Necklace by Guy De Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant's short story, "The Necklace," deals with many different themes. This work of literature examines notions of beauty and youth, class and money, and a liveliness and zest for life that is contrasted with the conception of aging. Despite all of these thematic issues, it appears to the shrewd reader that the principle theme that this work of literature is based upon, and which all of the other themes hinge upon, is the relationship between beauty and money. Quite simply, the main character, Mademoiselle Mathilde Loisel, equates beauty and attractiveness to money and all of the material trappings it affords. Consequently, the poor woman forfeits what true beauty she possessed -- independent of money -- due to an unfortunate financial situation.
It is fairly apparent that Mrs. Loisel believes that physical attractiveness and beauty is largely based on the amount of money that a woman…...
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Works Cited
Artinian, Artine. "Maupassant as Seen by American and English Writers of Today." The French Review. 17(1), 9-14. 1943. Print.
Loisel feels that she has no dresses worthy of the elite party. Rather than appreciate the material goods she and her husband do have, she laments what she lacks and thus seems bitter and ungrateful. Her life filled with fantasy and longing causes quite severe mental and emotional impairment, even depression: "she wept all day long, from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and from distress." Madame Loisel was depressed before she lost the necklace, mentally, emotionally, and physically weak. Her weakness is expressed physically in her trembling hands, her "boundless desire," and her artificial sense of "ecstasy" when she first lays eyes on Forester's strand of diamonds.
Her artificial ecstasy continues while she experiences a brief moment of fame and attention at the party: "Mme. Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest of them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and mad with joy." Alive for the first time since the…...
And as before, rather than expressing openness about her true feelings, in the face of wealth she becomes embarrassed and ashamed, and this also proves her undoing, as if she had only been open about what had transpired with the necklace, then she would not have had to labor her entire life to pay back the debt.
Mathilde bankrupts her husband, by losing the paste necklace, but this selfishness is echoed early on when she insists upon a fine gown, rather than something she can really afford to attend the ball that proves her undoing. Unlike her husband, Mathilde is incapable of perceiving the needs of others, or the real value of money: "she thought for several seconds, reckoning up prices and also wondering for how large a sum she could ask without bringing upon herself an immediate refusal and an exclamation of horror from the careful-minded clerk," and he…...
757). Chopin (2002) writes: "There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature" (p. 757). Louise is discovering that she will have say over what she does and there will be no one who, even unwittingly, is able to get her to do something that she has not decided to do herself. Chopin (2002) continues: "A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination" (p. 757). Here Chopin (2002) seems to be saying that whether or not a man does exerts his will over a woman in an abusive or non-abusive way makes…...
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References:
Bell, D. (2010). Maupassant and the limits of the self. Romantic review,101(4), 781-801.
Chopin, K. (2002). Kate Chopin: Complete novels and stories: At fault / Bayou folk / a
night in Acadie / the awakening / Uncollected stories. New York, NY: Library of America.
Cunningham, M. (2004). The autonomous female self and the death of Louise Mallard in Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour." English language notes,42(1), 48-55.
Faience Necklace
This necklace was found in the Egyptian tomb. Wealthy Egyptians who died were buried with many of their most precious and/or sentimental life's possession that they wished to take with them to another world (the Afterlife). This necklace was found in one ancient Egyptian tomb and evidently manifested value despite its cheap nature. (Faience was a relatively cheap material) (Andrews, 1981)
The beads are various scintillating colors representing various values of the Afterlife. They were wrapped around the mummy's neck in order to restore breath through the symbolism of these colors. The blue, green, and black are water, sky, vegetation and youth. The White, yellow and red beads meanwhile signify sun, light, fire, and blood. The blue and green beads in this broad collar are supposed to be turquoise and lapis lazuli beads. The Faience is made from the crushed quarts. The necklace dates to 332-30 BC.
The beads are…...
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References
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Faience necklace 332-30 BC
Women in 2 Stories Studied
The Female's Role in "The Story of an Hour"
The 19th Century is on record as one where male dominance and authoritarianism was the order of the day. Women were mainly passive and subservient. However, towards the end of the century, women started questioning their assigned roles and responded swiftly to the sex battle that was common during that period in a number of ways. They revolted and wanted to take action aimed at changing the perspective of the society. The new woman frowned at the traditional woman. There emerged female authored literature that addressed exuberance and despair. It brought to the fore the dreams of victory and the defeat of violence. This is well illustrated in the fiction of Kate Chopin, one of the top American authors of the 19th Century. According to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar who were literacy critics, the oscillation between…...
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Bibliography
Berkove, Lawrence L. "Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour'. "American Literary Realism 32.2 (2000) 152-158.Academic search Premier. Web. 14 Sept. 2008.
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." The Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. 7 thed. Comp. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007.153, 159-160.
