Draft 1
Name: JoJo.Chen
Date: May.7.2007
Draft Two
Title
“After the French Revolution (1789-1799), class distinctions remained an integral part of French society.”(38) It could be deduced that, though encountered the failure, the French upper bourgeoisie continued playing its role in impacting the value, which referred to aesthetic, life and most other things, of the masses. They were still envied or even worshiped because of the life they had. At least, at the first few years after the revolution.
Then there was no wonder for an ordinary girl, inclusive of Mathilde, to indulge herself in the fantasy of the upper class marked with luxury. And Guy de Maupassant, who was “born into an upper bourgeois family”(38), was sensitive enough to perceive this kind of phenomenon among the girls “born in a family of clerks”(38) like Mathilde. Out of the instinct of an author, Maupassant felt responsible to display the possible cruel consequence of this unrealistic fantasy. In the story, Mathilde toiled ten years to pay off the debt of an actual paste necklace, which should surely attribute to her unrealistic fantasy.
Firstly, the fantasy was gratrually driving Mathilde, through three steps, to tragedy.
Mathilde was a normal girl and married a normal man, but she could not stand “dressed plainly”(38). Nothing is more unendurable to her than “the poverty of her dwelling”, “the wretched look of the walls”,”the worn-out chairs” and “the ugliness of the curtains.”(38) This suggested some inner desire of Mathilde. Mathilde had a nature for pursuing a voluptuary life, which haunted in her mind previously and firmly. But the reality she lived in had a big difference from what she was dreaming of; therefore seeing all the surroundings was a torture. The only moment to get rid of that was when she was relishing the ideas of all the delicate things. Fantasy was the only comfort as well as the initial cause of her sufferings. It was understandable for Mathilde to be seized by fantasy, when reality are too far away from meeting it. This was the first step of the fantasy to do its crime, attracting Mathilde and making itself an indispensable part of her life.
To Mathilde, what’s more, her inability to obtain what she yearned for contributed to her tortures. Because she “had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded by any distinguished man”(38) The more she was dying for, the more she suffered; the more she felt her powerlessness, the more she abandoned herself in the fantasy. It was a desperate loop without end. This was the second step of the fantasy to do its crime, girping Mathilde even more firmly in its hands.
And from the later text “She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen.”(43), could we come to the conclusion that Mathilde war free from the housework before. The attendant result was that her chance to have a deep touch with the real life was diminished. If she spared a blink at the reality, things would turn out to be totally different: Mathilde would be more content with her life. In a manner of speaking, weltering overduely in the fantasy was a relatively dominating cause of reducing her contact to the real normal life. The door to the real life was shutted, now Mathilde had fallen the prey to her fantasy, totally.
Then happened a ball. After her husband told her the news, out of everyone’s expectation, Mathilde “threw the invitation on the table with disdain” (39). This reaction should be attributed to her fantasy, too. And from then on the fantasy began to drive Mathilde to do something. According to the fantasy, a ball without decent dress and jewels was not complete, and she would rather not to attend it if she had no ornament. So she was still frustrated, for “she had no dresses, no jewels, nothing.”(39) What she dreamed of was “to be pleased, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after”.(39) Although there was still a huge distance between the reality and her fantasy, it seemed to be a good chance to have an experience at what she was longing for. So it was imaginable for such a woman to make every sacrifice, including sacrificing her husband’s gun and going to borrow jewels from a friend “whom she did not like to go and see any more” (39), to realize it. The huge desire of experiencing the fantastic moment gave her an immense impulse to do anything to fulfill it. That was why Maupassant had written so long a text before describing how deeply Mathilde immersed in her fantasy. Mathilde herself probably didn’t even know she had walked the first step into the tragedy. Until this moment all the intricate foreshadowing for Mathilde’s later ten-year-toil was over.
Now her fantasy started to playing another role in her tradegy-- blinding her eyes.
After she enjoyed “the triumph of her beauty”(41),”the gory of her success”(41),and “a sort of cloud of happiness composed of all this homage”(41) came the tragedy: Mathilde tumbled to find that the necklace was lost.
A woman in such a circumstance did all she could: asking her husband to go the same way back and inquire the cab companies and writing a letter to her friend to make time for finding. But they were all in vain. At last, the only solution seemd to be buying a new one for replacement, and so she did.
But why didn’t she honestly tell her friend the truth and beg for her forgiveness? It never occurred to her mind. It should still owe to Mathilde’s fantasy: the upper class’s life just like she dreamed of everyday was so nice that there couldn’t be anything fake. In her fantasy there were only things like “dainty dinners”, “shining silverwar”and “delicious dishes server on marvelous plates”.(39) As to Mathilde, how could anything fake exist in this splendid world? She was blinded by her fantasy, therefore neglected the truth that a wealthy family didn’t entail everything true, especially jewels. When she saw the diamond necklace at the first sight, “her heart began to beat with immoderate desire and her hands trembled as she took it”.(41) She was too excited to think about distinguishing it true or fake. This was the first mistake resulted by her fantasy.
The overwhelming joy and the overdue confidence according to her fantasy also led her to neglect her friend’s words when she asked whether she could have it for the ball:”why, yes, certainly” (41). Such a series of short, immediate and positive agreements was much likely to contain something worth doubting, for instance, the necklace didn’t worth much and therefore the owner felt no worry to lend it out. Mathilde should notice that, but she lost the last opportunity to reverse the tragedy. Then the only thing left was a heavy debt which cost her ten-year toil, her youth and her beauty after the necklace was missing. If she had made a casual inquiry to her friend, how would she suffer that much?
Her tragedy was doomed by her fantasy. Mathilde was a typical figure, who helplessly abandoned herself in the fantasy of an upper class life, which was the fundamental cause to the borrowing of the necklace and certainly the whole consequence. And it is because she indulged too deeply in her fantasy that made her doubtless about the rich life which could probably contain something not genuine. She did not make the basic judgement and did not notice the suggestion veiled in her friend’s words, thus the only chance to know the truth before paying bitterly escaped. Ironically, it was not until the end of the story dawned the truth on her, and before that, during her ten-year-toil, she was still sometimes retrospecting her fantasy moment. “But sometimes, she sat down near the window, and she thought of that gay evening of lone age, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so feted.”(44) A woman paid a ten-year toil, which was the exactly opposite to her fantasy, in return for a one-night taste for her fantasy. How miserable, but perhaps that was why a woman was a woman.
At the very end of the story, Mathilde said nothing, but it could be easily figured out that all her fantasy about the upper class was crashed. And, of course, her own life, once ordinary but peaceful, was broken into pieces ruthlessly and worthlessly. Because the last thing she was “proud of”(44), repaying off the debts, was found meaningless and an ironic mistake.
Maupassant contrived such an unexpected and thought-provoking ending, while starting with a woman abandoned herself in the fantasy, to achieve his aim: displaying honestly the cruel consequence an unrealistic and excessive fantasy might bring about as a warning for the real life.