The Folly of Envy: A Comparative Analysis of Guy de Maupassants The Necklace and Raymond Carvers Neighbors - Essay Example

The Folly of Envy: A Comparative Analysis of Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" and Raymond Carver's "Neighbors" Many decades separate Guy de Maupassant and Raymond Carver. Henry-Rene-Albert Guy de Maupassant was born in Normandy, France to wealthy parents in 1850. He was a lad during the Franco-Prussian War and the expulsion of Napoleon III as emperor. Raymond Carver's life could not be more different - born as he was in 1939 in rural Oregon to an alcoholic sawmill worker and a waitress. And yet, the thematic similarities in de Maupassant's "The Necklace" and Raymond Carver's "Neighbors" are gripping indeed, proving as it were the universality of the "friends with money" theme, and the eventual downfall wrought by envy and covetousness.

In "The Necklace", the protagonist is Mathilde, "one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees" (1). Married to a simple clerk whose meager paycheck could not accommodate her expensive tastes, "(s)he suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs." On the other hand, in "Neighbors", Raymond Carver paints for us the image of a middle-class couple, Bill and Arlene Miller, who are not painfully poor, but wish they could be wealthier and are envious of their next door neighbors, the Stones, who "go out for dinner, or entertaining at home, or traveling about the country somewhere(70).

" When the opportunity to "escape from their class" presents itself to both Mathilde and the Millers, both jump at the opportunity. For Mathilde, it came in the form of a party for the well-heeled. For the Millers, it was a request from the Stones to feed the cat while they went on a trip. - a request which of course came with unfettered access to their house and belongings. Though Mathilde initially demurred as she had nothing to wear, she relented when she was lent money by her husband to buy a new dress and when she was able to borrow a diamond necklace from her friend.

In words that demonstrate the mastery of language of de Maupassant: "She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything, in the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a cloud of happiness made up of this universal homage and admiration, of the desires she had aroused, of the completeness of a victory so dear to her feminine heart." (3) On the other hand, the Millers took advantage of the absence of the Stones to immerse themselves in the other couple's world - drinking their medicines, wearing their clothes, drinking their wines, using their things.

Once, when Arlene came back, Bill noticed "the white lint clinging to the back of her sweater, and the color was high in her sheets", the lint as a metaphor that betrayal of trust, as secret and furtive as it might be, leaves traces behind and clings to a person. As de Maupassant's story unfolds, Mathilde discovers to her horror that she lost the diamond necklace she borrowed from Madame Forestier, and she and her husband plunged themselves into abject poverty repaying the debt. Towards the end, a Mathilde aged by poverty - "her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red" (4) met with the friend after ten years, only to be told "Oh my poor Mathilde!

But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs! . . . "(4) In "Neighbors", on the other hand, the climax comes when Arlene Miller realizes that she left the key inside the Stone's apartment and locked the door (73). Faced with the prospect of the Stones' finding out their betrayal and their going back to their unexciting lives, the Millers could do nothing. It is clear that the theme of envy resonates in both works. Though the difference is that in "The Necklace" we see a protagonist who values the belongings of her friend, and in "The Neighbors" we see that the Miller couple had no respect for the things of the Stones and in fact gain sexual titillation from them, this difference is only superficial.

When one claws his way into the hearts of both Mathilde and the Millers, the same things can be seen - that burning, all-too-familiar human envy, and a quiet desperation borne out of ennui from one's existence. WORKS CITED Henry-Rene-Albert Guy de Maupassant. The Necklace. (original title: "La Parure") France. (1884). Raymond Carver. "Neighbors". First published in Esquire Magazine. 1971.