Necklace

The short story "The Necklace" by Guy De Maupassant takes place in France several hundred
years ago. Mathilde Loisel lives in a flat with her husband, who works as a clerk for the Minister
of Education. Their lives are not luxurious, but they are not poor, merely simple. Mathilde,
however, longs to be rich. She envies her friend Jeanne who has a large house and lots of
jewelry.

One day her husband brings home an invitation to a ball. He thinks his wife will be excited to
attend such a fancy party, but instead she is upset. She complains that she has nothing suitable to
wear to such an extravagant occasion. Her kind husband agrees to give her the four hundred
francs that he had been saving to buy a new rifle to get herself a gown.

The week of the party, Mathilde seems anxious again. When her husband asks her why, she frets
that she has no jewelry to wear with her dress. He suggests that perhaps she could borrow
something from her friend Jeanne Forestier. Mathilde goes to Jeanne's house and picks out a
sparkling diamond necklace to borrow.

She and her husband attend the gala and have a fabulous time. She loves amazing and dances all
night. Finally, they head home in the wee hours of the morning. When they arrive home,
Mathilde realizes that the necklace is missing. They wonder if it fell off in the carriage that they
took home, but neither of them noticed the number. Her husband goes out to search the streets
but returns empty handed. To stall for time, Mathilde writes to her friend that she broke the clasp
and is having it repaired. In the meantime, they find another necklace that matches the missing
one, but it costs thirty-six thousand francs. Her husband fortunately inherited eighteen thousand
francs from his father, but they will need to borrow the rest of the money. Finally, they have
enough to purchase the replacement necklace and Mathilde gives it to Jeanne who doesn't even
look at it.

The next ten years Mathilde's life changes dramatically. They move to a smaller apartment where
she has to cook and clean for herself. She also does work on the side while her husband works
multiple jobs to pay back all the money they borrowed. After the ten years, the money is all paid
back, but Mathilde has aged a great deal.

One day she sees Jeanne Forestier on the street. She decides to tell her the truth about the
necklace. Jeanne is stunned by Mathilde's rough appearance. Mathilde explains that it is
indirectly because of Jeanne since she lost the necklace she borrowed from her and had to pay
for a replacement. Shocked, Jeanne confesses that the necklace Mathilde borrowed was a fake,
made of paste, worth no more than five hundred francs.
Clearly, the lesson of the story is that honesty is the best policy. If Mathilde had been honest with
her friend from the start, she would have learned that the necklace wasn't made of real diamonds
and would not have wasted ten years paying for a replacement

MATHILDE LOISEL

Character Analysis
Mathilde Loisel wants to be a glamour girl. She's obsessed with glamour – with fancy, beautiful,
expensive things, and the life that accompanies them. Unfortunately for her, she wasn't born into
a family with the money to make her dream possible. Instead, she gets married to a "little clerk"
husband and lives with him in an apartment so shabby it brings tears to her eyes (1). Cooped up
all day in the house with nothing to do but cry over the chintzy furniture and the fabulous life
she's not having, Mathilde hates her life, and probably her husband too. She weeps "all day long,
from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and from distress" (6). She dreams day after day about
escaping it all.

Mathilde the Material Girl

When it all comes down to it, Mathilde's kind of a material girl. The most obvious thing she
wants out of life is: expensive stuff.

She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury… She let her
mind dwell on the quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze,
and on the two tall footmen in knee breeches who dozed in the large armchairs, made drowsy by
the heat of the furnace. She let her mind dwell on the large parlors, decked with old silk, with
their delicate furniture, supporting precious bric-a-brac, and on the coquettish little rooms,
perfumed, prepared for the five o'clock chat with the most intimate friends… (3)

Now why does Mathilde want all of these expensive, material possessions? It doesn't sound like
she just wants it because she's money-obsessed. No, for Mathilde, the rich life is attractive
because it's glamorous, beautiful, exciting, fine, and unlike the dingy apartment in which she
lives. The glamorous life has a certain kind of magical allure to it. A lot of the objects Mathilde
wants are magical, like the "tapestries peopling the walls with ancient figures and with strange
birds in a fairy-like forest" (4). For Mathilde, being wealthy amounts to living in a fairy tale.
Being middle class amounts to boredom. She wants the fairy tale.

Does her wish to live the fairy tale life make her "greedy"? Well, you ever notice how
throughout the first part of the story, Mathilde's never satisfied with anything? When her
husband brings her the invitation all she can think about is the dress she wants. When she gets
the dress, all she can think about is the jewels she doesn't have. And when she visits Mme.
Forestier, she's not really satisfied with any of her jewel collection – she keeps on asking, "You
haven't anything else?" (46). At least until she sees the most fabulous, expensive looking piece of
jewelry, that is: the diamond necklace.

