And now the first half of the stylistic analysis of "The Necklace". I've managed to write everything till the stylistic devices only, but I'm working at the continuation. Hope, you'd enjoy the reading! Have a nice time!!!!!!!)))))))

          The short story under analysis “The Necklace” is written by a popular 19^th-century French writer Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant, who is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form’s finest exponents. He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for S.Maugham and O.Henry in this respect. His stories about expensive jewelry (“The Necklace”, “La parure”) are imitated with a twist by Maugham (“Mr. Know-All”, “A String of Beads”) and Henry James (“Paste”).

          Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-realistic and fantastic modes; stories and novels such as “L’Heritage” and “Bel-Ami” aim to recreate Third Republic France in a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably “Le Horla” and “Qui sait?”) describe apparently supernatural phenomena.

          The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom of the protagonists’ troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886. This interest is reflected in his fiction.

          Maupassant is notable as the subject of one of Leo Tolstoy’s essays on art: “The Works of Guy de Maupassant”.

          Friedrich Nietzsche’s autobiography mentions him in the following text:

“I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample – for their number is by no means small, ... or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Guy de Maupassant”.

          The story is devoted to a woman who loses her friends necklace and spends ten years of her life paying for the jewel. This woman (Mathilde Loisel) wasn’t happy because she wasn’t rich but wanted to live bohemian life:

“…Her tastes were simple because she had never been able to afford any other, but she was as unhappy… She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains. All these things, of which other women of her class would not even have been aware, tormented and insulted her”.

       To my mind, this short title “The Necklace” is symbolic in the story. The simplicity of the title is common in many of Maupassant’s novels. The necklace is representative of the riches and expensive material possessions that Mathilde wastes her time pining after. Importantly, the necklace that Mathilde borrows from her friend, instead being glamorous and satisfying, dooms Mathilde into a state of poverty and despair. Maupassant expresses Mathilde’s greed saying that when she first saw the necklace, “her heart began to beat covetously”, but Mathilde only enjoyed very temporary satisfaction. Mathilde got of one night of being accepted among rich people, which in the end left her with ten years of suffering. The story is pessimistic and upsetting, and the emphasis on the necklace, especially as the title, reveals that emphasizing material things is harmful and fruitless. 

          The title encourages the reader to focus on the symbolism of the necklace in the story. The theme of fatalism is emphasized in this title, for each time the necklace is brought into the plot of the story, it involves an event where “fate had blundered” over some character. The first time the necklace is brought up, Mathilde is borrowing the necklace from of friend, so that she, doomed into a middle class social status, can pretend for one night to be part of a more fortunate class of people. The next time the necklace is spoken of, it is the cause of a “fearful catastrophe”, its misfortune disappearance which causes Mathilde lots of grief. Then, the final time the necklace is brought up, Mathilde discovers that, as fate would have it, the necklace she spent so long replacing was worthless. Fate interacts with the characters every time the necklace comes into the story, and the title helps to focus the reader in on the necklace’s implications.

        In this short story there are many motifs and themes. However, the important ones, materialism and fatalism, are easily recognized because they revolve around the necklace. The reader knows to focus on these themes because the title encourages the reader to analyze the interaction of the necklace in the plot. Also the themes of wealth, of women and femininity, of pride and of suffering can be found in this story.

          The expensive nature of the necklace (the gorgeous piece of diamond jewelry) is not the only way in which wealth is central to this story. The main character of “The Necklace” is obsessed with wealth. She wants nothing else than to escape from her shabby middle-class life with a shabby middle-class husband and live the glamorous life for which she was born. She's so jealous of her one wealthy friend it hurts.   

       Mathilde Loisel is a 19th century French version of a desperate housewife. Because she’s a woman in a man’s world, she has almost no control over her life. She finds herself married to a husband she doesn’t care for, and cooped up in a house she despises. What she wants more than anything else is to be desirable to other men. And what’s particularly irritating is that she has all the “womanly virtues” she needs in order to be desirable: she’s charming, graceful and beautiful. She’s just doesn’t have the necessary wealth.

          This story is also about pride. Mathilde Loisel is a proud woman. She feels far above the humble circumstances she’s forced to live with by her common birth. In fact, her current situation disgusts her. It could be that it is also pride that prevents Mathilde and her husband from admitting they’ve lost an expensive necklace. After the loss of the necklace makes Mathilde poor, and her beauty fades, she may learn a pride of a different sort: pride in her own work and endurance.

