El collar

Does vanity have a price?

Many of us have heard the saying: Nobody knows what they have until they lose it. This saying could be well applied to the main character of the story “The Necklace,” written by the French writer Guy De Maupassant. The story tells the life of a woman named Mme. Mathilde Loisel, who goes through an immense transformation in the story as it develops. Mme. Loisel isblessed with the gift of beauty and charm, but tormented by poverty. She constantly suffers from not having been born into luxury, comfort, and delicacies in life, causing her a huge depression. Her main concern is to have what she can not have, which leads her to never be satisfied with the life that her husband provides. However, towards the end, Mme. Loisel is able to show a great sense ofresponsibility for her actions to fix her mistake. Mme. Loisel's vanity drives her to lose the simple pleasures in life that she always took for granted; however, by the end she accepts the responsibility of repaying the debt her vanity caused her to incur, and to realize that she could become a hard working woman.

Mme. Loisel is a stunning woman, but she is filled with vanity. She knows howbeautiful and charming she is, so she tries to appear to be something she is not. Perhaps Mme. Loisel feels that she did not belong to the social class she is in and that she deserves better than that. She is continuously daydreaming about the riches she did not have as a cause of her vanity. An example of her vanity occurs when her husband tries to please her with an invitation to a ball of theMinister of Public Institution. But she is not content, and only wants more because, as Maupassant describes, “[Although] she had no dresses, no jewelry, no nothing. . .she [always] felt made for that” (130). So instead of pleasing, as her husband thought, she is angry because there was nothing she could wear for the ball to be envied, primarily because, Mme. Loisel did not want to feel inferiorto the rich women that were going to be at that ball. She wants to feel at the same level as them, only pretending to be wealthy like there is nothing to be ashamed of. In an attempt of manipulation, Mme. Loisel tries to reject the invitation by saying to her husband, “I have no dress and therefore I can't go to this ball. Give your card to some colleague, whose wife is better equipped than I”(131). Thus he falls into her trap and decides to sacrifice the money he had been saving, and gives the money to his wife only to see her happy with her dress. In that moment, Mme. Loisel did not even bother to ask him what he was saving the money for; she is only thinking about her own needs. She is being selfish.

Now, Mme. Loisel has everything she wants to look beautiful, but she is stillunsatisfied. She wants to look stunning for that evening and be able to take away the breath of every single guest that is at the ball. In order to do so, she obtains a borrowed necklace that she requested from a friend of hers. Mathilde’s vanity finally drives her to borrow a jewel from her friend Mme. Forestier. The author describes Mme. Loisel, saying, “her heart began to beat with animmoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her throat, outside her high-necked dress, and remained lost in ecstasy at the sight of herself” (132). Mme. Loisel is so happy that she does not notice that the necklace is not made from real jewels. That does not matter to her, because as a consequence of her selfishness and vanity the only thing she cares about is to stand outin the ball.

When the time of the ball arrives, Mme. Loisel has finally reached her goal, and she is the most beautiful woman of the evening; everybody is looking at her. Since it is her time to shine, she is not even aware of the magnitude of her vanity. At the ball, she feels prettier than anybody else, elegant, and filled with joy. Her vanity increases when all the men look at her,...