So yes, by many standards, Mathilde is probably greedy. But her greed's not the end of the story.
Material things aren't the only things she wants. And there's also a deeper reason for her greed:
dissatisfaction. We can't help but thinking that if she truly were satisfied with her life as it is (i.e.,
marriage, home, etc.) that she wouldn't be day-dreaming of a life she could never have.

Mathilde and Men

The other thing Mathilde wants? Men. Rich, attractive, charming, powerful men. That passage
we quote above finishes with: "the most intimate friends, men well known and sought after,
whose attentions all women envied and desired" (3). Just a little afterwards, we're told:

She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be seductive and sought after. (5)

What's interesting about Mathilde's man-craze is that she seems to be more interested in seducing
men than in the men themselves. That's because what Mathilde really wants is to be wanted.
More than being just desired, Mathilde wants to be glamorous — gorgeous, charming, graceful,
and thoroughly decked out in diamonds. The ultimate measure of being glamorous just happens
to be being attractive to glamorous men. It all forms part of one big glamorous, fairy-tale world,
the world about which Mathilde fantasizes.

What's particularly frustrating to Mathilde is that she knows she's got the natural looks and
charms to be a splash with the rich playboy types she wants to impress. She just needs the
outward signs of being wealthy, but can't afford the necessary clothing and jewelry. Mathilde's
quite vain about her "feminine charms." Her vanity may be why she's unwilling to go to the ball
unless she looks better than everyone else there. And when she does go to the ball, that's exactly
what she is:

The day of the party arrived. Mme. Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest of them all,
elegant, gracious, smiling, and mad with joy. All the men were looking at her, inquiring her
name, asking to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to dance with her. The
Minister took notice of her. (53)

So Mathilde may be vain, but she's at least not deluding herself about her attractiveness.
Mathilde's vanity about the ball might seem a little extreme, but think of it this way: so far as she
knows, that ball might be the one chance she has to experience the life she dreams about. If you
were in her shoes, wouldn't you want to make it absolutely perfect?

Mathilde the Desperate Housewife

We know Mathilde can be a hard character to like. She can seem vain, greedy, and shallow,
especially compared to her husband, who goes to great lengths to please her. He's happy with
what he has, while she always wants more. He seems to care a great deal for her, while she
almost never shows any sign of caring for him. Does Mathilde have any redeeming qualities?

We don't know, but we do think Mathilde deserves a little sympathy. Think about what it means
to be a middle-class woman in 19th century France. Because she's a woman, Mathilde has almost
no control over her life: her family marries her off to her husband, and once she's married, he's
her master. He goes out and works, and gets to go out on hunting expeditions with his buddies,
while she has to stay in the house all day. She doesn't seem to have a terribly close bond to her
husband, or find him attractive. She doesn't seem to have many friends – how would she meet
them? She doesn't have any kids to occupy her time. She doesn't even have anything to do, since
the maid takes care of the housework. Her life seems to be miserably boring. In fact, she doesn't
have anything to do except to daydream about a different life. That makes Mathilde a classic
case of the desperate housewife. (For the classic case, head on over and check out Emma
Bovary, the leading lady of Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

In those circumstances, can you blame Mathilde for creating a fantasy world that's more
glamorous, more exciting, more beautiful than her own? Can you blame her for wanting to be
wanted by somebody rich and important? Back then, if you were a woman, being wanted by a
man was practically the only way to be anybody at all. And Mathilde feels like a nobody,
wanting to be a somebody.

Still, we can't sympathize completely with Mathilde. It does seem like at some level her
complete and total unhappiness has got to be self-induced. Her situation makes her unhappy, but
she also refuses to try to make herself happy. She refuses to try to be content with what
she does have. Which is too bad, because, as she finds out when she loses the necklace, things
can get a lot worse.

Mathilde's poverty later in the story raises another question though. When Mathilde's poor, she
certainly seems to be worse off. Her impoverished life suddenly becomes difficult
and uncomfortable in a way her middle-class life never was. She's constantly busy doing
physically demanding chores. She gets exhausted. She has to be rude to people, and pick fights
over pennies. Her good looks disappear. But then again, once she's poor, at least Mathilde
is doing something. She can no longer be bored and useless. And all her hardship and work has a
purpose: she and her husband have to repay the debts. So maybe, in a certain way, Mathilde's
better off when she's poor. What do you think?

