Preview

Mathilde And Della In The Gift Of The Magi

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
695 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Mathilde And Della In The Gift Of The Magi
In the story of The Gift Of The Magi was this young lady named Della who had been working for months, and only made one dollar and eighty-seven cents. The next day was christmas and she didn't have enough money to buy her significant other named jim a present. Della found the money to buy jim a present, but at the end of the day both of the gifts were worthless but meant a lot to each other. This story relates to The Neckless in a few ways. The Necklace is about a young lady named Mathilde who’s also poor but she’s ashamed to be poor. She dreams about being rich, she fantasies so much she becomes depressed. One day she gets an invite to a ball and she doesn't want to go because she does not have anything nice to wear. Her husband gave her …show more content…
“Mathilde” “ i think i could do it on $400, for this was exactly the amount he had been saving for a gun.” Mathilde is selfish, she knew her husband was saving up money to save for a gun so he could go shooting this summer, but she didn't care. All she cared about was not looking poor at the ball. However, “Della” “ I had my hair cut off and sold because i couldn’t have lived through christmas without giving you a present.” Della wasn’t thinking about herself, all she cared about was getting her husband jim a christmas present. She gave up her most valuable thing so she could have enough money to buy jim a …show more content…
Mathilde is ungrateful and Della’s appreciative. “Mathilde” “ I'm utterly miserable at not having any jewels, not a single stone to wear.” Her husband gave her his money that he was saving so she could buy a dress and not worry about looking poor, now she’s complaining that she doesn't have any jewels to wear. The dress wasn't enough for Mathilde, she wanted more. Yet, “Della” “ She hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say my hair grows fast.” Della loved the gift even though she didn't have any hair to comb, her husband knew Della’s hair was one of the most precious things to her so he brought her a comb, and she appreciated the thought. Mathilde and Della are the same when it comes to their stubbornness.
“Mathilde” “ wear flowers , for $10 you could get two or three gorgeous roses, no… there’s nothing so humiliating as looking poor.” Mathilde didn't want to wear flowers because she said she would look poor, she wanted to wear jewels. “Della” “ pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man.” Della would argue with the grocery man that he charged her an extra penny so she would wait until he gives her a penny back.
Both characters Della and Mathilde relate to each other, they have their similarities and their
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Ashford Eng125, Finial Paper
    • 1597 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Ashford Eng125, Finial Paper

    Mathilde dreams of the living in a beautiful home whereas Della does not seem to…

    • 1597 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Gift Of Magi Analysis
    • 170 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Gift Of Magi Analysis

    In the “Gift of Magi” the story begins with Della, She has $1.87 and is looking for a gift for her husband. They are poor and do not have much to their names but her hair and his gold watch. She decides to sell her hair for twenty dollars to but her husband a silver band for his watch. She gets home and fixes up dinner. When her husband gets home he stares at her for awhile and when we finally snaps out of it gives his gift to her it’s the brushes has wanted for awhile but can not use anymore since she sold her hair. When she handed him his gift which was the silver band he says that he sold his watch to buy her the brushes. The irony in this story is so genuine because they both sold their most precious items in order to buy the person they…

    • 170 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Compare and Contrast "The Necklace" and "Ambush"
    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Compare and Contrast "The Necklace" and "Ambush"

    In “The Necklace,” a female character, Mathilde, is living in Paris during the 19th century. She is poor, yet undyingly wishes she was wealthy. One day the woman is invited to a prestigious ball within her city. She immediately she contacts a rich friend and borrows a fabulous necklace. Once the night is all said and done and she returns from the ball, she realizes that the borrowed necklace is lost. She reacts by lying about the necklace and buying her friend a new one. With her financial situation the way it is she goes spiraling into debt and never recovers. Later, once Mathilde admits to her friend that she lost and replaced the necklace, it is revealed that the borrowed necklace was a fake worth very little.…

    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson Analysis
    • 1255 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson Analysis

    Although Sylvia cannot recognize her own neighborhood as a slum, or the occupants as poor in the beginning, she slowly realizes that everyone is not equal through the distribution of wealth. Sylvia is angered by the prices in F.A.O Schwarz because she knows that the items for sale are just toys, and that these toys would never take precedent over other things her parents desperately struggle to buy. This is apparent when Sylvia thinks of the thirty-five dollar clown in the store: “Thirty-five dollars could buy new bunk beds for Junior and Gretchen’s boy. Thirty-five dollars and the whole household could go visit Granddaddy Nelson in the country. Thirty-five dollars would pay for the rent and the piano bill too” (Bambara 94). Although Sylvia cannot directly face the injustices that surround her by speaking outwardly, she inwardly questions the frivolity of the wealthy in order to keep the realities of the situation at bay. Sylvia knows that the prices in the store are outrageous and that she could easily get the toys elsewhere, but what really bothers her is the fact that people actually have the money to buy the toys that are only imitations of the real thing. For instance, the price of the sailboat confuses Sylvia because she knows that not only can she build one herself for fifty cents, but that the toy boats costs as much as a real boat. Sylvia demonstrates a maturity that allows her to separate her wants from her needs, which is what seemingly distinguishes the wealthy from the poor in the story. Sylvia’s shame to enter the store and her inevitable jealously only fuels her desire to find out how others are able to make money and buy expensive things; she questions why she “ain’t in on it,” which is only answered by her recollection of Miss Moore’s words that symbolize the connection…

