/ssrg/ Short Story Reading Group: The Necklace

Not only could you do so, but it would be most welcome! This is a very short first story. I'd expect it to only take about half an hour.

I am not certain what pace we should aim for. Some wanted only one story a week, others two, one guy said having two a week would kill it quickly, but I don't know why. One recommended set days for discussion. This could work as well. We could have Reading Announcement threads with some discussion in spoiler tags, and then a real Discussion thread on e.g. Wednesday and Saturday for open discussion. If anyone has suggestions as to the pace, please say so.

Use spoiler tags as you deem it necessary. If everyone seems to have already read the story, don't bother, but the current sentiment seems to be that people have not read it just yet.

I'm sorry we're upsetting your booktuber/DFW/cuck/bait threads. Thankfully there's a hide button if you want to browse Veeky Forums without having to deal with threads about reading or literary discussion.

u niggers better b reading mavis gallant.

Better poll link because I greentexted the wrong shit:

>Poll for The Necklace
strawpoll.me/11963009

plan out the week, then maybe we could use the weekend,s Sat and Sun, for anons to catch up and we can use those days as a general discussion of all the stories read. Then we could plan the next week, discuss authors or stuff like that. but we're at a good start. just a suggestion.

Reading it right now.

Just finished Christmas Carol, made me cri evrytim, time for this one now

So do we start discussing?

It feels like a story I've read, or known, yet I'm sure I've never read this specific one. I have never read de Maupassant before, though I've seen his name on Veeky Forums a few times. His writing is more understandable than I expected from a name dropped on Veeky Forums.

I was surprised to the depths he pushed the Loisel's suffering in order to show the pain which pride brings them. And even after years, thinking Madame Forestier never knew about the switch brought a smile to her face. Though in the end, she finally gets her comeuppance with the truth about the necklace.

Did Mathilde grow as a character? She's just as prideful as ever, but has the 10 years of hard times dashed her aspirations of becoming a wealthy woman?

Cribbing from the Wiki article, Mathilde resembles the necklace - a falsely wealthy appearance.

Saw the ending coming which kind of ruined it for me.

I've only read one de Maupassant story(Two Friends, it's really good) so I'm not so well versed on his style, however it is more understandable than most authors on Veeky Forums.

The story revolves around the notion that our ultimate goal as humans to be seen as better than our peers, as described by Mathilde's daydreams of living in an elegant household. We'd throw away our pride to illustrate superiority rather than stay true to ourselves. I feel the flower offered by her husband represents the acceptance of the conditions of her life, whereas the necklace represents her desperation for luxury, or perhaps the mask we use to paint the picture of false beauty.

Her losing the necklace is a representation of the destruction left by such an ambition. The actions we make that are caused by this thirst are bound to lead to catastrophe.

It's evident that Mathilde's character did not grow, since she has allowed the thirst to still eat at her mind, allowing her envy for Forriester she had at the beginning of the story grow immensely.[\spoiler]

Thoughts?

My new years resolution is to bury these daily threads. Bye bye, fags.

Remember to reread the story! That way we can discuss even more after resding it again and noticing things we didn't in a first reading.

I like your interpretation of the rose and her losing the necklace being the comeuppance for her ambition. I would add that I think the loss of the necklace was just a trigger, and not the true comeuppance for her ambition. Had she decided to tell her friend about the lost necklace, she'd have suffered very little.

Rather, her true imprisonment is the one she imposes on herself. Maintaining her pride, refusing to tell her friend, and thereby forcing herself to endure 10 years of suffering.

As Dickens writes in A Christmas Carol, "his offenses carry their own punishment". No external contrivance or karma has brought her down. It was her own doing.

The husband didn't deserve that at all though. Why didn't he just tell Forestier himself?

He may have thought telling her wouldn't have improved the situation, and that if it would have his wife would surely have done so.

So couldn't we assume this was the same reason Mathilde didn't tell Forestier? Why should we say it was purely out of pride?

