Final Timed-writing
Sherry Yan
June 21, 2007
Timed-writing Three
Directions: From The Necklace, what might have been the quality of Mme. Loisel’s life if she had not lost the necklace? Is her life better or worse now?
If Mm. Loisel had not lost the necklace, she might have lived a completely different life. However, despite the fact that she was the focus of the feast with her beauty and the decoration of the necklace, I don’t think that from then on she would live a high-class life, in stead, after the night of a brilliant dream of a higher social rank and a much more luxurious life, Mm. Loisel might return to her normal life as a ordinary and unnoticeable wife of a bourgeoisie.
The reason I make such speculation is that in the society of that time, there existed so wide and deep a gap between different classes that it was almost impossible for people of the lower caste to climb up the ladder of the social ranks. It is true that Mm. Loisel was a very charming young woman and attracted many people of the higher class at the feast, however, she was born into a bourgeoisie family and married to a man of the same class, both of which had decided the fact that she was completely bourgeoisie. People may appreciate her beauty, but they may not forget her social rank, since it is perhaps something that people focus on most when observing a person at that time. Even if the necklace had not been lost, the fact that she belonged to the middle class would never alter and her pompous night would prove to be nothing but a fantastic dream. Thus it is still almost impossible that Mm. Loisel is able to escape her social rank as a middle class and chances are even more meager that her dream would come true that she lives as a high-class rich woman ever since the feast. On the morning after the dreaming night, Mm. Loisel might find that she is again a wife of a ordinary bourgeoisie. No one of the higher class that accomplished her coming to call at her, she would return to her usual life.
However, even if Mm. Loisel would be able to continue her comparatively comfortable life as a common housewife instead of working hard for years to pay back the debt, I don’t think her life could be described with the term “better”. How to define whether a person’s life changes for the better or for the worse? Maybe she don’t have to shoulder the heavy debt of the expensive necklace, but it doesn’t mean that Mm. Loisel would feel satisfied with such a quiet and ordinary life. Not only the economic status decides the quality of a person’s life, but also to what extent can the person feel satisfied or contented from such life is a gauge of his living status. If Mm. Loisel keeps sticking to her vanity, she would never feel her life changing for the better in the latter half of the life. Even if her husband loves her so deeply and goes every lengths to provide her with beautiful dresses, vintage necklaces and delicate bonnets, she would never feel satisfied, since her dream of material luxury is something that her husband can never realize as a mere middle class staff. It is quite possible that in the following years, Mm. Loisel repeatedly recalls the night she wore the glorious necklace and the happiness she experienced at the accomplishment, which renders her more and more unsatisfied and disappointed with her status quo. Finally, she passes her every day life in completely disappointment and melancholy, aging quickly.
Mm. Loisel immersed with such vanity, her life might be doomed to be a tragedy. No matter she had lost the necklace or not, she had already lost her own ideal of living a better life with her own efforts, only vanity and forever dissatisfaction surrounding her as well as the unapproachable dream of a pompous and luxurious life.