Assignment #8: The Necklace

In the story, "The Necklace", there is a moral implied. This moral is that you should tell the truth. If Mathilde would have told the truth ten years before, when she had lost the necklace, she wouldn't have to have spent most of her life the way she did. The moral also implies that if you tell the truth no matter what you think the consequences will be you will not have to worry or even have to pay for your actions. Mathilde should have just told the lady so that she wouldn't have had to get all the money back and it changed her life forever.

 

Mathildes' attitude is superficial. In other words she is a shallow person. If she had not been so envious of others and their material possessions she would not have had such a rough life, working to pay off a debt that was unnecessary in the first place. Being envious is just one of the many "wisdom teachings" that can be found throughout the story, "The Necklace". An example from the story of when Mathilde showed envy would be, "She looked at him out of furious eyes, and said impatiently: "And what do you suppose I am to wear at such an affair?" (Page 3, The Necklace). When she said this she said it out of envy and maybe even a bit of classless. Her husband had just offered her an exclusive invitation to a great party and she was just flat out rude about it. Envy would be the teaching that is that is noticed the easiest but there is also other ones that are hidden deeper into the story.

Another "wisdom teaching" that had to be looked for deeper in this story is about trust. When Mathilde had borrowed that special necklace from Madame Forestier she had made a promise to Forestier to return it safely and to take good care of it. Mathilde also made and internal promise to herself that she would return it, that's how she ended up going through all the trouble of ten years of hardships to pay off her own promise. So the key issue here would be trust and promises. It kept the story going and gave it a purpose. This particular "wisdom teaching" may not have been as obvious but it is definitely there. It "secretly" made the story into its final product.

There were so many teachings that one could grasp from the story "The Necklace". The ones that I happened to grasp and get out of it were the two main teachings. One was rather obvious and shown throughout most of the story, this was envy. Mathilde had no right to show this feeling but yet she did and myself as a reader has learned from it. There is still the matter that there are teachings that weren't so obvious like trust and promises and the relationship between them. This was a little bit harder to see but if you look hard enough it's the teaching that shaped top whole entire story. So the two teachings that I found were the felling and consequences of showing envy towards other people, and the relationship between trust and promises.