The Happy Prince Summary

Discuss the short story "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde as an moral and a social allegory?

Quick Answer

The story is allegorical to the social class system of Victorian England—the wealth of the upper
classes versus the impoverishment of the poor.The statue of the prince has its jewels delivered to
the poor via the swallow (now, on top of the hill, the prince can see the poverty that had
previously been shielded from him). Eventually the statue loses all its material wealth; he is
richer inside for helping the needy, but no longer outside, and the swallow dies. The people
remove the prince statue, now that he is plain, and discuss the next statue that will replace him,
because material wealth is most important to them.

Expert Answers
 KBRADY4030 | CERTIFIED EDUCATOR

The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde, is a wonderful allegory, typical of 19th century English
fiction. Social injustice, the redemptive power of love, and the loss of innocence are themes
addressed by both Dickens and Wilde.

Here we have a statue who, at one time, was a real prince. He was happy when alive, because he
was kept ignorant of any sadness or suffering outside his palace walls. His life was one of joy
and fulfilled desires. And then he died. Upon his death, a statue was made depicting him which
was covered in gold, had beautiful sapphires for eyes, and a ruby attached to his sword-gilt.
Because of the value society places on gold and jewels, he was thought to be quite beautiful.
"Useless," remarks a Town Councilman, "but beautiful." He is adored by all who see him.
Unfortunately for the statue, his placement atop a high hill allows him to witness, for the first
time, the pain and misery experienced by the poor of the city, of whom he had remained
ignorant.

The statue, once happy, now weeps with sadness to learn the plight of so many who have so
little. A self-serving swallow arrives to take shelter beneath this statue and eventually becomes
touched by the statue's kindness and desire to help others. He becomes the statue's messenger
and agrees to remove the jewels and the gold from the Happy Prince in order to bring
contentment, badly needed financial security, and compassion to the masses. In an allegory, the
characters stand for ideas or for people in history. In this story, the swallow can be seen
as Socialism -delivering necessities to all so that all are on equal footing.

As the statue's gold and jewels are taken and redistributed among the poor, he is no longer able
to see the impoverished around him. He knows it is there, and he is not blind to the sufferings
of others as he once was. Even without eyes to see, he knows that it exists.

Eventually, the little swallow lies at the feet of the statue and dies from exposure and
exhaustion. He never made it to Egypt because he exchanged his dream of warm climates and
comfort with a bigger dream -to bring help to those who are in need. The sculpture cracks
with sadness at the loss of his friend, and his heart is exposed. The most beautiful part of the
statue -the kind and giving heart- could not be seen on the outside.

Upon seeing the statue in such disrepair, the powerful people of the city -the Town Councilors
and Mayor -decide that he is no longer useful, because he is no longer beautiful. Much like the
poor, who were exploited and tossed away by the rich, the statue is taken down. Arguments are
begun to determine whose likeness will replace the superficial shell that they called The Happy
Prince.

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social allegory in that it places shallowness vs. altruism; idleness vs. sacrifice; and contempt vs.
compassion under the perspective of the one person who once was adored by all and now has a
statue made after him: The so-called Happy Prince.
Once, when the Prince was alive, he was filled with richness and opulence to the point that, after
his death, he was made into a statue of gold leaf and jewels. After the shallow swallow visits
him and does the favor of giving one of the statue's rubies to a poor person, the Prince
demonstrates that, as he gives more and more of his jewels and disrobes himself from the gold,
he gains more for feeding the poor and clothing the needy thanks to the riches in his statue.

Slowly, as the swallow continues to deliver the goods of the statue to the poor of the city, he
learns the social imbalance that exists in society, where some have too much and others too
little. In the case of Wilde's time, Victorian England was experiencing the same inequity in the
slum districts and Oscar's story is a clear allegory and metaphor of the British Social System at
the time: Where the rich were filthy rich and the poor starved to death.

In the end, the swallow learns the lesson, the prince is completely run down from the jewels and
gold that decorated him and, in accordance to the typical Victorian mentality, he was not worth
attention anymore because, as the story says:

"As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful,’

Hence, the shallowness of the people ended up with them trying to destroy the statue, the
swallow dies next to it, and both go to Heaven where God deems them two beautiful creations
just because of being who they are.

