Guy De Maupassant’s The Jewelry Essay

According to critic W.E. Garrett Fisher, (Maupassants) purview of human nature was an utterly distorted one. On on the whole pass on he only saw the cruelty, the bestiality, above all, the ineffable stupidity of mankind. We simply find one man or woman in his books who illustrates the nobler gradient of life. (Piana, n. pag.) Indeed, French writer Guy De Maupassants works were based on ordinary incidents from everyday life, which exposed the true nature of people. (n. pag.) The Jewelry was no exception it was built on the premise that first impressions of people ar almost always wrong, as they constantly change, with unexpected results. Set in Paris, The Jewelry centered on Monsieur Lantin, a chief clerk in the Department of the Interior, and his wife, who was unnamed throughout the story. The initial impression that the reader cease derive from brothel keepere Lantin is that she is a perfect woman. De Maupassant described her as a perfect type of the virtuous woman in whos e hands every sane young man dreams of one day intrusting his happiness. (n. pag.) The reader can similarly conclude that Madame Lantin was the ideal wife and homemaker.According to De Maupassant, She (Madame Lantin) ruled his home with an delivery so adroit that they really seemed to live in luxury and that It would be impossible to conceive any attentions, tendernesses, playful caresses which she (Madame Lantin) did not lavish upon her conserve (Piana, n. pag.) De Maupassant implied through the latter that Madame Lantin was a faithful spouse who will never cheat on her save. (Piana, n. pag.) However, The Jewels plot identified Madame Lantin as the antagonist by unmasking the hypocrisy of her character. After her demise, Monsieur Lantin wondered how did she manage to make ends meet with his low salary of 3,500 francs a year. Madame Lantin had very expensive vices frequenting the theater and her large arrangement of fake jewelry. De Maupassant wrote, His salary, which, in hi s wifes hands, had amply sufficed for all sign of the zodiac needs, now proved scarcely sufficient to supply his own few wants. And he asked in astonishment how she had managed always to furnish him with excellent wines and with knifelike eating which he could not now afford at all with his scanty means. (Piana, n. pag.) It was also The Jewels plot that answered Monsieur Lantins psyche. Broke and hungry, he was labored to go to the jewelry store in an attempt to pawn Madam Lantins jewels and came out of the shop with 196,000 francs. Therefore, this incident revealed that Madame Lantins jewels were genuine, in sharp contrast to her claim to her husband, Now look at them see how well up the work is done. You would swear it was real jewelry (Piana, n. pag.) It also refuted Madame Lantins fidelity she most likely had a paramour who provided her with money and jewelry. (Piana, n. pag.)After Monsieur Lantin told the jeweler that he had more jewels to sell to him (he managed to sell one of his wifes necklaces for 18,000 francs), one of the jewelry stores clerks rushed out to express joy at his ease while another kept blowing his nose as hard as he could, as if they were trying to suppress their laughter. (n. pag.) Chances are, they were mock his ignorance about his wifes adultery. The story ended six months afterwards with Monsieur Lantins unhappy second marriage to a virtuous moreover ill-tempered woman. These circumstances allowed him to emerge as the protagonist the loving husband who was cheated on by his late first wife and was trapped in a loveless second marriage. The Jewelry was able to defend its purpose that looks can really be deceiving. Madame Lantin, whom everyone praised and admired, turned out to be a greedy woman who cuckolded her husband for material wealth. Meanwhile, Monsieur Lantin became as fortune-hungry as she was by enjoying the money he got from selling her ill-gotten jewelries.Money transformed him from an upright man who r efused to sell a fake piece of jewelry to a man obsessed with profiting from his late wifes jewels, regardless of the event that she got these using illicit means. What added credibility to The Jewelry was that De Maupassant allowed the events in the story to naturally unfold and expose the characters hypocrisy in the process, drawing on the formula that there is no secret that will never be revealed. He also showed that anyone can be a hypocrite, hence his very generalise description of Madame Lantin and his refusal to give her a name. Lastly, The Jewelry leaves the reader with an open-ended question Which is better, gaining happiness from dis silver dollar, or experiencing misery as a result of honesty?Works CitedGuy De Maupassant. The Literature Network. 9 January 2008. .Baccellia, Autumn. Short Story epitome The Jewelry, by Guy De Maupassant. Helium. 9 January 2008. . Piana, Courtney. The Many Impressions of Mrs. Lantin. 23 July 2002. 9 January 2008. .