Short Story The Jewelry by Guy De Maupassant: Summary and Analysis

M. Lantin is the main character throughout of the story that make readers have different feelings. After been through all the events in his life, M. Lantin spends the rest of his life living in miserable. Many different memos can be taken out from the story and one of them is being thankful for what we have in our life. M. Lantin married to a poor but beautiful lady who is a dream of all the young men. She seems “to be the very ideal of that pure good woman to whom every young man dreams of entrusting his future”. M. Lantin falls in love and then gets married to her. When she becomes a wife to M. Lantin, she really shows that she is a right choice to him. She knows how to manage finance that her family can live as luxury with the limited salary. Her husband is the only one who is working in the household.

At the beginning of the story, she is described as a present to M. Lantin. M. Lantin loves his wife so much, “six years after he married her, he loved her even more than he did the first day”. However, he doesn’t always try his best to appreciate the woman of his life. Beside of being in love with her, “there were only two points upon which he ever found fault with her-her love of the theater, and her passion with false jewelry”. He refuses to go to the theater with her because of being tiring. It can be understood because men have to go to work and they need to save energy.

However, he tries to convince her to go with someone else but him. She doesn’t agree at first but then she has to please him. She loves to wear jewelry but never get the support from him. Instead of being encouraging for what she likes, he tries to tell her not to wear those by saying “My dear, when one has not the mean to afford real jewelry, one should appear adorned with one’s natural beauty and grace only”. He is not comfortable seeing his wife in those jewelry that he thinks it is fake. Despite all the excuses from the wife, he still thinks his wife has the taste of a regular Gypsy and seems disrespect her enjoyment. One night of going out from the theater, the wife gets into a bad cough and passed away because of pneumonia. M. Lantin is so sad and nearly following her into the tomb. He is so upset that in just one month, his hair turned white. This situation of story can bring readers a thought that what if he had been there with her at the theater. Then he could have saved his wife’s life by protecting her from a terrible winter’s night. His ignorance to his wife’s hobby could make him regret for the rest of his life.

This point is not clearly told in the story. However, readers are able to recognize through the author’s descriptions about M. Lantin’s life. He loses all the focuses to his job, he is founded to have “checks might have been seen to swell up all of a sudden, his nose wrinkle, his eyes fill with water – he would pull a frightful face, and begin to sob”. The image of a chief clerk has gone. He looks all depressing and hopeless. After a period of time not so focusing on career, M.Lantin got a little into debt. With all the desperate, he thinks about all the jewelry of his wife. He always has the thought that all of the jewelry is fake. Now, when he is having no choice, he decides to take them to the store and have the owners estimated those. The jewelry worth so much money that he could never image. This is a reveal but also a knot of the story.

Different people can have different assumptions. He thought it could be the present from someone that his wife had hidden from him. In my opnion, those jewelry is the way his wife tries to save money. At the beginning, she is said as a woman who “ruled his home with an economic so adroit that they really seemed to live in luxury”. Therefore, readers can understand that she can manage finance to buy those fine jewelries. When knowing the jewelry worth so much money that can save his life, M. Lantin is not even happy. At that moment, his mind is so doubtful. People always try to work hard to earn money. However, in this scenario, he has so much money but he doesn’t know what to do with all that. Money cannot even buy his happiness. Six months after, he is remarried and live the rest of his life miserable because of a terrible temper spouse. He surely would have the moment thinking about his first wife with all the regrets. The story can be a lesson to all of us. Money can buy everything but not our happiness, and we always should be appreciated of what we are having in our hands.

The story that I chose is “The Jewelry” by Guy de Maupassant, which represents hidden meaning and symbolism that uses deception and perfidy throughout the text. The story plays along with the main character: Lantin and his wife. Set in the late 19th century, Lantin and his wife get married quickly, at the beginning of the story, his wife just moved to France with her mother while coming from a poor family. Lantin and his wife live as a middle-class family with a salary of about 3,500 francs a year. The wife loves to go to the theatre and loves her fake jewelry. Lantin does not like her fake jewelry: “one should appear adorned with one’s natural beauty and grace only—and these gifts are the rarest of jewels.” Eight days after going to the Opera, the wife died of pneumonia. Lantin becomes so depressed that he prematurely turns white-haired, checks out of his workplace, and goes broke without his wife. While trying to find ways to make money, he thinks of selling his wife’s jewelry since he didn’t like it anyway. However, he finds that the “fake” jewelry is real and that it is all worth over 200,000 francs. He becomes lustful with his new inheritance — overjoyed that his life will be “better”. Half a year later, he is married to a tight and tempered woman; his life was very miserable.

What I can conclude from the text is that the theme is expressed with deception and perfidy to reveal the captivating truth that life is full of irony. One of the most prominent examples of irony was that he was happy with his wife however poor, however, when he gained great wealth and married again: he was very unhappy. The thing that I find hardest about interpreting literature is the requirement of fluid interpretation and its usage that it takes to comprehend the alternate meanings of texts in a world full of people who are taught to follow the examples and use the steps. I am a more mathematically inclined person, so I like to stay in my own little mind bubble. I’ve had to learn to step outside of the box and read between the lines. What makes “The Jewelry” most interesting is that it leaves the reader guessing: how and where did the wife get the money for all the jewelry? As quoted by one of the jewelers purchasing back the jewelry: “The person who owned these must have put all her savings into jewelry.” The audience and readers get to decide where and who gave her or got her the jewelry which adds as a factor that makes the readers more compelled to continue reading. Lantin overlooked the fact that his wife amusement of her jewelry and was oblivious to find the real truth, therefore showing the human nature of being ignorant when blinded by bliss. Ignorance is bliss until the bliss is taken away it then becomes a nuisance; Lantin did not discover what he had until it was lost to him.

Overall, Guy de Maupassant’s use of deception and the question of infidelity helps to keep the reader guessing while leaving just enough to keep them hooked on what is next by surprising the audience with plot twists along the way.