Dejonai Osborne
Ms. Holmes
Honors 10th Literature: Period 6
February 22, 2013
Wicked Charms Money is the instrument of exchange. It helps in buying and selling and also in fixing a value on things or services. Money does not have brain to think how to hurt people. It is the thought of humans to use money as a tool for an evil purpose. When a person loves money so much, they will become jealous of others with more money and they tend to try to get more money than the richer person in every possible way. They don’t care what it takes. But they soon lose sight of the more important things in life, like family and friends, and the money that they have no longer seems to have value. Likewise, in the story “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, the character Madame Loisel seems to think that living a luxurious life is all that is all that matters in life. After spending 400 francs on a dress, and borrowing a diamond necklace from a friend, she dances in a cloud of happiness at a grand ball. Yet, after losing the borrowed diamond necklace, she spends 10 years paying back the loans that it took to replace the necklace, only to find out that the original borrowed necklace was only imitation. Despite the fact that Madame Loisel never really had a lot of money, she proves the theme of the story: “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” because of her characteristics of being hypocritical, bourgeois, and superficial just to have one lavish night (New International Version, 1 Timothy 6:10). Madame Loisel’s hypocrisy of her life is based on her desire for money. Even before she married Monsieur Loisel, she had expectations of being the most prestigious lady in her town, saying that she was “born for every delicacy and luxury” (Maupassant 1). She thinks that she is just destined for the best in life, and everything should just be given to her. She sometimes even thinks that “she [has] married beneath her”, when she thinks of her husband, a middle-class clerk for the Ministry of Education, because women had no individual status, and were classed by their husband’s wealth and distinction (1). Madame Loisel is very hypocritical, because she herself was born “into a family of artisans”, meaning that her own family wasn’t very rich (1). How could Madame Loisel think that her husband should be financially able to give her such a lavish life, if her own background suggests that she should have simple, inexpensive tastes, after having “never been able to afford any other” (1)? Thus, Madame Loisel’s love for money makes her very hypocritical of her life and her husband. Madame Loisel is considered bourgeois because her love for money causes her to only care about materialistic things. She always wants the most expensive and exquisite items imaginable, and she cares about nothing less. Guy de Maupassant describes her longing for a rich life. He wrote:
She imagined silent antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by torches in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in large arm-chairs, overcome by the heavy warmth of the stove. She imagined vast saloons hung with antique silks, exquisite pieces of furniture supporting priceless ornaments, and small, charming, perfumed rooms, created just for little parties of intimate friends, men who were famous and sought after, whose homage roused every other woman's envious longings. She had no clothes, no jewels, nothing. And these were the only things she loved; she felt that she was made for them. She had longed so eagerly to charm, to be desired, to be wildly attractive and sought after. (1)
Madame Loisel shows that she thinks that she has to have material things in order to be thought of as beautiful or to be able to appeal to people. Because she does not have the most expensive items, then she thinks she does not have anything. She only thinks material things, and that her love for these things is what she always dreams about, not family or