Did Mathilde really "suffer continually" to begin with? She had a maid and a contented husband.

>She had no expensive dresses, no jewelry, nothing.

But she had the dress she'd go to theater in.

Is the husband a fully sympathetic character? Did not he too have plans for his little stash of money?

The husband, I think, by wanting to shoot with friends was aspiring to something practical and fitting his class. Such a thing has no deception.

I found the introduction to be interesting. The section containing "Natural fineness, instinct for what is elegant, suppleness of wit, are the sole hierarchy, and make from women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies." paints ladies of the period as the people with the best chance of upward mobility, and sort of provides them with more agency than men, who are bound by caste and rank. It gives Mme. Loisel the potential for a lot of agency.

Otherwise I found the short story to be sort of interesting in a Lovecraft or magazine literature sort of way(like dickens or sherlock holmes). You had a point the author was sort of hammering(don't be prideful) which was embodied in the hamartia of the main character.

Pride leads the wife to asking the husband for the most she can get out of him. Pride leads her to borrowing the necklace and then being too embarrassed to be seen wearing her poor wraps to wait for a taxi near the other guests and then lose it in a shitty taxi. Pride leads to lying about the necklace and going in debt.

If she had realized her pride at any point, it wouldn't be her undoing, but she doesn't which makes it hamartia. Definitely a simple read, but pleasurable and quick like a magazine or nap.

>Did Mathilde really "suffer continually" to begin with? She had a maid and a contented husband.

No, I'm unable to read that as anything but ironic. She suffers for the first time after losing the necklace.

>Is the husband a fully sympathetic character? Did not he too have plans for his little stash of money?

He comes across that way to me, if a pushover.

>I found the introduction to be interesting. The section containing "Natural fineness, instinct for what is elegant, suppleness of wit, are the sole hierarchy, and make from women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies." paints ladies of the period as the people with the best chance of upward mobility, and sort of provides them with more agency than men, who are bound by caste and rank. It gives Mme. Loisel the potential for a lot of agency.

There's also the implication that all women see themselves as rightful royalty, though, and as too good to settle for a lesser rank. The story is in many ways a misogynistic one. Whether that misogyny is justified depends on how true to life Mathilde's actions are and how uncomfortable they are for that reason. The husband strikes me as just a personification of a long-suffering 'nice guy' type as a foil to female vices (he has no name).

Mme. Forestier didn't even notice her cheap jewelry had been replaced by diamonds for ten years. Their lives were ruined over something that literally doesn't matter.

Is no one going to comment how similar this is to Madame Bovary?

The writing is a bit more sparse than I would have expected for the period.

From Sandra Smith's The Necklace and Other Stories

>ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Born in Normandy, Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) and his younger brother, Hervé, were raised by their mother, Laure Le Poittevin, after she and his father separated in 1861. After being expelled from a Catholic school for his disrespectful attitude toward religion, Guy was sent to a boarding school in Rouen. There he met the writer Louis Bouilhet, a close friend of Gustave Flaubert. Both writers mentored Maupassant, and Flaubert, already at the height of his fame when the young Maupassant met him, would have the greatest influence on his writing.

>In 1869, Maupassant enrolled as a law student in Paris, but a year later, at the start of the Franco-Prussian War, he was drafted to work in the military administration in Rouen. After a brutal French defeat at the Battle of Sedan, Maupassant witnessed the army’s retreat to Le Havre firsthand. The stories in “Tales of War,” this volume’s second section, reflect Maupassant’s own feelings about the German victors, and ultimately contributed to his profound view of the absurdity of war and the essential bleakness of the human condition.

>After France’s humiliating defeat in 1871, Maupassant left the army to continue his law studies and was appointed to a position at the Ministry for the Navy. However, thanks to the intercession of Flaubert, he became increasingly involved in Parisian literary life, meeting some of the most important writers of his day: Mallarmé, Zola, Daudet, Huysmans, Edmond de Goncourt, as well as many others. His first critical article on Flaubert was published in 1876, followed by a collection of stories, Les Soirées de Médan, which included Boule de suif, one of his best-known novellas. Critics finally recognized Maupassant as a major writer in 1885 with the publication of his novel Bel-Ami. During his brief career, Maupassant was extremely prolific, writing over 300 short stories and six novels, many of them relating to madness and the macabre, themes that are explored in this volume’s third section, “Tales of the Supernatural.” Largely written near the end of his short life, these stories are thought to be influenced by his own debilitating struggle with mental illness in the last decade of his life.

>Maupassant suffered from the symptoms of advanced syphilis, including a decline into madness that led him to attempt suicide on New Year’s Day in 1892. A week later, he was interned in Dr. Blanche’s clinic in Paris. He died there the following year at the age of 42.

that fucking ending! wow. reading some of your guys comments, Mme. Loisel was materialistic in my opinion. She just had to have the dress , the jewelry, to fit in among the rich. The way the story was describing the way women were supposed to be in society? or how they were ranked i guess, was kind of setting the way the story was set or the context, i don't know if that makes sense but i guess how the classes saw themselves in their time period. It was a very good story, kind of made me think that people sometimes will not change no matter what life throws at them, like how at the ending, Mme. Loisel still placed a lot of value in the necklace, while Mme. Forestier had forgotten about it already, the story doesn't say what happened to the necklace, not from what i can recall.
The story also teaches us a lesson, a lesson about values and what we should consider valuable? Look at how much pain and hardship Mme Loisel had to endure over a necklace that ended up not being a big deal, maybe if she had trust her friendship more with Mme. Forestier, she would have avoided everything. Same thing with her marriage, she put that in danger because the husband had nothing to do with her mistake, he was just trying to make her happy, he valued marriage over a necklace but was influenced by his wife and in doing so was ruined financially.
Cant wait to read your comments lads, great story to begin with. This is just what i got from the story after one read though, i'll read it again and try to come up with more.

>cant open on my phone

Found a copy online. Its six pages? Will get on it after work!

clicnet.swarthmore.edu/litterature/classique/maupassant/parure.html
Here it is for non plebs

ciudadseva.com/texto/el-collar/
Spanish translation

I read this story several years ago in secondary school lit class, and didn't think much of it besides having an interesting twist, but after gaining more life experiences and reading it a second time I got a deeper message about humility and materialism here.

The way I see it, the problem presented to the reader is Mathilde's inability to cope with middle-class life. It's heavily emphasised in the introduction that she believed that she deserved more for a woman of her stature. I'm not too familiar with how society worked in France in that era but I believe that this line:

>since with women there is neither caste nor rank; and beauty, grace, and charm act instead of family and birth. Natural fineness... are the sole hierarchy

Is an assumption or thought by Mathilde, not an assertion by the narrator. This line is immediately contrasted with Mathilde’s bemoaning of her humble lifestyle. The irony is that if Mathilde truly believed that “beauty, grace, and charm” would make her the equal “of the very greatest ladies”, she wouldn’t have valued material wealth as highly as she did, which lead to her downfall.

Mathilde’s angst is fueled by her forgetting of her social position. But that is remedied through ten years of work. I think that the suffering she goes through here is greatly exaggerated by readers. Wives of her social standing (middle-class) would most definitely have to do the chores. Having a peasant to do housework for her was already a luxury, which she didn’t acknowledge because of her forgetting of her social standing as mentioned before (correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not familiar with the history). By the end of the story, by embracing her lot in life, Mathilde is contented with middle-class life, and her relationship with her husband is implied to have improved. Her contentment is best summed up with her line to Madame Forestier before confessing the truth about the necklace:

>And she smiled with a joy which was proud and naive at once.

(1/2)

Our protagonist is proud for the first time in the story. Through experiencing hardship for the first time together with her husband, she no longer takes what she has for granted, no longer dreams of trinkets and tapestries and furniture far beyond her reach, no longer blames her husband and has become a better human being.

Which leads me to the conclusion that the message from the author is that women of that era should be contented with what they had at the time. As mentioned in , upward social mobility would be possible, but should be viewed as a privilege and not a right as our tragic protagonist is implied to believe. Marrying into an upper caste was a chance, not a right.

Was the story misogynistic? Not exactly. Mathilde goes through a great deal of personal growth from losing the necklace.. Had the author/story truly had a prejudice or disdain for women, I’m sure that Mathilde would be as upset and discontented with having to 'become the woman of impoverished households’ as she was at 'the wretched look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains’ before losing her necklace.

When I read the story for the first time, I felt that the husband was quite the valiant character and I still do so now. He puts his wife’s needs before his own, offering to pay for her dress instead of his gun he was saving for without hesitation and doesn’t utter a single complaint or blamed his wife for her stupid mistake. He serves also as a contrast to Mathilde with his contentment with his social position.

>her husband, who uncovered the soup-tureen and declared with an enchanted air, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu! I don't know anything better than that," she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware...

The story ends before Mathilde’s reaction to the revelation. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but I like to think that she spent the rest of her days happily with her husband.

(2/2)

The hypergamy of women ruins another man!

He's poor - aka not very smart.

The story represents the superiority of eastern religion and values (the husband) over the west (mathilde)

>And she smiled with a joy which was proud and naive at once.

It seems she finally puts value behind accomplishing such a feat through hard work, as opposed to putting value on those things which are generally endowed at by chance: beauty, grace, and charm--luxury.

First time I've ever read Maupassant, found it a good read, simple story but very well crafted. I don't know if I agree with the general sentiment that the story was about class. I'm more with in that the point was about her wanting to be what she isn't and living through the perception others have of you. Good point about the rose/necklace too.

I disagree with you though, I think the character did grow. At the beginning she could not feel content with what she had and dreamed of
>"long salons fitted up with ancient silk, of the delicate furniture carrying priceless curiosities, and of the coquettish perfumed boudoirs made for talks at five o'clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire"
Notice the allusion to friends and attention from famous men. She does not desire those things for herself, from a purely materialistic standpoint, but only as a means to impress others and gain their approval (once again the attention of important men is what made her happy in the dance, not the necklace or being elegant).
However by the end of the story she is not concerned with appearances anymore. She feels no shame in approaching her rich friend, and makes no attempt to hide her situation. She no longer feels the need to live through others. And that is why, even though she is in a worse situation than at the beginning, she appears to be much more content with it.

Very interested read! The author does leave the ending open a bit for interpretation. Has she truly settled into lower/middle-class life, and is the smile a mark of her uninterrupted pride or a mark of her newfound pride in her current way of life. Would she even be unhappy with news that the necklace was fake? And even if she were at first, after time would she even regret it?

A lot of our reading of her "suffering" is our own interpretation and feelings regarding the manual work of a woman of her class and era, and not necessarily her own feelings or the feelings of her peers.

Is the east superior because it is ignorant and content in whatever comes its way?

Or is the west superior because it suffers and struggles to obtain what it has and becomes wiser and happier for it?

>becomes wiser and happier for it?
um

>However by the end of the story she is not concerned with appearances anymore.
But she still relishes the idea that she managed to replace the necklace without her friend knowing.

The Necklace was one of the last stories in my collection of Maupassant's short stories and I thought it to be one of his lesser ones, at the very least disappointing.

Who all has bought The World's Greatest Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)? eBook or paperback?

I read it. I liked it. Cheers OP

I did not enjoy it to be honest, folks. The whole thing reads like a cheap MRA advert
>woman who dares to want better things in life is a cunt incapable of seeing past material gains and social status
>her friend is an example of happiness because she's perfectly content and happy with small things, nevermind her being rich af in the first place
>husband is an infallible paragon of virtue
Slapping Mathilde's suffering with a gotcha moment in the end only furthers the notion of the authors refusal to treat her character with fairness

Do you think the world an author creates should omnipotently endeavor to cure all a character's faults and provide them a comfy world to live in without causing them any stress?

I feel like you are focusing too much on the use of a woman as the main character, and deriving criticism from that one point.

The Necklace was the first short story that I read, back when i was still a kid. I absolutely loved it and have some great memories associated with the time.

Is The Necklace a parable?

The husband and her rich friend barely get any characterization idk how you made all these assumptions

Don't want to hate on the story, i liked it, but is this considered "great" to you guys? or am i just not appreciating it enough.

Not the user youre replying to but what are you on about? It's clearly stated that the husband willingly gives up his own private savings just to please her rather than indulge himself. Furthermore he is complicit in the charade and the working of the debts.

You could say that's the husband-ly thing to do, but when was working yourself to the bone to correct the mistake of your missus, which he not once blames or even moans at not his missus, or even give up without grievance his own aspirations something he HAD to do. He was kind

How come the author didn't pay attention to the husband and what it was like those 10 years

I think it was alright. I liked it but it was nothing mindblowing IMO. We'll get to Borges, Hemingway, Chekov, dunno if Kafka and Joyce too, but those are what I would consider great.

It's not really that great--it's just the first. It is a quick read with a fair amount to discuss. The great stuff will be incoming I imagine.

I was a bit disappointed by it, but at the same time I tried to get from it what I could. The discussions we've had in this thread have greatly increased my enjoyment of the story and I'd encourage you to participate in them as well, to glean from it what you can.

I once read a short story in college and thought it was utter shit. Then a few years pass, and my opinion of it changed significantly. I'm not saying this is the same, but it's a possibility.

I expect future stories to be better. As another user noted, this was actually one of his least favorite de Maupassant stories.

But she still was dreaming about a life with luxury, no?
There's this quote:

>But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window, and she thought of that gay evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so feted.

I think that by the end Mathilde still hasn't became fully happy with her life. Sure, she is more conscious of her position, but there's this thing, this over preoccupation with the material side.

>And she smiled with a joy which was proud and naive at once

I think this isn't giving a sense of full contentment. The word "naive" indicate a person yet bestowing too much credit to a thing that was never important, the necklace. Maybe after the last reveal she could see what was important, but never before that.

>tfw you will never hunt larks with Monsieur Loisel

Don't remind me, user.

Pretty good story, about human idiosyncrasies of vanity, pride, and the construct of status. Maupassant stories always have a very serene, provincial approach to their subject matter and I quite like them, reminds me of some tolstoy short stories I've read

Kek

>tfw made a play out of this
>almost won if not for the shitty time limit
great story though desu

I don't think it's possible that she went through 10 years without going through any personal growth. Note that Mathilde initially regarded housework beneath her, but she adapts to it perfectly eventually. It's impossible to adapt so well without having a change of mindset.

She probably wasn't fully content with her life, but then again, who is? In the end she becomes a less angsty, bratty person through struggle, a theme I greatly enjoy.

Because he's a plot device and this is a 3000 word short story.

It's perfectly fine to want for better things in life, but to do so to the extent that that want eclipses all pleasures of your current life is unacceptable. You should reread the first few paragraphs and Mathilde's interaction with her husband.

>Two Friends

This story is fucking incredible

I'm not saying that she went all these years without growing as a person, she learned something. But I think that she only grasped the full irony of her story after the reveal. Just then she fully gets what's really important

When making the schedule for these threads, keep in mind that most of the stories in the collection are significantly longer than this one. This not only means that they have more content to discuss, but also that everyone here will need more time to read each periodical story before joining the thread. Veeky Forums is a slow board.

Yeah, the use of one-sentence paragraphs gave a very punchy feel at the climax of the story, and at the end I enjoyed the reference back to the two friends understanding each other perfectly in the introduction

Lit isn't that slow. A thread dies in under 12 hours.

I am looking at the length of the story. This one was short so I only allotted 3 days.

What sort of schedule should I aim for? I have Bartleby scheduled for five days, from Thursday through Monday (moved it up one day). Is that long enough?

This one took me 20 minutes to read, unless you're the busiest person alive these shouldn't be too encumbering on your time. I've already read Bartleby, I don't remember exactly how long it took me as it was about a year ago but definitely one sitting

I estimate Bartleby will take 74 minutes and The Necklace to take 15 minutes.

How many minutes of reading per night could I expect of people? 20? 25? 30?

I am trying to post notice of the next reading ahead so that if people want to begin discussing on Thursday they may do so, but I'd also like people to be able to read it within the allotted days. 5 days for Bartleby is 15 minutes of reading a day. Is this too slow, too fast, or just right?

Someone in the other thread said they worried reading 2 stories a week would ruin the group, but I'm not sure if they meant it was too slow or too fast.

Bartleby is next? You are in for a treat. I absolutely love this story.

>he didn't read OP

what do you mean by this?

>Bartleby is next?

Bump. Final day for discussion!

Any new readers?

I read this in my own free time in highschool and got Veeky Forums point from teach for bringing it up in class discussion. It's one of the few short stories out there that actually made me feel, I mean that ending is just fucked up. The whole thing is, but what really pissed me off is the whole thing could have been avoided had there not been a lack of communication. That of course was probably one of the intents of the author. What I don't get is why he's pushing this ideology that wanting more out of life is bad. There's nothing inherently wrong with liking to pamper yourself and indulge yourself in materialistic beauty, but he insistists on writing this story seemingly focused on housewives with the intent of demonizing the liking of materialistic pleasure. I mean, this woman isn't a necessarily bad person, but she's made to look like a selfish bimbo that takes her loving husband's money.
>inb4 that's how real womyn are /r9k/ posts
Seeming that her wealthy friend didn't act this way, I don't think the message is sexist, but Marxist propaganda warning the lower class to stay in their place instead of trying to mingle with the bourgeoisie.

Is not an obsession with material acquisition a vice worth condemning?

The author doesn't necessarily make a judgment about her. Bad things do happen to her, but as you say they could have been avoided. She could have avoided them.

>What I don't get is why he's pushing this ideology that wanting more out of life is bad.
I think the author's point isn't to condemn wanting material wealth, but rather to say that chasing after social status and craving attention will lead to ruin.

The main character never cared about actually being wealthy, she cared about giving off the appearance of being high-status. She needed the necklace instead of the flowers because she was afraid of looking poor at the ball. By extension, she was afraid of telling her rich friend that she lost the necklace because of her obsession with appearances.

Also, as a bit of symbolism, perhaps the fake diamond necklace represents her false ambitions toward appearing high-class.

I believe that material obsession and greed are bad and that that idea was well executed. I do not however believe materialism itself is outright bad. Although the author does not seem to make an opinion on her, he does show clear preference against materialism itself to get his message across. The ending she got could have been avoided, but had that happen the author wouldn't have been able to get his message across as potently to the audience. 9/10 story telling, I just was not as fond of the message, which is quite alright.

I certainly had not thought of it that way, but it makes much more sense, so thank you. Now that you've mentioned it, her focus really is much more on the apearence of being of high status. As for the symbolism, I thought that was apparent, but it backs up my theory that the story was intended to show people of separate class should not try to join a higher class because the do not belong, as a fake diamond cannot ever be a real diamond no matter how close the resemblence is to the real thing.

final days lads! get your final thoughts out before the new story! this next one seems good too.

OP , you think it would be good if i post some background info of the autthor like someone did for the last story? don't want to ruin the thread if anons don't want to know that stuff, what do you think?

Please do. I am trying to find some criticism of works to post as well. If anyone can find some to share it too would be appreciated.

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