THE MAIN CHARACTERS

      The short story "Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant has three major charecters. They are 

Mathilde Loisel, Monsieur Loisel, Madame Forestier. Primarily, the author describes the charecters directly.

Mathilde Loisel

   Mathilde is the protagonist of the story. All events which were occured in the story are connected with this person. She was a pretty and charming girl. She was married and she had a loving husband.  But she did not  like her life. She was not satysfied with her status in the society and with the cash position of her family.  Her tastes were simple because she had never been able to afford any. She always invied the rich women. The author  discribes  Mathilde Loisel directly, for example: 

"She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans. She had no marriage portion, no expectations, no means of getting known, understood, loved, and wedded by a man of wealth and distinction; and she let herself be married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her tastes were simple because she had never been able to afford any other, but she was as unhappy as though she had married beneath her".

"She had no clothes, no jewels, nothing. "

"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."

   But at the end of the story he changed comletely. After loosing the necklace she begun to work very hard to earn as much money as possible with the aim to pay debts: " She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen. She washed the plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse pottery and the bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dish-cloths, and hung them out to dry on a string; every morning she took the dustbin down into the street and carried up the water, stopping on each landing to get her breath. And, clad like a poor woman, she went to the fruiterer, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on her arm, haggling, insulted, fighting for every wretched halfpenny of her money."

   Moreover her apperance also changed: "Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice, and the water slopped all over the floor when she scrubbed it".

                                   Monsieur Loisel

Monsieur Loisel was Mathilde Loisel's husband. He was a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. He loved her wife very much and he did everything to satisfy her. Moreover he thought that she was satisfied with everything. We can judge about Monsier Loisel through his speech and his actions, for example:  "Why, darling, I thought you'd be pleased."

 "Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It looks very nice, to me . . ."

"What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you?" 

"He stopped, stupefied and utterly at a loss when he saw that his wife was beginning to cry. Two large tears ran slowly down from the corners of her eyes towards the corners of her mouth."

  

                                  Madame Forestier

 Madame Forestier was the rich Mathilde's friend. Mathilde went to her to borrow the necklace for the party, because she had a lot of jewellries. Mathilde thought that all her necklaces were very expansive, but at the end of the story we saw that they are did not. For ten years Mathilde and her husband worked to pay for the necklace and Madame Forestier was really schoked when she got to know about it:  - "You say you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?" 

 - "Yes. You hadn't noticed it? They were very much alike."

 - And she smiled in proud and innocent happiness.

 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! "