What surprised me about this story was that Madame Forestier said at the end that her necklace was fake. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs. the couple had worked hard and lived in poverty for ten years to buy the necklace. Little did they know that it was just a fake.
What intrigued me about this story was that when the necklace was lost, I was curious to know what the couple would do. How do they compensate for this expensive necklace for them.
What confused me was the fact that the heroine was a very vain person. She thinks she was born to have expensive jewelry and live a good life. Mathilde spends all her time doing heavy housework. she is no longer as beautiful as before, she looks like other women from poor families. Ten years passed in this way.
3 thoughts on “Jiaying Discussion 9”
Jiaying, thanks for the interesting thoughts. It is a bit confusing that the Mathilde continues to be proud and vain up to the very end despite the fact that she has become old and worn—everything has never wanted to be. She is still proud, thinking (until the last moment) that her taste in jewels is so good that she even fooled her wealth friend.
I absolutely agree with you, Jiaying; it was unexpected to learn that the jewelry was a fake at the very end. It’s interesting to see how something so small and unimportant can drastically alter the course of someone’s life. The news is made more heartbreaking by the fact that the couple had worked so hard and suffered poverty for ten years in order to pay off the loan for the necklace. Just like you, I was also curious to learn how the pair would react to the necklace’s disappearance. It’s obvious that they were upset by it, and it says a lot about them as people that they didn’t try to avoid responsibility or lay the blame elsewhere.
Hi Jiaying, I agree with you. The surprise at the ending that the original necklace was fake blew me away; they should have explained what had happened to Ms. Forestier and then taken it from there. But they went ten years paying back all those loans when honestly, they could have had a better future with all that money. “Honesty is the best policy.”The heroine thinks she was “born with a silver spoon in her mouth.”