night. She was so swept away that she didn t notice until she got home: her neck was bare! The necklace was gone! When Mathilde told Mr. Loisel, he went right back out the house to look for the necklace. Now, think about this for a minute: the guy had been at a party until early morning. He had watched other, wealthier men dance with his wife all night. When he got home, he needed some rest. He was half undressed before
4 Mathilde told him about the missing necklace. And what did Mr. Loisel do? He selflessly dressed again and went right back into the cold night (or actually early morning), walking up and down every street that they had driven past, looking for that gaudy necklace. What a noble, benevolent person! And, as you ve probably predicted by now, Mathilde showed no gratitude to her gracious husband. She just curled up in a chair and mourned for hours. Can t blame her though uselessly crying and staring off into space was something that Mathilde was familiar with. Do I really have to say the same thing I ve been saying for the past three paragraphs? Or is Mathilde s personality clear enough to you at this point? Since the Loisels couldn t locate the necklace, they resolved to buy a new one. Mr. Loisel borrowed money to pay for the necklace, and for the next ten years, the Loisels worked to pay off their debts. Mathilde changed during those ten years: She had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, [and] her hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice, and the water slopped all over the floor when she scrubbed it. (14) But two things did not change about Mathilde. One was her longing for the glamorous life. She wondered what might ve happened if she hadn t lost the necklace and had to resort to work for the rest of her life. Would she have been invited to more exclusive parties? Would she have gained more wealthy admirers? Mathilde had no way of knowing, but she continually asked herself What if? The second thing that did not change about Mathilde was her indifference to her husband and the work he did, all for her. Mathilde viewed herself as a martyr, because of the work she did 24/7. But Mr. Loisel worked even harder, and without complaint. To be honest, Mr. Loisel was in danger of working himself to death. And it was all for a petty necklace. But did Mathilde show any gratitude to Mr. Loisel? Of course not. I don t really think I can give you any proof of Mathilde s character. Because I found Mathilde s personality distasteful, the ironic ending to this short story was refreshing to me. When Mathilde learned that Mme. Forestier s necklace was a fake and was only worth about 500 francs, I had to laugh out loud. But I don t think Mathilde s 10 years of hard labor were in vain. Mathilde most likely would ve spent the rest of her life idly curled up in a chair by the window if she hadn t had to work for Mme. Forestier s necklace. I think the manual labor made Mathilde a somewhat tougher, more practical woman. Even though Mathilde was unhappy during those years, at least she could release her unhappiness by working hard. Still, I think Mathilde deserved those years of work, even though Mr. Loisel didn t.
5 So what was my point throughout this paper? Well, it wasn t simply that Mathilde deserved her punishment for losing her friend s necklace. My point was that people with selfish, unkind hearts end up paying for their attitude at some time or another. In Mathilde s case, she paid through hard work. And even though her heart didn t completely change, she still got what she deserved. This will happen to all unloving people at some point whether on earth or somewhere else
6 Works Cited Shmoop Editorial Team. "Mathilde Loisel in The Necklace." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 6 Jan. 2014. SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on The Necklace. SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 25 Dec. 2013. Please Reply to: theheavenlynews@gmail.com