    • 1255 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    How Did George Washington Make Decisions
    • 431 Words
    • 2 Pages

    How Did George Washington Make Decisions

    Likewise, Jim and Della both gave up their prized possessions to give the other happiness. When Della asked Mrs.Sofronie “Will you buy my hair”(O’Henry). Della would do anything to get jim the perfect gift for christmas when she sold her hair. When Jim said “Della let’s put our christmas gifts aside keep them a while, they are too nice to use (O’Henry). It did not matter that they sold their most precious items to get each other a gift for Christmas.…

    • 431 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Mathilde vs. Dee
    • 622 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Mathilde vs. Dee

    In “The Necklace”, Mathilde is seen as a poor woman who had low self-esteem and was married to a clerk. In this story, she was invited to a ball and borrowed a friend’s necklace. After the ball, Mathilde discovers that the necklace was lost. As a result, she had to search for a similar necklace and had to take out loans to make a purchase. She was forced to work for ten years to pay off the debt until one day when she saw her friend. Little did Mathilde know that the necklace she lost was worth much less than the new necklace she paid for.…

    • 622 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Mathilde's Greed In The Necklace
    • 179 Words
    • 1 Page

    Mathilde's Greed In The Necklace

    In the beginning of “The Necklace”, Mathilde is not satisfied with her life, for she is stuck in a middle-class lifestyle when she desperately feels that she is “born for every delicacy and luxury.” (de Maupassant) In the nineteenth century, the wealthiest people commonly threw elegant balls, and invited many of their friends. If de Maupassant decided to have this…

    • 179 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Reliving The Past In The Great Gatsby
    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Reliving The Past In The Great Gatsby

    Daisy is a good example of this, because when she visits Gatsby and sees his house, and all of the luxurious things he has, she starts to cry when she sees what nice shirts he has because she starts to realize that she could have had love and money instead of just money. On the night before her wedding, she was drunk, and holding a pearl necklace from Tom in one hand, and a love note from Gatsby in the other, and could have chosen to have love over money, and almost chose love until she sobered up and realized that she cared a bit more about money, “…pulled out the string of pearls. ‘Take ’em down-stairs and give ’em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ’em all Daisy’s changed her mind.’ …we locked the door and got her into a cold bath. She wouldn’t let go of the letter. She took it into the tub with her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw that it was coming to pieces like snow. …hooked her back into her dress, and half an hour later, when we walked out of the room, the pearls were around her neck and the incident was over” (Fitzgerald 59-60).…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Madam Loisel Research Paper
    • 560 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Madam Loisel Research Paper

    Della is a very unselfish and loving woman. She sacrificed her beautiful long hair, which she treasured very near and dear to her heart, to get her husband a nice gift for Christmas. Unlike Madam Loisel who made her husband buy her something very expensive for her own greedy and self centered reasons. Madam Loisel doesn’t care about anyone else but herself, where as Della would go to the ends of the Earth to make her husband happy because of how much she loves him.…

    • 560 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Comparison Of The Necklace And A Doll's House
    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Comparison Of The Necklace And A Doll's House

    In these plays, they both found happiness in money. In the Necklace, Mathilde “had no dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but appearance of its possession, led Mathilde to borrow an expensive necklace from a wealthy friend to show it off at the ball she was invited to by the Minister of Public Instruction. She ended up losing the necklace and worked half of her life to get it back. Not knowing that the necklace was fake. She didn’t want anyone to know that she had lost it, and would do anything to earn money.…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Choices In The Tiger, The Jackal, And A Pair Of
    • 1524 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Choices In The Tiger, The Jackal, And A Pair Of

