Madam Loisel's Emotions in The Necklace

Living a life where you’re not happy with what you have will always bring you down. You’d go out and see people with nice clothing and other accessories and toys that you wish you had or could afford. Most people nowadays aren’t happy because of this. In order for them to be happy, they simply thought that they need more money, more new stuff, or even a perfect life, which is out of the question because nobody’s perfect. In this case, Guy De Maupassant, the author of The Necklace, writes about a girl who just doesn’t have the best luck. She would always dream of having the “perfect life”, but it never came to her. Although Madame Loisel’s emotions stayed the same, she does have a moment where she feels better than everyone else in the world.
First, the emotion that Madame Loisel shows all the time is sadness and depression. She was the type of person who didn’t take what she had for granted. Madame Loisel always thought that she needed more and that more was better. She always dreamed of having a better house, and newer and better quality of clothes. Maupassant wrote “She would always weep for days on end from vexication, regret, despair, and anguish.”(7) When someone weeps, they’re sad. Madame Loisel was probably weeping because she didn’t have her perfect life, or any nice clothes and jewelry. She wanted to be envied and fascinating and sought after, which means that she didn’t want to be poor like she is, but interesting and to blow people away if they saw her. Therefore, she would always be sad because she didn’t live the life she always wanted.
Although Madame Loisel was sad and depressed, she finally had her happy moment. At dinner, her husband gave her an invitation to a dinner party. At first she did feel sad because she didn’t have anything to wear, but after borrowing a beautiful necklace from her friend and getting money to buy a new ravishing dress, she felt much better and happy. One of the best feelings in the world is being happy. Other people will love you if you’re happy because you’d be more cheerful and joyful. Maupassant writes “She danced madly, wildly, drunk with pleasure, giving no thought to anything in the triumph of her beauty, the pride of her success, in a kind of happy cloud composed of all the adulation, of all the admiring glances, of all the awakened longings, of a sense of complete victory that is so sweet to a women’s heart.”(38) In this quote, Madame Loisel is happy with herself. She is being admired with what she’s wearing and loves the attention. This was her moment. Where she could be perfect.
Shortly after she left the party, her bad luck comes back to her. Madame Loisel lost her friends necklace and she became miserable. After a few weeks of looking everywhere for it, they gave up and came up with the plan of buying a new one. She found an exact replica, which cost way more than she could afford, but she needed to get it. Because of this, she fired her maid, learned to do housework, and experienced the horrible life the needy live, which went on for ten years. Maupassant writes “She became heavy, rough, harsh, like one of the poor. Her hair untended, her skirts askew, her hands red, her voice shrill, she even slopped water on her floors and scrubbed them herself.”(81) This quote tells us that she started not to care anymore. This all happened because of losing the necklace, just because she didn’t want to hurt somebody, she ended up hurting herself. Even worse, years later, she saw her friend who she borrowed the necklace from and told her what happened. Surprisingly, her friend told her that she bought the necklace for much cheaper than what Madame Loisel needed to buy the replacement. Madame Loisel had to go through so much, for something that didn’t even matter to her friend.
In conclusion, Madame Loisel always has the worst luck, even when she has a good and happy moment, it always comes back. Although loosing the necklace made her life horrible, it did show us how good of a friend she is. That’s why people shouldn’t judge you on how you look, because people who you think are loyal and nice, aren’t, and probably wouldn’t do that for you. Madame Loisel might always dream of having a better life, but she should stop and realize that what she has in front of her is what’s best. Her husband had to work extra, and still managed to love her and do anything for her through this time. Perhaps if this story was different, and Madame Loisel didn’t have bad luck and she had her perfect life, the story wouldn’t have had gone through her miserable times and she would have just bought a new necklace in a second, or probably wouldn’t have lost the necklace in the first place.