The Necklace Group

Question:

strozier40
strozier40
Student
High School - 10th Grade

In The Necklace, compare and contrast what Madam Loisel was like before she lost the necklace and years later after she lost it.

Please give me some ideas of how she was before losing the necklace until she repaid the debt years later.

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Posted by strozier40 on Thursday July 19, 2007 at 11:47 AM and tagged with character, madame loisel, the necklace.

Answers:


  1. bmadnick Teacher
    High School - 11th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    Prior to losing the necklace, Madame Loisel wanted to be part of the upper class, feeling that money and nice things would somehow make her a better person. She's beautiful and feels she is "born for every delicacy and luxury" life has to offer. When she's invited to the ball, she's afraid her drab wardrobe isn't good enough to wear to the ball. She borrows a necklace from Madame Forestier for the ball and has the best night of her life at the ball. She loses the borrowed necklace and is afraid to tell her friend she lost the necklace. She replaces it with a diamond necklace that takes Madame Loisel many years to pay off. During that time, she lives in poverty. She loses all of her physical beauty due to all of her hard work.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/necklace

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    Posted by bmadnick on Thursday July 19, 2007 at 1:54 PM


  2. sagetrieb Teacher
    Doctorate

    In considering comparison and contrast, it is useful, after identifying the similarities and differences, to ask the “so what?” question.  In other words, what is the thematic significance to how she is described at the beginning and how she is described at the end as a result of her experiences, namely, losing the necklace and living in poverty to pay for it?  Or, what is the significance in character?  Does she really change?  Madame Loisel tells her friend, "Yes, I have had a pretty hard life, since I last saw you, and great poverty--and that is  because of you!"  If she has lived a life of poverty, has she become more humble, changed her understanding of what is important in life, changed her values?  The irony of course is that she suffered to pay back something that she thought had value and did not.  Does this sentence, then, suggest to us that she now understands the meaning of value? While you need to think this out for yourself, I think that she does not, that her voice is full of resentment, and so her values in fact have not changed at all, she is every bit as superficial and vain at the end of the story as she is at the beginning.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/necklace

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    Posted by sagetrieb on Friday July 20, 2007 at 6:42 AM