Comparison and Contrast of the two stories : The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant and The Story of a Proposal by Kate Chopin - Essay Example

?Looking At Literature: Poetry in the Modern Age – Comparison and Contrast John M. Duebel ENG 125 Introduction to Literature Shayla Gordon Date: 27 August 2011 Looking At Literature: Poetry in the Modern Age – Comparison and Contrast Classic and modern literature has provided today’s day and age with a vast amount of information to think about and ponder over. There are a number of literary works that have shaped the way that most people think today, and works by a number of authors have helped people all over the world to formulate opinions and give a second thought to the way they live their lives. Two such literary works under the purview of the theme of gender roles and marriage have been taken with a view to compare and contrast in order to develop a deeper insight into the opinions that their authors formed on the basis of understanding human relationships and emotions; the two works are ‘The Necklace’ by Guy de Maupassant and ‘The Story of a Proposal’ by Kate Chopin. The Necklace is a short story that was first published in a French newspaper by the name of ‘Le Gaulois’ and is one of the most popular stories written by Guy De Maupassant, in the year 1884. The story talks about the life of a couple where they live estranged lives within the same house. The author has tried to help the readers understand the kind of oppression a number of women at the time felt when they were forced to marry someone at a young age, with the aspect of deriving a loving emotion for someone being completely inconsequential in nature and not required at all. Mathilde Loisel, the protagonist and wife of a low paid clerk always pictured herself bequeathed in luxury and comfort and often dreamed of living a high society lifestyle, with a platform to showcase her beauty and airs. However, the man she was married to was not able to provide her with the excitement of living such a life and lived a mundane and monotonous life instead. Thus, the story talks about how the husband realises his wife’s desires and tries to take her to a high society party; however Mathilde’s idea of dressing well and being the most noticed person at the party takes her to rid her conscience of being ethical to herself as she takes her friend’s necklace to wear and then loses it. She was not able to bring herself to tell the truth to her friend about the lost necklace and thus transforms the life of the couple as they sell everything and take up various odd jobs which over the years turn them prematurely old, just so that they would be able to buy back the necklace for Mathilde’s friend. The story talks about the kind of strength and bond that the marriage of the two regains with time as Mathilde realises the importance of being there for the man that she has married and understanding the kind of sacrifices he has made for her. She thus grows up and is able to gain maturity with respect to the kind of struggles that she went through to earn money and how the same taught her how to be stronger. At the same time, this story can be compared on a level to Kate Chopin’s ‘The Story of an Hour’ as it describes various emotions that Louise Mallard, the wife in the story, suffers an array of emotions as she hears about the news of her husband’s death. Louise suffers from a condition of heart problems and thus her sister is forced to inform her of the death in the gentlest way possible so as to not aggravate anything. However, upon hearing of the saddening news, Mrs. Mallard undergoes various kinds of feelings at the same time, ranging from resentment and sadness to joy and the feeling of liberation. Both these stories are similar to each other on the basis that in both stories, it is the wife who is undergoing the mental and emotional thinking and trauma that the husbands are subjecting them to in different ways. In The Necklace, Mathilde yearns for a different life whereas her husband is just not bothered, or so she thinks whereas in The Story of an Hour, Louise does not seem to care much about the life that her husband lives as well. The wives have both been saturated of the kind of give and not receive relationship that they have been sharing within the scope of their marriages. This emotion portrayed well by both authors helps to give an insight into the kind of unhappy lives that most women in America and abroad, at the time were facing due to living within a fairly patriarchal society. One may also compare the settings or surroundings within which these stories have been written; times were tough for both couples in the stories as they were trying to make ends meet. Despite the same, the husbands tried their best to give their wives whatever they could, but fell short due to a lack of communication that they shared with each other. The authors have tried to portray the kind of life most couples lead these days, by attempting to put the same across through these very incidents. This lack of communication can be compared to what most relationships suffer because of, in the modern world and thus despite the best efforts of trying to do little things for their partners, people fall short because they actually fail to understand what the other person might be longing or yearning for. While reading both these tales, it is clear to the reader that the kind of imagery that has been made use of within the story is enough to tell a tale in the reader’s imagination. Both stories have been told from the point of view of women and have elements which may be recognised by women all around the world even today. Both women wanted to lead different lives, away from the clutches of marital ‘bliss’ and had already created a sense of freedom from the bondage that they were bound by due to the wedding rings that they bore. Furthermore, in both these stories, the women have been portrayed to having assumed a life for themselves; they are both content with their own thoughts and framework of mind and desire to lead a different lives inclined