June 14, 2007
The origin of Mathilde's Misery Life
In “The Necklace”, Guy de Maupassant sets a stage for a nineteen-century French ironic play, in which the main character Mathilde pays the debts of one night glory at the ball for ten years of hard living, because of a necklace. The necklace, borrowed from her “friend” to go with the dress she has bought for the ball, turns out to be a paste one. The common idea is that the woman deserved it because of her excessive vanity. However, equipped with the context of the story that French society was organized on a class basis even after the French Revolution when class distinction remained an integral part of the society(38), it is natural for readers to wonder whether the purpose of the writer was only to depict a pretty women with excessive vanity. Was the debt to be paid, the wearing out of her beauty, the misery life of ten years hardship truly rooted in her vanity, or something deeper?
Some people suggest that attributed to her excessive vanity, Mathilde reaps as she had her own sown, basing on the fact that Mathilde regards herself as someone who “had really fallen from her proper station”, and felt herself as someone who “born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries” (38). The writer did spare no effort on portraying a vanity girl who has always been complaining how unfair her life is; however, everybody has peacockery, especially for a charming girl, why Mathilde’s was so deadly and resulted in “compromise all the rest of “her husband and her lives? (42) It is not entirely her fault to have vanity under the social environment when what society advocated were aristocrat’s elegance, ‘upper class’ luxury life, and maximum exterior fineness. While, “excessive” vanity she might have, could also unsurprisingly derive from her prettiness and charm, rendering her having many fantasies such as being equal with the very greatest ladies. And what’s wrong with her “natural fineness”? Thus, vanity is not, at least the fatal reason which leads the misery life afterwards.
Nevertheless, Mathilde is not totally innocent; her fault is the misinterpretation of natural fineness as the sole hierarchy with women (38), which gives rise to her “ceaselessly suffering from the poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the walls.”(39) In her mind, her “natural fineness” should provide her all the facility to get things she dreamed. Sadly, her “natural fineness” blinded her eyes so she underestimated the rigidity of social hierarchy. Actually, she knows that it is a world for girl to have “no dowry, no expectation.”(38) All she does all her life is deceiving herself in order to live in a fantasy world. Thus, it is the huge disproportion between her pretty looking and low social class that made her dream some dream she should never dream, buy the dress she should never buy, and more lethally, borrow the necklace she should never borrow.
Since her vanity resulted from the big gap between ideality and reality, it was the social hierarchy rather than her vanity fundamentally resulted in her tragedy. The ideality is what she intends to match her “natural fineness”, and the reality is what she couldn’t get according to the rigid social hierarchy which means it is extremely difficult for people to change or move from the class into which they born. (38)“By a mistake of destiny,” Mathilde, born to be a pretty and charming girl, was raised in a family of clerks, whose expectation for an upper way of living is cut by an invisible line which she had no ability to cross. After all, a man often chooses a wife on the basis of how large her fortune is at that time.(38) Then when her time comes, she would do whatever she could--buying dress, borrowing jewelry--to shine, only for one night, because she can not believe the beauty like her could not have what she supposed to have. So after what she’s gone through--the losing of the necklace, the hardship of pay the debt, she could only sigh that “how life is strange and changeful!”(44); she could only see how she was manipulated by destiny. So what is destiny? It is the rigid social hierarchy, due to which she should only do within her rank boundary. Thus, she is manipulated by rigid social hierarchy.
And another dramatic factor, the necklace was paste one, also proves that Mathilde’s misery life is rooted in the social hierarchy. If the necklace is a real diamond, what she has been suffered for years was only the simple paying back of serious mistakes she made ten years ago. However, the cruel truth that the necklace was a paste one made her ten years of hard work amounts to nothing. Forestier even gives a gesture of dissatisfaction when Mathilde return the replaced one. “You should have returned it sooner, I might have needed it.” (43) True friend never do that. It is warranted to say that under that atmosphere, in the different classes, it is luxury for Mathilde to make real friends with Forestier, who didn’t bother to tell the truth beforehand, which, to some degree, caused her “friend’s” ten years of misery life.
Admittedly, the definition of vanity does include excessive pride in one's appearance, and, Mathilde processes a lot; her misery life does not root in it. It is much sound that “thanks to” her natural beauty wrenched by the strict social class, her vanity was so excessive on the surface that it is difficult for reader to dig out what is the essential reason of her misery life. In fact, the tragedy of Mathilde was rooted in the rigid social hierarchy.
Work Cited
Guy de Maupassant. “The Necklace.” 1884. Rpt. The International Story: Anthology of Short Stories.
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