What are some examples of real life people who are similar to Mathilde Loisel in Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace?"

In describing Mathilde as a character, we first must extrapolate the traits that make her salient and unique. Then, you can take those traits and make text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world connections with them. 

• Text-to-text connections- Compare Madame Loisel to another literary character.


• Text-to-self connections- Compare Madame Loisel to someone you know from a personal experience. 


• Text-to-World connections- Compare Madame Loisel with anyone you have ever heard of worldwide that is comparable to her. 

This is the most effective way to accurately tie Mathilde to someone either in literature, or real life, that has a life or story similar to her own. 

All this being said, let's focus on Mathilde.

Mathilde is:

1. unrealistic-  She dreams of things and situations that cannot possibly occur within her current set of circumstances. Dreaming and wishing are different from expecting for things to change essentially on demand, like Mathilde did. It is impossible to turn a lifetime of genteel poverty into extravagance and riches overnight, or just by wishing it. 


2. ungrateful- Regardless of having all that she needs to live in relative comfort, even with a helping girl for the household, Mathilde shrugs off what she has and keeps wishing for things that she cannot afford. 


3. unrelenting- She refuses to tell Madame Forestier that she lost her necklace. This is a combination of ridiculous pride and a weak ego. Instead, she ruins her life looking for a replacement that was not even worth the effort. 

Now, think about the type of people who reunite those three qualities.

Real Life: Text to World In a real life scenario, think about people who continuously wish to have more, become more powerful, or act like something that they are not. Wanting more is not the problem. The problem is wanting more of what one is not really able to reach, rather than setting realistic goals. 

Hence, think of people at your school or at your workplace, for example. Specifically, people whose ambition and wish to detach from others whom they consider lesser than them leads them to act and behave in a way commonly known as "fake."

Think of these very people, and notice that their tendencies are similar to Mathilde's in comparable, albeit modern, behaviors.

a) Many drive cars that they cannot truly afford, or live and buy things that are above their limitations for the sake of appearances. 

b) They are always dressed to impress, and not for productivity.

c) They also separate themselves from others and tend to hover in cliques so that they an be perceived as important people, whether they are or not.

They do all of these things because, like Mathilde, they are not truly anchored in their immediate "here and now." They are not using their common sense. 

Those are people who are also, like Mathilde:

• unrealistic- They live above their means in the hopes of presenting and image of something that they are not.


• ungrateful- Rather than make do with what they have, they want to push their own limits and forget the things that they have already been able to achieve. To them, these things are no longer important, nor worthy of being thankful, or feeling grateful. These people only want to appear to be better than everyone else.


• unrelenting- People who live for imagery and unrealistic expectations are often unhappy. They, however, think that happiness is made of material and monetary goals that they continuously try to meet, but to no avail. They continue to be unhappy and unsatisfied with their lives, whether they get the material gains that they hoped for, or not.

Therefore, anyone in your own life who has acted and behaved this way is no different in characteristics from Mathilde. 

Text-to-text connection 

From a literary perspective, the character of Emma Bovary, from Madame Bovary is very similar to Madame Loisel. Being that both characters are products of the Belle Epoque, and that their respective authors, Gustave Flaubert and Guy deMaupassant, were close friends, it comes as no surprise that the two women share traits and behaviors typical of their time and place. 

Like Mathilde, Emma was completely unrealistic. She, too, wanted to belong to an aristocratic social circle that is as exclusive as it is historically impossible to penetrate. She would also day-dream about a grandiose state of things, of having servants in livery, exotic dishes to eat, and essentially everything that she could never have. Again, hoping and wishing is not the issue. It is the fact that she truly thought that this is something that she was born to be, and that she (like Mathilde) was wrongly placed by fate in another set of circumstances. 

She was also ungrateful. Even though Charles Bovary's high intelligence is marred by his less than sophisticated behavior, he is still a great husband to Emma, just like Monsieur Loisel is to Mathilde. Both husbands get their wives tickets to grand events. Both husbands put up with their wives' whims. Both husbands suffer as a result of their wives' thoughtless actions. Both husbands are also unloved by the wives they loved so much.

Finally, Emma is also unrelenting. She only gets worse with time, just like Mathilde does. While Mathilde succumbs to a life of unnecessary sacrifice for the sake of replacing what she thought to be an expensive necklace, Emma's life also goes into a downward spiral of excessive overspending, shallow lovers, and unsuccessful attempts to fill the void of love and desire in her heart. 

In all, both women suffered from a tremendous need of something that only they could have helped themselves to get rid of. If only they had common sense, and if they had lived in reality, they could have been able to forfeit their shallow emotions in favor of healthier and happier lives.