Commentary on The Necklace Essay

The necklace

The Necklace takes place in Paris during the late 1800s. In this short story a lower class woman named, Madame Loisel, will do anything to try and fit in with the upper class, but she soon learns that there are consequences for not being oneself. In the century of the 1800s there were social classes that were divided by lower class, middle class and upper class. Depending on how much money one had is what class one were in. Meaning if one was rich then they would be in the upper class and if one was poor you would be in the lower class.

Madame Loisel is one of those beautiful and good looking girls, but she is very rude and ungrateful. She is married to a great husband who is constantly trying to please her but she is always unthankful and greedy. She dressed plainly because she couldnt afford fine clothes because her husband, Monsieur Loisel, is a clerk. One day Monsieur Loisel got her an invitation to a ball: Look I got something for you (line 46 page 54). She threw it down and looked at him scornfully: But my dear. I thought youd be thrilled to death (line 54 page 55).

Madame Loisel didnt want to look poor going to the ball, so Monsieur Loisel brought her shopping and gave her 400 Francs to buy whatever she wanted: All right. Ill give you 400 Francs. "'But try to get a nice dress (line 83-84 page 55).

As the party neared, Madame Loisel seemed to be at ease and on-edge. She didnt want to go to the party without any gems or flowers because she didnt want to look poor. So Monsieur Loisel gave her the idea to go borrow something from one of her old school friends, Madame Forestier, who was now rich and wealthy. Madame Loisel borrowed a diamond necklace from Madame Forestier. The night the dance came Madame Loisel was dancing with other men and not her husband. By the time the dance was over Madame Loisel noticed she had lost the necklace.

To replace it Monsieur Loisel had to buy 36,000 Franc necklace. He had to borrow money from many different loan sharks to make up for all of the money he had to use for the necklace. To work off all of the Money Madame Loisel and Monsieur Loisel, had to work 10 years straight of hard work to make up for the money. Madame Loisel had to learn how to do all of the hard jobs like clean dishes, clean Toilets, get a job and clean her whole house. They finally paid off all of their debt and money they owed. Madame Loisel got in habits of doing hard jobs that it was eventually a habit. One day Madame Loisel saw Madam Forestier walking. Madame Loisel went out and greeted her and told her about the story. Madame Forestier said: Why it was only a pasted diamond necklace. Why it was only worth 500 Francs(line 263-264 page 60).