The Necklace - the Price of a Dream

The price of a dream

        Everybody has a dream of a better life. This is what motivates us through life. It gives us a goal, and takes as lot of our resources to try to figure out how to reach it. However, for Mathilde Loisel, in the story “The Necklace,” things are more complicated than that because of the times she lives in. Maybe this is why she accepts to pay any price for the fulfillment of her dream.

The way that she is feeling and thinking, and how this fits, or rather doesn’t fit the times she is living in is so important for setting up the scene that the author, Guy de Maupassant spends six paragraphs, all the introductory part of his story talking about it. In order to have a clear image of the story, to better understand the way characters acts, is  very important for readers to understand the time that the story takes place, the nineteenth century, a time when the society was imposing on women to depend on men pretty much on everything. We should always remember that, at the time, when it came to marriage, the barrier between the social classes was rarely crossed.

Mathilde is dreaming of a life of richness knowing that she will never have a chance to reach it. Her place in society is stated by birth, her parents are employees, and she actually surpasses her social status by marrying a clerk. Still, she is not happy with it. She refuses to accept her condition, and strongly believes that “women have no caste or class, their beauty, grace, and charm serving them for birth or family. Their natural delicacy, their instinctive elegance, their nimbleness or wit, are their only mark of rank, and put the slum girl on a level with the highest lady in the land” (Maupassant 1). And in order to emphasize this idea, the author will underline the power of her feelings using strong words. Hence, Mathilde is not only unhappy, she “suffers endlessly,” she is “tortured,” she is “indignant” (1).

It is made clear from the beginning though that she was the only child in family and she was “pretty and charming,” which guides us to the conclusion that she was probably a spoiled child. We can make this statement with no fear of mistake; after all, even though we don’t know much about the parents, we know they managed, and it sure wasn’t easy, to marry her above their social class. Seeing Mathilde in the light of these circumstances, one cannot believe that she is greedier than any of us. She is the product of her environment, probably just too much of a dreamer. She dreams so much that she encounters difficulties accepting reality, and she needs the touch of imagination to embellish it.

At the end of the first six paragraphs, we will feel like we know Mathilde for a long time even though we don’t know much about her. We don’t know where she lives, or how old she is; we don’t know if she is short or tall, blonde or brunette, but we are the only ones who know her dream, and the sharing this secret is building a bond between Mathilde and the reader.

With this bond built, Maupassant will take us to another level of the story. He starts using short sentences that are raising the emotional level and the speed of the succession of the events.  We will suddenly live the imaginary world of Mathilde’s fantasies; Maupassant masters the passage from fantasy to reality, with just one word, “But”, “But one evening her husband came with a proud air” (2). Her husband brings an invitation to a party where “all the official world” will be present. She has a chance to live her dream for one night, and she knows that probably this is the only chance she has to fulfill her dream. It’s like we are seeing Cinderella’s real life with the big ball where she will meet Prince Charming but without the fairy godmother to prepare her for it. So, she has to take the initiative and prepare herself. She will get the money she needs from her husband, but she has to carefully think and choose the sum that “she might ask without meeting an immediate refusal” (2) She gets her dress, and she will borrow a precious necklace to fit her dress. She spends a lot of effort and resources for building her image, because “there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among a lot of rich women” (3). She has her dream night, and everything is perfect.