What a great statement to use to analyse this excellent
short story! In a sense, we can rephrase this statement by refering to a common phrase
or parable in the English language: "You make your own bed, then you have to lie in it."
If we think of these two statements in regard to this story, and more particularly in
regard to the character of Mathilde Loisel. The story makes it clear that she has every
reason to be happy. Without any dowry or prospects, she is married to a minor clerk and
is able to experience a comfortable life. Even though in a sense her marriage brought
her "up" in the world, she lived as "a woman who has come down in the world." The
beginning of the story makes it clear that she devoted herself to a feeling of
dissatisfaction, rather than choosing to enjoy the relative wealth that she
had:
She
grieved incessantly, feeling that she had been born for all the little niceties and
luxuries of living. She grieved over the shabbiness of her apartment, the dinginess of
the walls, the worn-out appearance of the chairs, the ugliness of the draperies. All
these things, which another woman of her class would not even have noticed, gnawed at
her and made her
furious.
Note the way that
the text makes it clear that another woman of Mathilde's class would not even have
noticed the things that place her into such a fit of grieving and dissatisfaction. The
daydreams that she turns to as relief for her grief show that she is determined to not
accept the reality of her state and cannot be grateful for what she has. Thus it is that
we can argue the rest of the story shows the statement to be true. It was Mathilde's own
greed for jewelry and for the appearance of wealth that led her to borrow a necklace
from her friend, which in turn led to the loss of the necklace and Mathilde's subsequent
falling into even greater poverty. Life is what you make of it, and Mathilde's refusal
to be grateful for the simple luxuries that she had resulted in her loss of even
those.
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