She knew what her dreams were, and where she wanted to be. She knew that she did not want to live in her small little apartment. She dreamed of living in a great mansion, with great reception halls, and small scented rooms for conversing with friends. But all those dreams, those wonderful, wonderful dreams faded away when she married a clerk and knew she was never going to move up her status but, yet still tried. Guy de Maupassant wrote “The Necklace” to tell people of the fictional life of Mathilde Loisel. In the story “The Necklace” Mathilde Loisel is ungrateful, selfish, and ignorant.
The first characteristic that Mathilde Loisel shows is her ungratefulness. She is very ungrateful, as she is acting as though she was of a higher class, then what she actually was. She tries to be a higher class, and fails almost always. Mathilde Loisel shows she is very ungrateful when her husband Monsieur Loisel, works so hard to get her tickets to go to the ball, that many clerks do not have an opportunity to grasp, because of their social status. The very first thing that Mathilde thinks of is the fact that she does not have a dress good enough to go to the ball.
She doesn’t ever care how hard her husband worked [200]. When Mathilde goes to her friend’s house, Madame Forestiers, to pick out a necklace to wear to the ball she perused through the whole jewelry box until she finds the one she wants in that little box of dreams. In that little box of dreams laid a diamond necklace, she instantly knew she wanted that one [202]. Mathilde is very ungrateful throughout the whole story. The second trait Mathilde shows is selfishness. Mathilde Loisel is very selfish, while on the other hand her husband was very selfless, by trying to do everything for her.
Even though most of the time it all blew up in his face because she did not even know he was doing anything for her. Most of the things he does go by unnoticed by Mathilde. Mathilde seems to obsess over her looks and nothing else. her husband got her these wonderful tickets to go to the ball, and the first thing she worries about is what she’s going to wear, and the fact that she didn’t have anything to wear and no money to go out and buy a new dress. She didn’t have a dress nor any jewelry [200]. The narrator states Mathilde wanted to envied and fascinating [199].
Mathilde should just be herself and not push away all the ones that she loved. The third characteristic that Mathilde shows is ignorance. Mathilde seems like she would be the type of person that would care about nothing more than the clothes and jewelry, not what they are made of. She does not seem to be the type of person to go around looking for the cheapest dress. She looks like she would be one of the people that would go out and buy herself a brand new, beautiful, expensive dress [200]. Mathilde takes 400 francs and goes to the store to buy probably the most expensive dress she had money from her husband to go out and buy [200].
Mathilde Loisel is most likely the most ignorant girl in “The Necklace”. Envy, a very devilish game, that everyone is involved with in some point in your life. Mathilde learns this the hard way when she loses the necklace and can’t find it. After all of the searching she goes from ungrateful to very grateful for what she has, from selfish to selfless like her husband, last but not least, she changed from ignorant to a normal caring person. Mathilde shows that she actually does care about the things that her husband does.
