Assignment II:

Guy de Maupassant In-depth Character Analysis

The Diamond Necklace Characterization; Guy de Maupassant’s Pessimistic Twist
Written by Preme Namfar

Once a young and beautiful woman with a loving husband yet let the flair of vanity
consumed her and feel like she entitles to have a lot more than fate destined. Madame
Mathilde Loisel spent her middle-class life as a very dissatisfied and unhappy woman. She
rebels against her circumstance and always felt trapped in her own life yet continues to dream
of becoming more than what a clerk daughter earned to be, even though her husband willing
to give her everything she wishes for if he could. The only moment anyone could feel the
spark of happiness from her was the night at the glamorous party, where Madame Loisel has
a new dress bought with her husband hard-earned money and have "the diamond
necklace" borrowed from her wealthy friend around her neck; it was the night that gives her
the sense of belonging in the wealthy world this beautiful broad has always aspired for. Guy
de Maupassant depicted Madame Loisel's delusional pleasure of becoming one of the
socialites clearly in the scene he has written about her feeling that night shown in this passage
"She danced with rapture, with passion, intoxicated by pleasure, forgetting all in the
triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness comprised
of all this homage, admiration, these awakened desires and of that sense of triumph which is
so sweet to woman's heart." Guy de Maupassant's protagonist, Madame Mathilde Loisel, is
an air-headed woman who cannot seem to find the satisfaction in what she once already had;
in fact, she is a very dynamic character who has developed the point of view in her life over
time but still focused on the wrong thing from this unfortunate experience whence she had
lost the diamond necklace. Some may argue that she had learned something from what led
her to 10 years of poverty, but the end of the story when she met her wealthy friend, Madame
Forestier, Mathilde Loisel, still gets the pleasure from the fact that her friend never notices
the difference of the replaced diamond necklace. Little that she knows about the twist Guy de
Maupassant has given her in the end.

Guy de Maupassant has been a well-known writer because of his ability to draw up very
much complicated conflicts in the stories he wrote. "The Diamond Necklace" is one of the
most successful short stories, of course, has offered a pretty tangled on conflict made by
Mathilde Loisel from the get-go. Mathilde Loisel has described in the opening as a character
who is suffered ceaselessly, feeling (herself) born to enjoy all delicacies and all
luxuries. Moreover, we may found Madame Loisel to be a little bit manipulative and greedy
when she cried for the lack of what she currently has and how unequipped she was as a
presentable wife, so her husband willing to give her the savings that he planned to use as a
treat for himself for an expensive gown his wife wanted. Nevertheless, it was not enough for
Madame Loisel. In the midst of the conflict in her unsatisfactory, she used the same old "sad
wife act" to manipulate the situation whence she mentioned to her husband that "It annoys
(Mathilde) not to have a single piece of jewelry, not a single ornament, nothing to put on.
(She) shall look poverty-stricken. (She) would almost rather not go at all." That point is the
beginning of the disastrous fortune the Loisel will have to face just because Madame
Mathilde cannot accept her middle-class self. Once she has Madame Forestier's jewelry, she
chose the "most expensive-looking" diamond necklace and dared to borrow it. When she lost
the necklace, the crying and the manipulation comes in to play, yet again, her husband had to
bend over backward and walk in the shivering cold weather to get Mathilde out of the trouble
she caused. Moreover, because both of them chose not to tell Madame Forestier the fact that
the necklace was lost, the Loisel family had to pay the ultimate price for a lesson that serves
Madame Mathilde Loisel's greed and vanity and face the real poverty for ten years after one
glorious night.
The way Guy de Maupassant has given the background thoughts from Monsieur Loisel does
give Maupassant's protagonist, Mathilde Loisel, the antagonist quality at the same time.
Furthermore, it creates a compound effect in terms of the reader's thought process. We may
feel sorry for the unfortunate experience that the Loisel faced, but it is not farfetched to have
blamed everything that happened on Mathilde Loisel's need of the vanity and grace. He loves
his wife too much to even tell her about the plan he has for the savings a lowly salary worker
like him has given her although, "he grew a little pale, because (Monsieur Loisel) was laying
aside just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer..." and
his wife just neglect his demeanors and quickly accepted the hard-earn money to buy an
expensive gown. However, both of them are in this mess and facing the hardship of really
being poor just because Monsieur Loisel is his wife enabler, even if it is out of his undying
love. Throughout the story, the reader can see how Madame Loisel always dismissed his
ideas and his words, and after all the things she has herself and her husband paid through, she
blamed Madame Jeanne Forestier for what happened. Although the character of Mathilde
Loisel may be dynamic in terms of her point of view in life and understand that the neediness
brought her family to this point, she can also be perceived as a flat character because
Mathilde Loisel learned nothing from the circumstance yet have a vengeful thought towards
her good friend who let her borrowed the necklace Mathilde herself has lost. From the reply,
Mathilde Loisel has given Madame Forestier when she found Mathilde to be unrecognizable.
We can see that she pinned the blame on Jeanne Forestier in this dialogue, "...(Mathilde)
have had a pretty hard life, since (she) last saw (Jeanne), and great poverty—and that
because of (Jeanne)!"

[Epilogue]

The reason I found Guy de Maupassant to be such a pessimistic writer is that the story has
ended with Mathilde Loisel still focused on the wrong thing and blamed Jeanne Forestier for
letting her borrow a necklace that she later learned that it was just a piece of costume
jewelry that cost nothing. Although the readers may get the moral from the lesson presented
in this story, there is no hope for Mathilde Loisel. She still is an air-headed woman who
regrets about the circumstance, not her actions.