Selfishness Comes With a Cost

As I read Guy de Maupassant's The Necklace, I couldn't help but notice how greedy Madame Loisel was being about her financial situation. Although she was not born into an overly wealthy family, she was not born into a dirt-poor family either. And despite her husband's efforts to make her happy, nothing was ever good enough for her. She was convinced that she deserved the finest of everything and that she was "born for every delicacy and luxury." Although her selfishness may have bought her a night of admiration, her rush to escape before being seen in the modest clothes of her everyday life proved to put a damper on her capability of acquiring the luxurious items she desired. I believe the lesson this story strives to teach is to be happy with the life you have, because it could always be worse.

Madame Loisel spent her days at home wallowing in self-pity. She was insulted and embarrassed by her poor house, her ugly curtains, worn chairs, and unsatisfactory furniture. Tortured by the displeasing features of her own home, Madame Loisel fantasizes about a fancier house. Having a richer friend, Madame Forestier, from her old school days, Madame Loisel knows how a proper home should look, but is too embarrassed to ever visit her dear friend.

When her husband brings home an invitation to a ball, Madame Loisel is not as pleased as her husband hoped she would be. "I haven't a dress and so I can't go to this party. Give your invitation to some friend of yours whose wife will be turned out better than I shall," Madame Loisel tells her husband. And when she finally gets an appropriate dress, her next dilemma is being "utterly miserable at not having any jewels, not a single stone, to wear." Given the idea to borrow some from Madame Forestier, Madame Loisel rushes to her friend and leaves with a beautiful diamond necklace.

In her rush to leave the ball before any of the rich men and women saw her in her everyday clothes, Madame Loisel loses the diamond necklace. After searching for days, Monsieur and Madame Loisel are forced to go into debt to buy Madame Forestier an exact look-alike necklace worth four thousand francs. Madame Loisel was forced to live the life of a poor woman rather than living the life of an average woman as she had before. She was made to give up many of the luxuries of her life before to be sure that she and her husband had enough money to pay back their debts.

After ten years, the debt is finally paid off and Madame Loisel decides to tell Madame Forestier of the hardships she had to endure just to make sure that she got the necklace back. I'm sure Madame Loisel was quite surprised to learn that the original borrowed necklace was only imitation and worth five hundred francs at the most.

The selfishness Madame Loisel showed throughout the story reminded me a lot of how many people today are. In the world today, most people make a living the best way they can, but are never fully happy with the results of their hard work. No matter how much money they make, no matter how nice the clothes or furniture they buy, there is always someone with nicer things than them. And so there is a never-ending cycle of people constantly trying to "keep up with the Joneses."

After reading the ending of the story, I decided that it's better to be happy with what you are blessed to have than to make yourself miserable by wanting a life you can never have. I'm sure Madame Loisel would much prefer to have her life of blandness and modesty over the life she had inevitably inherited because of her greedy and selfish ways.