The Happy Prince and Other Tales Themes

Love is Pain
Love is a recurring theme in the tales of Oscar Wilde. Many critics have read homosexual
undertones in a few of the depicted relationships, which explains why Wilde felt the need to
disclaim these tales as directed to adult audiences rather than children. This did not dissuade the
critics from vocalizing their issues with the kiss between the Swallow and the Happy Prince or
the Giant and the Boy, as they deemed them inappropriate and perverse. Nevertheless, others
have defended Wilde as simply using the kiss as a symbolic gesture of platonic love. The tales
indeed teem with many facets of love. Whether it be romance, friendship, or even simple
kinship, Wilde explores the dark side of these relationships, often by having the character who
shows true love suffer immensely.
The Futility of Charity
In his essay “The Soul of Man under Socialism,” Oscar Wilde declared that “Charity creates a
multitude of sins.” This theme is one of the most prevalent in the tales, and Wilde makes it
abundantly clear he is no believer in the virtue's putative merits. Charity is recurrently portrayed
as ephemeral, because even when people are motivated by compassion, it rarely if ever solves
the underlying problem: Man is self-centered. The Happy Prince may have been charitable in
death and helped many families survive the harsh winter, but no true social change comes to
pass. The Swallow becomes collateral damage, as he dies helping the Happy Prince atone for his
past neglect. Granted, they end up spending eternity together, but the townspeople they helped
are likely to continue living in wretched circumstances. Wilde is suggesting that charity is selfish
as it only truly helps the benefactor sleep soundlessly.
Martyrdom
Unlike the tales of Andersen, Wilde’s tales do not romanticize the transcendent powers of
martyrdom. In fact, despite Wilde’s admiration for Andersen’s tales, he emulates the style only
to subvert the original messages. There is no salvation in suffering. When Hans blindly puts his
friend’s needs above his own life, it is commendable but ultimately meaningless, as his friend
does not even recognize the sacrifices made. The nightingale gives her own life for an ingrate
student. Few of the characters’ suffering ever results in real change for anyone.
Homosexuality
Most of the tales in Wilde's collections have some, albeit sublimated, reference to homosexual
love, pederasty, or the insufficiency of heterosexual love based on reproduction. He never
indicates his interest in these issues outright, but rather undergirds his seemingly traditional
morality tales with them. Women are vain, as the Reed in "The Happy Prince;" there is a
romantic kiss between a male Swallow and a Prince, and another between a Giant and a boy; the
Nightingale is penetrated by the Rose-tree, whose gender is not stated; the young King is a dandy
with a coterie of handsome, effeminate pages; the Star-Child is a young Adonis besotted with his
own ethereal beauty; the Water-Rat makes the case for friendship being more powerful and purer
than romantic love. Through the framework of the fairy tale, then, Wilde is able to explore the
world in which he was currently a part of in his own life.
Art and Beauty
It is no surprise that the aesthete Wilde permeates his tales with art and beauty. Beauty redeems
the Giant; the Art of man is replaced with the Art of God to crown the Young King; the Infanta is
never troubled by ugliness or pain within her palace walls; the Star-Child relinquishes beauty and
art for morality. Wilde writes of gardens, flowers, rich clothing and gems, sensuously handsome
youth, and more. The focus on beauty helps make some of the tales more adult, in that the adult
reader sees the loss of it as a reflection of their current or future loss of youth. Ultimately,
Wilde's message on both beauty and art is complex. He values art for art's sake, thinks that a
focus on pure morality is deadening and ugly, and believes art and beauty can redeem the
degenerate; however, he also sees the limitations of art and beauty and critiques Victorian
society's artifice and ambivalence.
Christianity
Christian morals are present in many of the tales, and Christian figures and biblical diction are
present in a few. Wilde sees pure Christian love -that which the Priest in "The Fisherman and His
Soul" evinces at the very end, as well as the Christ figure in "The Selfish Giant" and the Star-
Child in the story of the same name—as worthy of approbation. Christianity offers a basic moral
framework that can govern human actions and thoughts in a mutually beneficial way. Wilde was
not concerned with specific dogma or even advocating more religiosity; rather, he was utilizing
the most universal, recognizable principles.
Morality
In their essence, many of Wilde's tales promote classically moral behavior and condemn immoral
behavior. Selfishness, pride, naivete, avarice, and capriciousness are decried while selflessness,
kindness, sympathy, and generosity are lauded. However, Wilde is keen to indicate that shying
away from the former and practicing the latter does not guarantee one happiness, fulfillment, or
even the continuance of life. Many characters who behave nobly are not rewarded; many who
behave badly never get their comeuppance. Wilde may cloak his tales in artifice and beauty, but
the ugly reality that sometimes good people suffer and bad people prosper is quite manifest.