Eportfolio. "The Female's Role in 'The Story of an Hour,' (n.d.). Retrieved from: www.eportfolio.lagcc.cuny.edu/scholars/doc.../eng102_research.doc
Fonseka, Gamini. "The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant: A Critique of Class Consciousness" (n.d.).
In Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” (1884), a beautiful young woman named Mathilde is depicted almost as having been deprived of a higher station in life simply because of her impressive physical characteristics and that fact that she lives in humble dwellings. She is sharply aware both of her beauty and of her modest status. Having been born into a family of clerks and married a clerk, she feels constrained. She cannot afford nice clothes to accentuate and affirm her natural beauty. Yet she is drawn to those who have nicer things—such as her friend Madame Forestier. However, when her husband brings home an invitation to an event at the palace, Mathilde experiences a range of emotions. She shows signs of annoyance, humiliation, depression, joy, excitement, despair and remorse—for various reasons, which the rest of the story reveals. The physical, moral and emotional conflicts that Mathilde suffers as a result…...
The Necklace: Accepting YourselfGuy de Maupassants short story The Necklace is a 19th century French tale advocates that happiness is accepting yourself for who you are, not wanting what you do not have. It tells the story of a beautiful young woman named Mathilde who is disappointed with her low station in life and believes she deserves much better than her fate of being married to a kind, but middle-class husband. Her attempts to seem wealthier than she is and her refusal to accept her circumstances have tragic consequences, and ultimately lead to her downfall.Mathilde and her husband devote their entire lives to paying for an ornament that Mathilde lost at a ball, which they think is very valuable but which was really paste. Mathilde was too afraid to tell her wealthy friend about the loss, and instead replaced it with what she thought was an exact replica that was…...
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Works CitedMaupassant, Guy. “The Necklace,” pp. 1-116.
She also learns, too late, that the jewels and the life she coveted so long ago was a sham. Hence, the symbolic nature of the necklace itself -- although it appears to have great value, it is in fact only real in appearance, not in reality and the heroine is incapable of assessing the false necklace's true worth.
The tale of "The Necklace" conveys the moral that what is real, the replacement she returned to Madame Forstier, can be won not with beauty but with hard work, sweat, and toil. Like "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Necklace" revolves around the use of irony and a single, symbolic element, exemplified in the title object that works throughout the tale, using the literary device of irony, to reveal the protagonist's moral character. That final revelation engineered by the title object makes the story compelling, even if both protagonists may seem morally repugnant. The…...
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Works Cited de Maupassant, Guy. "The Necklace." Classic Short Stories. 28 Jun 2008. de Maupassant, Guy. "A Piece of String." Classic Short Stories. 28 Jun 2008. http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/string.html http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/necklace.html
Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Tell-Tale Heart." The Online Literature Library. Literature.org.
etsy.com/listing/97212322/african-primitive-ethnic-Jewelry)
is an African post-colonial piece of jewelry that is both post-colonial and also possesses gender and class implications.
One can see this piece of jewelry as being either Mother-Earth, Mother-Universe or Female Guardian Orisha. It has definite gender -- based connotations with a maternal warmth and sympathy emanating form the image. At the same time is authentic primitive African art and is also class-based since its origins are tribal and would expect a certain lower class of Africans to more likely wear this piece than the upper class. Its connotations, too -- since this is a fertility goddess -- are of people who desire to have children or who have suffered loss in childbirth. This has often been the case of the 'regular African folk -- the lower class -- who due to hardships of regular life have often lost children during or after birth as well as in their…...
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Sources
Eeden, JV (2006) Land Rover and colonial style adventure. Int. Fem. Journal of Polictis, 8, 343-369
Etsy African Primitive Ethnic Jewelry, Beautiful, Spiritual Copper or Bronze Pendant
La Parure "The Necklace" by Maupassant
French author Guy de Maupassant is considered one of the greatest French short story writers. Maupassant wrote more than 300 short stories, six novels and three travel books until in 1891, when he went mad. Maupassant's tales were dark and ironic, he portrayed the bourgeoisie life of Paris and his characters were unhappy victims of their greed, desire or vanity. What was most remarkable was Maupassant's style, he was a master of his skill, and he had a highly controlled style marked by objectivity and with sheer irony and comedy. His stories were usually about simple episodes of everyday life, which revealed hidden sides of people.
La Parure (The Necklace) is one of the celebrated works of Maupassant, a short story filled with irony and dark humor with implicit philosophical message that 'pride goeth before a fall' and the fact that pride always brings about a…...
Is there such a thing as retribution, though -- or at least does evil ever regret its actions. As the story ends, Misfit seems to be thinking about goodness and probably thinking that evil is not the answer to the problems in his life. At the end of the story Misfit regrets killing Grandma, and says that "she would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." Everyone has evil inside them; sometimes we see only good or only evil; but the battle exists on various planes in a regular, almost evolutionary manner -- the conflict is what drives humans forward. What are these consequences, though? If Mme. Loisel would not have been so determined to rise above her station and show off, or if she had been more honest and less presumptive, she would not have spent a…...