towards the will of their emotions. Mathilde was always living in a world of her own, full of pleasure and wealth and thus made her imaginary world a reality as she swam in the same, day in and day out, after which she was struck with reality. However, Louise was living within the purview of reality after which she was provided some imagination to think of life after her husband’s death. She underwent an array of thoughts and ideas and the feeling of living without his presence in her life, which toppled her world upside down. In both stories, the authors have tried their best to come up with a suitable ending providing the readers with an abstract version of a normative feeling. The authors have tried to let the readers think of ‘what might happen next’. In The Necklace, the author has left the reader wondering how Mathilde might have spent the rest of her life as she was forced into penance and poverty due to a mistake of fact and nothing else. In ‘The Story of an Hour’, Chopin gets the readers to think of how Louise must have died; whether the cause of her death was sadness due to her husband’s apparent death, or freedom which let her psychological thinking and her heart give way to ‘freedom’ of belonging to the rest of the world and getting liberated from the bond of marriage. In the modern day and age, this story has appealed to the minds of many readers because there are a number of women out there who want to break free from their husbands and live a life of their own; a number of women get married due to pressures from their family and friends and thus in the process, give up on their personal dreams which they then live, like Chopin’s Louise, in their minds, through their thoughts. Both women in the stories presented within this paper, have been seen to be suffering within the ideals of marriage; an institution, which in this setup, has been criticized a great deal by both authors speculatively as none of the wives in both stories have been living a happy lifestyle. They are forced to live under the wings of their counterparts and sacrifice and compromise their lives in order to fit that of their husbands’. Both authors have tried their level best to depict the kind of emotional trauma that they were being subject to and the kind of pain with which they were living their lives. However, the husbands have not been portrayed to be bad or negative; they have merely been put across as monotonous men who are not able to bring colour to their spouse’s lives. The style of writing in both stories is a simple yet abstract form where both authors have tried not to give the story away as they have left their readers pondering the end of the two couples in both stories. Both authors have used a dramatic way of narrating their tales which are descriptive in nature. A number of excellent analogies and picturesque situations have been provided in both stories as examples full of description have been provided with ease in both papers, making it easy for the readers to imagine the kind of life that the wives had been thinking of. Since this paper looks into a comparison and contrast, not only among the two stories, but also with the stories with respect to the modern day and age; it is imperative to note that the stories have probably taken place in the lives of many people around the world in different ways. The content provided within these stories is also enough for the authors to be able to express their feelings, through the characters that have been woven by them, within their tales. The authors have tried their best to use examples and thoughts that would relate to most people and appeal to them in order to help to understand the plight of the two women, both Mathilde and Louise. Furthermore, the authors have also tried to include as much possible abstraction to try and get their readers to challenge themselves to think of an ending that would suit the needs of every generation to come because the problem posed in the stories with respect to marriage and the needs and desires of different women, are subjective in nature and take place in every era and generation, to different kinds of women living in different walks of life. In conclusion, both stories have commonalities as well as differences in their own ways. As discussed above, both stories talk about the idea of marriage and how women have been suppressed in the earlier times with respect to this very bond. Marriage is a sacred union of two souls, however as per the views of the authors talked about within this paper, the very idea of being with someone else for the rest of their lives has proven to be a haunting concept for the wives of the husbands in the stories. At the same time, the authors have also tried to portray the men in a manner where they try and please their wives with whatever actions they carry out in life; in reality or actual modern day scenario, this goes for sure that there are many men that try and please their wives however their wives are not willing to live a life full of love with people they do not want to do the same with. The stories have excellent appeal worldwide and have been able to touch upon the hearts of many. Therefore, a number of stark differences and similarities have been provided with examples and instances from the stories themselves in order to show how the theme of love, relationships and marriage has provided excellent literature for the purpose of analysis. References Roberts, Edgar (1991). Writing Themes About Literature. Prentice Hall. p. 4. Rudden, Liam (15 August 2008). "Mathilde makes it to the stage". Edinburgh Evening News. Retrieved 31 August 2011. Maupassant, Guy de. The Necklace. Print. Chopin, Kate. The Story of An Hour. Print. Jamil, Selina S. (2009) “Emotions in ‘The Story of an Hour’” Explicator. EBSCOhost. Bender, Bert. (Sep., 1991) "The Teeth of Desire: The Awakening and the Descent of Man." American Literature. Berkove, Lawrence L. (2000) "Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin's 'The Story of an Hour." American Literary Realism 32.2 152-158. Web. 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