Write a character study of each of themain female characters in the stories you have chosen. Which

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Write a character study of each of the main female characters in the stories you have chosen. Which one do you feel most sympathetic towards and why?

For this essay I have been asked to write a character study of the main female characters in two stories. ‘The Necklace’ by Guy De Maupassant and ‘Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin. I will then decide through my analysis which character I feel most sympathetic towards and why.

The story of the necklace focuses mainly on a woman called Madame Loisel, she is a woman from the lower middle class, but due to her beauty she believes she truly belongs to the upper wealthiest of the classes. She dreams of a better life she will one day have, one day she and her husband are invited to a party, her husband suggests that she borrows a necklace from a friend and so she does, when they go to the party, she is the most beautiful women who has attended. She soon loses the necklace and has to pay 40, 000 francs to replace it. They have to borrow the money and spend many years living in poverty till they can pay the money back.

I do feel sorry for Madame Loisel because in the time of which the story is set, women were made to be so dependant on men where as there would have been women who preferred to be alone and so lived a life of unhappiness either way. They were expected to marry rich men in order to gain anything. She does not really love her husband and the most appealing thing about him is his “dowry.” Madame borrows the necklace feeling pressured to look good at the party so she attracts another rich man. At first the Madame appears to be spoilt, “She had no clothes, no jewels, nothing. And these were the only things she loved; she felt that she was made for them.” When she receives an invitation to the party she does not feel happy, but sulks because she does not have a dress or anything to make her stand out at the party. Her husband gives her his savings so that she can go out and buy what she wishes to wear at the party, and tells her to ask a friend to borrow a necklace so she can be the most attractive woman at the party.

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There is however, a turning point in the story, when Madame Loisel loses the necklace, her husband could have left her to be arrested, for theft and continue his life as before. Instead, he chooses to stay with her, paying the debt off together so that a new necklace can be bought. This clearly is a sign of great affection from Madame’s husband as it would have been much easier for him to just leave her. She gives up her hopes and dreams of living a life of luxury and being rich in order to pay her friend back, ...

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