Research Paper on:
Literary Critique of Guy de Maupassant's 'The Necklace'

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
from life in terms of material wealth and stability. In the end she loses everything because of this desire, losses that could have been avoided with the truth. In the  following paper we provide an overall critical analyses of the story, offering many perspectives from which the student could examine various components and elements. Irony The most important  element in "The Necklace" is that of irony. As mentioned, this young woman desires wealth and material stability that goes beyond her and her husbands means. She is going to  a party and feels she needs something "rich" to wear. She knows a wealthy woman, an acquaintance/friend and she borrows a necklace from this woman. She merely assumes the necklace  is a diamond necklace and she wears it feeling incredibly worthy. However, she loses the necklace and rather than tell her friend she lost it, she puts herself and her  husband in a lifetime of debt to purchase a new diamond necklace. At the end of the story she discovers the necklace was a fake all along. One critic  states that, "In The Necklace, the main character Madame Loisel always wanted more than she had. The irony of the story occurs when she works herself haggard to pay off  the money she had borrowed to buy her friend a necklace that she lost.....All of her work was really for nothing" (Cortez ss1.html). It is through this irony that we  see how the author teaches us important themes. "The first is to be proud of what you are, no matter what wealth you may or may not have. Madame Loisel  was very unhappy with what she had" and did not "realize that a person can be content with whatever situation they have" (Cortez ss1.html). This sort of irony is evident