Essay Draft Three

Jason Wu
June 5, 2007
Draft Three

A Curse or a Blessing

In late nineteenth-century Paris, there was strict hierarchy in the social classes of the French society. In The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, Mathilde Louisel loses the diamond necklace she borrowed from her friend at the night of the ball. She, together with her husband, spends the following ten years of misery paying off the debt, only to find out the necklace was a paste. A curse it may seem at first, the diamond necklace, is nevertheless a blessing for Mathilde’s life.

The loss of the diamond necklace has changed Mathilde’s life dramatically in several ways, the most obvious one of which is probably the physical changes. For a woman, losing youth and beauty is normally not something to feel happy about, but in this special case of Mathilde Louisel, it is. At the beginning of the story, Mathilde is presented as a “pretty and charming” girl (38). However, the beauty is just the main source of the mismatch of her life. She is “as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks” (38). She marries a little clerk, whose social status is far from a match of her beauty. She has no dresses and jewels to put on, but “she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station” (38). Mathilde suffers, because her beauty, grace, charm, all the sole hierarchy with a woman, is undermined under her current life and she thinks she deserves better. Ten year later, her youth, her beauty, her elegance, and her grace have all slipped away from her fingers. She looks old now, strong and hard and rough, with frowsy hair skirts askew, and red hands (43-44). She is no longer the woman of a “high rank” as she used to be, and now her physical appearance matches her social status – one of the sources of her suffering is gone.

Together gone with Mathilde’s beauty is her strong vanity, another underlying cause of her unhappy life. Even though she is married with a little clerk and lives a lower-middle class life, she has never stopped dreaming about “all the delicacies and all the luxuries” (38). She loves dresses and jewels, compliments and envies from other women, all those things that tickle her vanity, but she cannot have it. She suffers. Another woman of her rank will never even have been conscious of the things that tortures Mathilde: the poverty of her dwelling, the wretched look of the walls, the worn-out chairs, and the ugliness of the curtains (38). It is her vanity that makes her treat her current life and status with contempt and it is her vanity that brings her suffering. But it is gone. It is gone with the diamond necklace. It is gone with her beauty. It is gone with her sufferings.

Besides both the physical and mental changes that have undergone on Mathilde, her living environment has also been different, and under a “worse” environment, she actually lives a “better” life. At the start, her life is materially comfortable, thought not yet luxurious: she stays all day long at home, with no need to work for a living; she doesn’t have to worry about paying for food, clothing, housing; she even has a Breton peasant do all the humble housework for her (39). Under such a comfortable environment, Mathilde is still not happy. Her life is so comfortable and so free that she daydreams all day long, and she has lost her own role in the real life. Imaginary luxuries have fully occupied her life. Then all of a sudden, the thirty-four thousand franc debt took all the comfort away from Mathilde. “They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof” (43). However, the burden is also a wake-up call for Mathilde, to let her know “the horrible existence of the needy” (43). What is her reaction? “She took her part…with heroism” (43). She has finally found her true role in the real life and she has to pay for her own fault. When at the end they have paid everything, Mathilde is released. Now, she is promoted from an in-debt status to a normal life, in contrast with her former falling from the upper station. Thus, even though her living environment may have become worse, her mind is happier than ever.

Finally, after experiencing all these ten years of misery, Mathilde’s attitude towards social hierarchy has altered, which shows that she can comfortably live her current life now. Before the night of the ball, Mathilde envied the rich and downgraded the poor including her own class of people. She did not like to visit her rich friend because she suffered from their discrepancy of social classes. She thought “There’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich” (40). At the ball party, she refused to put on the modest wraps of common life, whose poverty contrasted with the elegance of the ball dress (41). All those evidences prove Mathilde’s shameful feeling of her own social hierarchy and how could she be happy this way? But now, after all these ten years of misery, Mathilde had nothing to lose any more. She dresses like a woman of the people going to public places such as the fruiter, the grocer, the butcher. To look poor no longer humiliates Mathilde, and she manages to accept her role among the social classes. At the end of the story when she runs into her rich friend Mme. Forestier who are still young, still beautiful, still charming, she goes to speak to her, to tell her all about it, with no hesitation. By doing so, Mathilde is conveying a message that she has survived the trick that life plays on her and being at the bottom of social hierarchy cannot hold her from living a happy life.

Throughout the story, we see how the night of the ball has changed Mathilde’s life in ways including her physical appearances, her thoughts of strong vanity, her comfortable living conditions and her attitude towards social hierarchy. Even though at the first glance all these changes might worsen her life quality, under a close scrutiny it turns out to be a blessing for her. The facts in the story declare so. Maupassant has commented in the story: “How life is strange and changeful! How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!” (44). What a trick life is! There are times curses can be blessings and there are times blessings can be curses. This is life. It not only happens on Mathilde but also can happen on every one of us. What can we do? Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and let God do the rest.

Work Cited

Guy de Maupassant. “The Necklace.” 1884. Rpt. in The International Story: An Anthology with Guidelines for Reading and Writing about Fiction. Ruth Spack. New York: St. Martin’s 1994. 38-44.

30.5.07 17:46