Happiness And Depression In The Necklace

Everyone has a different way of how they would like their life to be. Some are okay with being rich; some are okay with being middle class, and some are okay with living life paycheck to paycheck. Some people think that life is about the little things that make them happy. In “The Necklace,” the author develops a character named Mathilde Loisel, who is painted out to be a beautiful, middle-class housewife who is married to a clerk because she has no connections to the outside world. She is unhappy with the lifestyle she is living and wishes she had the lifestyle of a rich woman of high class. She feels she deserves a much more expensive and materialistic life than what she has. After being invited to a party and receiving a nice dress that her husband bought for her, she goes out and borrows a beautiful necklace that makes her feel like the woman she longs to be from a rich friend that she ends up losing by the end of the night. Instead of telling her friend she lost the necklace, she lies and decides to work and replace the necklace with one that looks very similar to the one her friend had loaned her. After ten years, she learns that the necklace she worked so hard and gave up everything for was only worth five hundred francs. Although something so little can give you moments of happiness, it can also give you years of depression.

Throughout the story, the reader can see that Mathilde Loisel is a beautiful woman that is very proud of her beauty and always thinks of herself as one who should be showered with luxurious and materialistic things. As the story takes place in the 19th century, the woman used their wonderful looks to get around or get what they would desire in life. Mathilde always daydreams of fancy dresses and jewelry and imagines herself being envied by others as if she had those nice things. Her high pride makes her oblivious to what she does have; a husband who is truly devoted to her. As the story goes on we know that herself and her husband gets invited to a dinner from Mrs. George Ramponneau where she receives this beautiful dress for 400 francs from her husband, but instead of being happy she now is upset because she doesn’t have any jewelry and that she will look bland without any. Her husband suggests that she borrows some jewelry from her rich friend Mrs. Forrestier, which she did… The night of the party Mathilde Loisel was the center of attention. “She was prettier than anyone else, stylish, graceful, smiling, and wild with joy. All the men saw her, asked her name, sought to be introduced.” Everything she always dreamed of finally came to reality the night of the party and Mathilde Loisel felt great. Once the party ended and Loisel got home she realized that the necklace was gone, she does not confess to her friend that she lost it, but instead out of her own pride she lies. Ten years later after working so hard to repay the necklace she lost she runs into her friend at the park who doesn’t even recognize her. Here is where she decides to tell her longtime friend about what really happened to the necklace, simply out of the pride she has accomplished. So we can tell that from the beginning to the end of the story, Mathilde Loisel has changed tremendously because of something as small as a necklace. Something so little destroyed her life.

Mathilde’s life took a change for the worst after the loss of the necklace. Namely, because instead of swallowing her pride as mentioned, owning into this fact, and confess to her friend, she decides to take matters into her own hands which didn’t turn out great. She goes out of her way to replace the necklace and, as a result, went into complete financial ruin. She then came to know the life of poverty, and what it’s like to be a low-class woman. Knowing that the debt must be paid off, the servant they had was dismissed, they changed their flat; they took a garret under the roof. Not only did her life take a change for the worse, but so did her husband’s because he also worked to pay the necklace off as well. He went on to invest his inheritance and gave up all his belongings. Mathilde had to take jobs and work harder than she had ever done before. The hard work and sacrifice reflected in her face and daily actions. She looked old now, she had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red and nasty. Her beauty disappeared, and she became an angry and ugly person. We know that all of this was unnecessary. The jewels she had borrowed ended up being costume jewelry and didn’t really need to be replaced. The shock came here being the reader as we never get to learn Mathilde’s reaction as the ending comes to an abrupt stop when the truth is revealed by her friend.

As expressed, although something so little can give you moments of happiness, it can also give you years of depression. We can clearly see how Mathilde’s pride, attitude, and overview of life greatly change because of a necklace. Her materialism was the reason she got herself in the debt in the first place. If she wasn’t so superficial she wouldn’t have gotten herself in the ordeal of even wanting an expensive-looking necklace, which when she lost would have to be replaced at great cost. Her life would have been so much better if she had just appreciated the life she was given, considering she wasn’t a low-class woman, she was a middle-class beautiful woman with a husband. She didn’t think about that, so because she looked forward to having all the nice things, she learned what it was like to live as a low-class woman which she greatly regretted later in life. How would her life have been if she didn’t lose the necklace? Or just appreciate the life she was given? The moral of the story; just appreciate what you have because it can get taken away in the blink of an eye.