    Sommers is faced with a challenging internal conflict of choosing between rationality and spending her money wisely on gifts for her family or giving in to her temptations and treating herself to a luxurious day in which buys herself a large variety of lavish items that she has not enjoyed since before she married. Progressively, Mrs. Sommers cannot contain her desires any longer and makes a tremendous mistake when she impulsively spends her money on exorbitant products for herself rather than beneficial purchases for her family. In the short story, Mrs. Sommers demonstrates her originally rational thoughts on spending her money wisely when the story states that, ‘“For a day or two she walked about apparently in a dreamy state, but really absorbed in speculation and calculation. She did not wish to act hastily, to do anything she might afterward regret”’ (Kate Chopin, page 1). This description of Mrs. Sommers’s actions show that her original values at the beginning the story can be identified as selfless. She wishes to spend her money with prudence and on products that are not for just her own benefit, but for her children’s gain as well. At a further point in the short story, Mrs. Sommers’s values change when the story reads, ‘“She was not thinking at all. She seemed for the time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function and to have abandoned herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her…

    • 1524 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    The Great Gatsby the Jazz Age
    • 2376 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The Great Gatsby the Jazz Age

    pretensions of aristocracy. She is now as poor as Stanley and Stella, but she cannot help but…

    • 2376 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    'Civil Peace And Expensive Necklace'
    • 499 Words
    • 2 Pages

    'Civil Peace And Expensive Necklace'

    Mathilde has a rich friend named Madam Georges and she wants everything that her friend madam Georges has in her house. Their families are similar in a way the only obvious difference is Mathilda isn't as fortunate as her friend. Matilda sees that her friend had an expensive necklace and wants to wear it out for a ball she is going to. At the dance the necklace is lost , Matilda feels she needs to pay for the necklace she lost. Matilda gets basically all of her money she owns and the money her husband owns and puts it towards a brand new…

    • 499 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Necklace Rhetorical Analysis
    • 1345 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The Necklace Rhetorical Analysis

    After the party, Madame Loisel loses the necklace, resulting in tireless work, loans, and night jobs for her and her husband in order to pay back the equivalent of the price. The couple finally succeeds when all the money is paid ten years later, only for Mathilde to discover that the necklace was ironically a fake, and worth a very small percentage of what the couple paid. The theme of this story is that an overemphasis on material wealth can shrink the spirit and leave one open to the changeability of fortune. The situational irony highlights this moral because the Loisels would never have had to exhaust themselves if Madame Loisel wasn’t so obsessed with riches and wealth. From the very beginning of the story, she wastes her time dreaming of luxuries such as fine silks, beautiful furniture, and gourmet feasts. Even when she is at Madam Forestier’s house to try on necklaces to borrow, she is never satisfied until she has seen the very best. Madame Loisel’s preoccupation with appearance clouds her judgment as well. As soon as she realizes that she has lost the necklace, she should simply come clean to Madam Forestier. Instead, she is too concerned with how her reputation will be affected, so she keeps quiet. She later pays the price for this when she discovers that the necklace is “false [and]…worth five hundred francs at most.” The life that she gets instead as punishment during the ten years in debt is even more difficult and meager than her life to begin with, which stresses how fame and fortune is so fleeting and unimportant in the scheme of…

    • 1345 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Sequel: The Necklace
    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Sequel: The Necklace

    And she smiled with proud and simple joy. Madame Forestier, quite overcome, clasped her by the hand. “Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine was only paste. Why, at most it was worth only five hundred francs!” “Only five hundred francs!” Madame Loisel gasped. Lost in thought, she began to feel sick. Thinking that she has just wasted ten years; doing heavy housework, hateful duties of cooking, bargaining with the butcher and many others, along with living the life of a pauper. “Oh darling, are you all right?” Madame Forestier questioned. “You look terribly ill” “I….I’ve got to do!” Madame Loisel mumbled as she ran towards the court yard. By the time she got home, she was out of breath. Madame Loisel yelled for her husband, but he didn’t respond, guessing that he still hasn’t gotten home yet. Thinking whiled she waited for her husband to return from work, about how he is going to react. When Monsieur Loisel came home, Madame Loisel greeted him pleasantly and began to tell him what has just happened. As she explained the situation, she could see her husband slowly become furious. Madame Loisel finished what she needed to say. Monsieur Loisel calmly stood up and told Madame Loisel to get back the necklace. Madame Loisel was confused with her husband’s reaction but went to go see Madame Forestier. Madame Loisel got to Madame Forestier house and asked “May I please have the necklace back. I will buy you the exact one that I’ve misplaced.” “Of course not, you’ve given it to me so now it’s mine!” Madame Forestier fought back. They continued to fight until Madame Forestier became violent. She revealed a dagger that was hidden under a cloth and persisted on stabbing Madame Loisel. Madame Loisel was stocked and blankly stared at the dagger coming towards her. As she stared, every second became slower and quieter. When the dragger touches her flesh, she awakes and notices it was all a dream……

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics