She dreams without end about the fine things in life and how she would be happy if only she was rich and lived among other rich people. She hates her class and her life and herself.

Her husband seems to be the best-natured man in the world. He seems to love Mathilde and at every turn in the story is willing to give her whatever she wants. It is hard to believe that she has not manipulated him into buying things for her earlier in their marriage. They sit down to dinner before a pot of stew and her husband acts as if it were the finest meal from the most expensive restaurant. But she takes off on another daydream about "eating the pink flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail" (1132).

Maupassant makes sure that we know that this woman is obsessed with material things: "She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that; she felt made for that." She feels worthless without those things, and if she had them, she believes she would feel very valuable: "She would so have liked to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after" (1132). She cannot see that she is loved by her husband, that she pleases him, that she is charming to him.

She has come from a powerful family, and she believes she is superior because of that. He tells her that that was a long time ago, and she is no longer a part of anything powerful. She tells him his great-grandfather "had a plantation and two hundred slaves" and he says "There are no more slaves" (1282). She longs for the time when the relations between the races was clear, when whites controlled blacks and blacks knew their place. She is not against blacks improving themselves, but she believes that the races should remain separate.

de Maupassant, Guy. "The Necklace." 1131-1138.

has a rich friend, but she doesn't like to visit the woman because she feels worse than ever about her life when she comes back home.

She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. . . . I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side. . . . Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears . . . and. . . a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom (789-790).

The woman lends Mathilde the necklace without hesitation and she wears it to the ball. Mathilde was the hit of the ball, coming alive in her dress and necklace as never before. She is admired by all the men. She is "crazy with joy" and "danced with intoxication, with passion, made drunk by pleasure, forgetting all, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success" (1134).

The boy knows on some level that his feelings are so fragile that the