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REFERENCES
Gretlund. J., et.al., eds. Flannery O'Connor's Radical Reality. University of South
Marketing Plan for Glisten & Shine
Glisten & Shine is jewelry and accessories-based company and shall be providing a variety of jewelry items such as necklaces, earrings, rings made from special customized gems, and later on would be diversifying its product line into bracelets, cufflinks, tie-pins, jewelry hair-pins and hair accessories, belts etc.
G&S's jewelry will be special as the customer will be able to re-use it over and over again and dye and re-dye it to suit his requirements, without spoiling the natural look. For making our product eye catching, we will make use of semi-precious, transparent and/or opaque crystal gemstone that will be coated with a special paste providing a natural precious look to the gemstones.
Glisten & Shine provides a unique product concept in a relatively maturing jewelry industry. This will give us an edge because customers are in that stage where they want something trendy as well as innovative.
G&S…...
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References
Amine, Lyn S.; Magnusson, Peter (2007). Cost-Benefit Models of Stakeholders in the Global Counterfeiting Industry and Marketing Response Strategies. . Multinational Business Review (St. Louis University), Vol. 15 Issue 2, p63-85. 23p.
Brassington, Frances & Pettitt, Stephen (2008). Principles of marketing, 4th edition, England, Pearson Education.
Findlay, Stephanie (2010). Jewelry for the masses, Vol. 123 Issue 25/26, p60-60. 3/5p.
Kay, Mark J (2010). Marketing and the Effects of Recessions. Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Vol. 90 Issue 2, p18-19. 2p.
" It is something that the film, in showing Marie's response to gossip in the news about her, refutes. She also refutes having said, "Let them eat cake," saying, "I wouldn't have said that." However, that is the most likely response a young woman who did not realize the citizens being out of bread meant they were starving, and who, herself would have replaced a shortage of bread with a cake, would have logically said.
Coppola's film is a commitment to portraying the character and personality of the Queen, not the stories, rumors, or to engage in debate about conspiracies. Perhaps that is why Coppola does not go into the details or depict the beheading of the Queen.
orks Cited
Coppola, S., (dir.), 2006, Marie Antoinette, Motion Picture, Columbia Pictures
Corporation, USA.
Grubin, D., (dir), 2006, PBS, Marie Antoinette, Documentary Film, David Grubin
Productions, USA/France.
The Birth of Marie Antoinette: November 2nd, 1755." History Today Nov. 2005:…...
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Works Cited
Coppola, S., (dir.), 2006, Marie Antoinette, Motion Picture, Columbia Pictures
Corporation, USA.
Grubin, D., (dir), 2006, PBS, Marie Antoinette, Documentary Film, David Grubin
Fashion
The misappropriation of Native American imagery, iconography, cultural ideology, and fashion is nothing new. After all, a slew of professional sports teams continue to run with Indian names and logos in spite of the controversy in doing so. A few sports teams, like the Atlanta Braves Major League Baseball franchise, boast insidious "tomahawk" chants during their games.
The latest trend in Native misappropriation is not much more tasteful than a Cleveland Indians jersey in the fashion world. Several manifestations of the disturbing trend have emerged in consumer culture. One is that commercial manufacturers Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters have been selling lines of clothing and jewelry that is culturally insensitive as well as illegal. A second trend, exposed by bloggers around the Internet, is the lewd use of Native-style feathered headdresses. These recent trends are highly disturbing in that consumers by now ought to know better. Especially hipsters, a subculture that…...
Seashell Mosaics: Create vibrant and intricate patterns by gluing colorful seashells onto a canvas or piece of wood. Experiment with different sizes, shapes, and hues to bring marine life to life. Shell Jewelry: Craft unique necklaces, earrings, and bracelets by threading seashells onto leather cords or wire. Add beads, charms, and driftwood for a touch of whimsical elegance. Seashell Shadowboxes: Preserve your beach treasures in shadowboxes. Arrange and glue seashells within frames, creating a three-dimensional display that encapsulates memories and seaside beauty.
Embrace Coastal Crafts
Driftwood Sculptures: Collect driftwood in various sizes and shapes and assemble them....
Òjà Òrísà: A Cultural Tapestry of Yoruba Traditions at the Village Market Festival
In the heart of Yoruba villages, the annual market festival, known as Òjà Òrísà, is a vibrant celebration that weaves together ancient customs, sacred rituals, and lively festivities. This time-honored tradition is a testament to the enduring spirit and rich cultural heritage of the Yoruba people.
Spirituality and Rituals
At the core of Òjà Òrísà lies the deep reverence for the Òrísà, the divine beings who oversee every aspect of life. Each vendor's stall becomes a miniature shrine, adorned with offerings and prayers.
Ìbòjì: Devotees offer sacrifices of kola nuts....
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