Conflict in Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace

In Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace, our main character, Mathilde Loisel, is a housewife who resents her position in life and often dreams of what it would be like should she ever have what wealthier families and women have. Her husband honestly tries to make her happy, and, while one attempt succeeds, an incident only minutes later leads to their lives changing drastically as both try to fix the mistake. Maupassant  uses his own life experiences to convey the image of a peasant women trying to make her way in the world, and that of the people he has known who are in demeaning or disastrous situations. The literary term I have chosen for this tool box is conflict, which occurs when some person or force in the story opposes the protagonist, whether that is internally or externally.

                There are a few examples of conflict in The Necklace, including the internal and external. One internal conflict is the one Mathilde holds within herself, in which she struggles with who she is compared to who she wants to be. Mathilde wants to be like her peers, while she still has beauty, she longs for the wealth to dress and enjoy life as they do, but her husband’s job and position make that impossible. This leads to one of two external conflicts, where she and her husband have a disagreement about a party invitation that he has gone to great lengths to receive. Mathilde begins to complain that she has nothing to wear, which raises the suggestion of Mathilde borrowing jewelry from a friend. Mathilde decides to borrow a diamond necklace from a close friend, which she wears to the party. Soon after the party the necklace is lost and leads to the main conflict of the book: how to replace the necklace before her friend finds out. This causes Mathilde to begin another conflict against herself; who she was the night of the party, compared to who she has to become to repay the debt caused by replacing the diamond necklace.

                Conflict is a key element in any story, let alone a huge part of The Necklace. Without conflict in a story, there is no plot, no storyline; there is no point to a story if there isn’t a moral or something to fight for. Conflict allows the reader to figure out what characters believe by what he or she fought for in a conflict, and draws the reader into the story by raising the question of, “What would you do?” In The Necklace, conflicts rise and fall allowing the reader to choose sides, between what he or she feels is either right or wrong. These conflicts leave the reader in suspense as he she waits for each to be resolved, which makes for a very interesting story.