Love and Marriage, Application Essay Example

Love and marriage are themes that arise in “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant and “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. Although marriage is the dominant theme in “The Necklace” and love in a dominant theme in “The Tell Tale Heart”, these themes are connected to character flaws in each story and directly contribute to the downfall of the main character. In “The Necklace”, Mathilde is extremely discontent with her marriage and believes that since she was blessed with good looks, deserves a better life and more well-to-do husband. In her attempt to spend a night living lavishly, she loses a necklace she lent from a wealthy friend and must spend the rest of her days working hard to buy a replacement. As a result, Mathilde’s tragic flaw, her vanity, plunges her into a deep level of poverty. In “The Tell Tale Heart”, the narrator, stricken by insanity decides he must kill an old man that he loves. His tragic flaw, insanity, becomes more and more pronounced throughout the story until it causes him to report his crime to the police. Although both Mathilde and the narrator learn a lesson at the end of their respective stories, it is too late for them to undo their mistakes and there is nothing they could have done to have avoided their fates.

In “The Necklace”, marriage plays an essential role to the plot. Essentially, Mathilde is extremely unhappy with her marriage, even though her husband, Monsieur Loisel, consistently proves to be a good husband despite his class. Mathilde’s main character flaw is that she is unable to be happy with her living situation and remains quite vain. The second paragraph of the story describes her life, “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”. Although Mathilde lived an average life, she was unable to be happy as the other women in her class were; in fact, it is likely that she was well off compared to many people in her town, but believed she wasn’t. The “mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains” may have been beautiful to other people, but Mathilde was so wrapped up in her fantasy of wealth that she couldn’t recognize what she had. As the paragraph continues, it supports this idea; since the couple had the ability to have hired help, they couldn’t have been too unfortunate.

Since Mathilde had become unsatisfied with her life, she welcomed the opportunity to attend a ball at the Ministry of Education until she realized that she wouldn’t be able to be dressed to her standards if she had agreed to attend. If Mathilde had not been so vain, she would have avoided the torment that was awaiting her in the future. However, since she allowed her discontent and vanity to cloud her mind, she forced her husband to buy her a fancy dress and received his permission to borrow an expensive necklace from her old friend. After Mathilde attends the ball, she loses this necklace and she and her husband must spend the remainder of their lives working hard and living in poverty to repay the debt. At the end of the story, the friend who Mathilde borrowed the necklace from barely recognizes her and tells her “Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs!” This is ironic because Mathilde’s husband would have been able to purchase her jewelry for this amount and prevented them from needing to go through all of this trouble. In the end, Mathilde was punished for her vanity and discontent and forced to accept the fate that she deserved.

In “The Tell Tale Heart”, love plays an essential role to the plot. Although the narrator is crazy, it is his love for the old man that drives him deeper and deeper into insanity until he must confess his crime. The narrator begins the story by describing his obsession about killing the old man despite his love for him, “Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture –a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees –very gradually –I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” Although it is difficult to tell if this was the real motivation behind the narrator’s crime, it is clear that he had no personal vendetta against the man or any hatred towards him; he simply decided that the old man needed to die so he committed the crime.

As time passes, the narrator believes that he still hears the old man’s heart beating and takes continuous care to ensure that the body is hidden. When the police come in to examine the narrator’s room, he remains calm despite the fact that he still hears it beating. Eventually, this drives the narrator to his breaking point and he exclaims, “”Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! –tear up the planks! here, here! –It is the beating of his hideous heart!” Although insanity was the narrator’s tragic flaw, there was nothing he could have done to avoid the situation; he was a victim of his own fate.

In conclusion, both “The Necklace” and “The Tell Tale Heart” end in tragedy because the main characters are unable to recognize how to correct their tragic flaw. As such, they enter a series of events that result in punishment for these flaws and they are forced to accept their fates. The themes of love and marriage in these stories are negative; they are ultimately what drive the characters to act on their tragic flaws and in the end, both characters learn an important lesson.