In “The Necklace,” Mathilde is very selfish throughout the story. Mathilde shows her selfishness when she longs to be rich and live in a nice home, wear expensive clothing and wear flashy jewelry with her clothes. “These…show how materialistic Mathilde is and how selfish she is for caring only about gaining these things for herself,” says one critic (Directessays). Mr. Loisel provides the basic necessities for her to live a good life, but she wants more than just the basic necessities. She wants wealth and good social status that she does not and can not have. She feels depressed every time she thinks about wealth or visits her “rich friend [Mrs. Forrestier], a comrade from convent days, whom she did not want to see anymore because she suffered so much when she returned home (Maupassant 5).”
Mathilde also shows her selfishness when she makes her husband buy her a new dress for the party. This is selfish because since she has nothing “new” to wear, she would rather not go to the party, and when her husband does get her a new dress, she still does not want to go because she does not have any jewelry to wear with her new dress.
Mathilde then shows her selfishness at the party. She goes to the party with the necklace she borrowed from Mrs. Forrestier and has a great time dancing until four o’clock in the morning while her husband was with several other men in another room asleep. “She didn’t show any care for her husband (Directessays)” who may have been tired and wanted to go home to sleep, but rather, she dances to her heart’s content. She shows more selfishness while leaving the party, when she leaves in a rush because she doesn’t want the other women to see her shawl that her husband brought for her to wear after the party, which was a “modest, everyday wrap” compared to the expensive furs the other women were wearing. This is selfish because she is ashamed of the garments that she wears in her everyday life. Even though those garments may provide warmth for her, she still feels very ashamed of her inexpensive clothing. When she figures out that she had lost the necklace, Mr. Loisel goes off to try and find it without any luck. They buy a replacement for thirty-six thousand francs. They struggle for all the necessities they once had to pay off the necklace. Ten years pass until they finish paying off the necklace. While relaxing at the park, Mrs. Loisel sees her friend Mrs. Forrestier in the park and confesses everything to her even though Mrs. Forrestier did not recognize her at first. After hearing the confession from Mathilde, Mrs. Forrestier shocks Mrs. Loisel with the news that the necklace she lost was just “costume jewelry. At most, it was worth only five hundred francs (Maupassant 12)!” One critics says, “He [Mr. Loisel] believes that if his wife had accepted her situation in life, things would have turned out differently (Directessays).” If Mathilde had not been so selfish and wanted so much that she did not have, she would have never lost the necklace, which caused her to waste ten years of her life paying it off.
In the story, “The Necklace,” Mr. Loisel is just as selfish as his wife, Mathilde. Mr. Loisel was trying to make his wife happy, which in return would stop her from being depressed and give him happiness. Another reason that Mr. Loisel is selfish is when he tells his wife, “All right, you’ve got four hundred francs, but make it a pretty dress.” He told her to buy a “pretty” dress because if the dress was pretty, it would make him look good in front of other people. Also, Mr. Loisel is selfish because the money Mathilde used to buy the dress was money he had set aside for a lark-hunt vacation with some of his friends the upcoming summer, which he did not seem to have her included in his plans (Maupassant 7). He was thinking of himself by saving the money for his vacation and did not think to include his wife in his plans. Mr. Loisel tries to please his wife and make himself look good in front of other people, which make him a selfish person.
Several of the people in society from “The Necklace” who are selfish are: Mrs. Forrestier, the Chancellor, the group of men asleep in another room at the party, and the group of women dancing at the party. Mrs. Forrestier is a selfish person because in the story she has the necklace, which is not real, in a case of a very expensive jeweler. When Mathilde and her husband go to the jeweler whose name was on the box and ask looking for this type of necklace, the jeweler tells them, “I wasn’t the one, Madam, who sold the necklace. I only made the case (Maupassant 9).” Mrs. Forrestier did not tell Mathilde about the necklace because she did not want her to know that the necklace was not real. The fact that she had the necklace in the case also emphasizes that she was selfish because she tried to make herself look good by having a fake necklace in a box of an expensive jeweler. This shows that she was a lot like Mrs. Loisel because she tried to impress others instead of accepting what she really had.
The Chancellor, man who threw and invited Mr. and Mrs. Loisel to the party, is just as selfish as the rest of the people in the story. One of the reasons that he is selfish is because on the invitation it says “The Chancellor of Education and Mrs. George Ramponneau” meaning that he is a married man, and while at the party, the story reveals, “The Chancellor himself eyed her (Maupassant 8).” A married man does not “eye” other woman because he already has a woman, but he was thinking of himself meaning that he was a selfish man.
The group of men at the party who were asleep in the other room while their wives danced their hearts out are all selfish people. They thought of themselves because they were bored and tired, so they went to sleep in another room. This showed their selfishness because they did not stay and dance with their wives, but instead thought of themselves and went to sleep. The group of women at the party were also selfish because they were not considerate of how tired their husband’s were. They thought of themselves because they danced to their heart’s content. The group of women were also selfish because they wore expensive furs and frowned upon others who wore cheap clothing. You see this when Mrs. Loisel is in a rush to leave the party because she did not want the women to see her wearing her “modest, everyday wrap (Maupassant 8).” The group of women and men were just as selfish as Mrs. Forrestier, the Chancellor, and Mr. and Mrs. Loisel.
In conclusion, Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” does not only tell the story of a spoiled selfish woman, it tells the story of a whole society of selfish people. Besides Mathilde in the story, her husband, Mrs. Forrestier, the Chancellor, and the groups of men and woman at the party were all very selfish thinking about themselves and less caring of others.
Works Cited
Maupassant, Guy de. “The Necklace” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 2nd ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003. 5-12.
Directessays.com. “The Necklace.” (2004). 09 Nov. 2004 < viewpaper/46208.html>.