          It’s also about nonstop suffering, caused by the cruelty of life and chance. At the opening, we meet Mathilde, the classic dissatisfied housewife, who spends her days weeping about how boring and shabby her life is. Mathilde finds one moment of real joy when she goes to a ball, but chance is cruel. Her happiest night becomes her worst nightmare when she loses the diamond necklace she borrowed. Then she and her husband experience a very different sort of suffering: the suffering of real poverty.

          The events in the analysed text happen in magical, glamorous city of lights, in Paris in the 1880s or so I’d say. The hint for such suggestion is that Mathilde dreams of being rich, but doesn’t seem to think a whole lot about being noble. If the story were set earlier, noble blood would have mattered more, and Mathilde probably would have thought about it just as much as money. At this point in time money practically makes nobility. Money’s what enables you to pay for the “high life”, and surround yourself with fancy, fabulous things. And the fancy, fabulous things that Mathilde fantasizes about – the oriental tapestries, “tall lamps of bronze”, the “precious bric-a-brac” in “coquettish little rooms” – all hint at the fashions of the time, as does the intimate, small-party social life that she idolized. So, the setting of the events in the given story is realistic. It’s presented in a detailed way. It provides a historical and cultural context that contributes to our understanding of the characters.

          From the point of view of presentation the story is the third-person omniscient, to my mind. The story’s focus is certainly on Mathilde, but the narrator does not speak from her point of view. Instead, he talks about Mathilde as if he were from the outside looking in. When he brings her up at the beginning, she’s just “one of those girls”. It sounds like he’s seen a lot more of them than just this one. Mathilde’s also not the only character whose thoughts he can see into; he’s able to speak into her husband’s thoughts just as easily, when he wants to.

          The characters we meet in the text under analysis are Mathilde Loisel (the main character), M. Loisel, Mme. Jeanne Forestier and M. Georges Ramponneau (the secondary characters). The writer reveals all the characters, especially, the main one – Mathilde, by means of narrative summary without judgment. Maupassant’s descriptions of his characters are an interesting mix of detachment and intimate understanding. He sees into the emotions of Mathilde clearly, and can make us as readers feel “inside” her world. But the narrator doesn’t share her emotions, and we don’t either. That doesn’t mean Maupassant seems cold or indifferent to the characters, though. In the few telling moments when he moves beyond detachment, it is to express what looks like sympathy, or even admiration:
“Mme. Loisel learned the horrible life of the needy. She made the best of it, moreover, frankly, heroically. The frightful debt must be paid. She would pay it”.
Maupassant’s detachment also keeps his narration from ever being judgmental, which is remarkable. You might want to judge Mathilde, but Maupassant never does. 

          The plot of the story runs as follows:

•    The introduction. At the beginning of the story, essentially nothing happens. The narrator’s interested in telling us about Mathilde (even though we don’t yet know her name). We learn about her back-story, her character, and her unhappiness with her mediocre life.

“SHE WAS ONE OF THOSE PRETTY AND CHARMING GIRLS BORN,… She would weep whole days, with grief, regret, despair, and misery”.

•    The exposition. The action proper begins when M. Loisel (Mathilde’s husband) comes home with the invitation to the fabulous ball and Mathilde reacts by having a fit. Now we have a specific problem: Mathilde’s now has the best opportunity she’s ever had to have a taste of the high life, but she has nothing to wear. That problem sets the rest of the plot in motion.

“One evening her husband came home with an exultant air, holding a large envelope in his hand…"And what do you suppose I am to wear at such an affair?"”.

•    The story itself.

“He had not thought about it; he stammered… She took off the garments in which she had wrapped her shoulders, so as to see herself in all her glory before the mirror”.

•    The climax. The necklace is missing! Mathilde’s discovery is the most exciting and dramatic moment in the story. It’s also the turning point in the plot. Before, the story was a build-up to Mathilde’s one glorious night with the rich and famous. Now it transitions into a desperate search. We have a feeling things are not going to end well.

“But suddenly she uttered a cry. The necklace was no longer round her neck!”

•    The denouement. When Mathilde meets Mme. Forestier on the Champs Elysées, it looks like we’re just about to tie up the last loose end in the story. The main action is over – the Loisels have finally finished paying off their debts for the necklace. All that remains is for Mathilde to see whether her friend ever noticed the substitute necklace, and tell her the sad story of the whole affair. But then things don’t quite wrap up the way we expect.

 “One Sunday, as she had gone for a walk along the Champs-Elysees… And she smiled in proud and innocent happiness”.

•    The conclusion. Sometimes critics say that the twist ending is the climax of the story, but I guess, that it’s rather the conclusion.

“Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two hands."Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs! . . . "”.

          The type of speech employed by the author of the analysed text is a mixture of narration and description with direct speech (dialogues).