The necklace
- Characters and their characterizations
1- Mathild: the protagonist of the story, beautiful, charming but not living the life she yearns to
2- Mrs. Loisel: Mathild’s husband, pleased with what he has and loves his wife
3- Madame Forestier: Mathild’s wealthy friend, a kind woman and nicely treats mathild
- Point of view
Third person limited, because we only know the thoughts and feelings of mathild
- Symbols
The necklace symbolizes the deceptiveness of appearances, mathild longs to look rich while she is not
- Irony
Dramatic: because Madame Forestier knows about the necklace while the readers didn’t know.
- Setting
The events take place in Paris and the culture in the story is the high social class/ aristocrat
- Theme
The deceptiveness of appearances:
Mathilde is not a rich woman, but she longs to look like an aristocrat (rich class) because she believes that her beauty worth it. However, Mathild puts too much effort to look rich and to impress the party attendees with her fake class, after buying a dress and borrowing a necklace from her friend. At the party she has gotten a lot of attention, but her truth is different that her appearance, her wealth and class are only an illusion and the people in the party were deceived.
- Lesson
1- Deception is often a mistake which has a bad result for deceivers
2- Don’t let the joy of one moment destroy your life
- Plot
1- Exposition: Set in Paris, France in 1880. A young, middle class woman dreams of a lifestyle far beyond her reach. One day, her husband comes home with tickets to attend a very affluent party, and she is excited to attend, but upset that she will look dowdy.
Conflict: Mathilde Loisel is not wealthy, yet she dreams to be. Her husband gives her money to buy a dress, but she is not satisfied until she asks a wealthy friend for a necklace to borrow.
2- Rising Action: At the ball, Mme. Loisel is a hit, everyone loves her. Upon leaving, she reaches for the necklace, and finds it missing. After days of searching, she and her husband decide to replace it with a one that looks identical. The replacement cost more money than they make, and it takes them ten years to pay it off.
3- Falling Action: One day Mathilde is walking to the market and sees the friend that she borrowed the necklace from. She decides to tell her what happened.
4- Resolution: The friend Mme. Forestier, tells Mathilde that the necklace was “false”, a fake. The reader is left contemplating the irony of the situation.
