The Setting And The Characters’ Mental Growth In The Necklace And Blue Winds Dancing

Guy de Maupassant’s novel “The Necklace”, tells of a middle-class woman with no desire to live in luxury and who ends up in financial ruin. Mathilde Loisel may be called a housewife. She stays in her house with no other activities. She dreams of a life where she is rich and surrounded with glamorous people. Mathilde grew from these different stories. This is also true for Mathilde, the narrator who is able to find his identity and purpose by going home with his family. After experiencing a culture shock, the narrator decides to go to college and finds that he is more at home with his Wisconsin family. The main characters go through mental growth and are forced to face the reality of their own lives.

The setting for “The Necklace” begins in the small apartment of Loisel on Martyrs Street. Mathilde dreams of a better life. She complains about her apartment’s “drabness” most days. She complains about the “threadbare” furniture and “ugly curtains.” Although she is grateful for her maid, she wishes to add more staff to her large “daydream home”. She describes her daydream service as:

Every aspect of her daily life makes her unhappy. Her husband bought beef stew for dinner. Her theatre dress, which she feels is not appropriate to wear by the rich, is something she doesn’t like. Mathilde’s reaction when she saw all of the details in her apartment showed her not being able to grasp her reality and how much she has changed. Soon she realized her failure to realize her true worth was in her desire to be glamorous.

Mathilde has been invited to the Minster of Education’s party. She uses her husband’s savings and borrows jewelry from a friend who is wealthy to purchase a gown. While the necklace seems to be beautiful and rich in diamonds, Mathilde isn’t aware of its authenticity. She is unaware of the fact and ends up losing her necklace. She ends up losing her apartment, which she then finds out is her reality. She is soon forced into an attic and has to work hard to buy the necklace. Mathilde’s perspective was changed by this. She stopped complaining about her miserable life and began to understand the meaning of hard work. She had to wait ten years before she could let go of her fantasies and take the first step towards realizing her dreams.

The last setting for “The Necklace” is on the Champs Elysees. Mathilde meets her rich friend, and finally gets the courage of talking to her. Mathilde confronts her friend to discuss her feelings about her necklace. This is her journey to acceptance and growth. When she meets her friend, it’s clear that her realizations are complete.

Blue Winds Dancing’s narrator has a completely different experience. This story begins with his Wisconsin home. It is described as a beautiful, friendly place. It is a place where everyone feels at home. He only questions his identity when he goes to college in California. He becomes aware of the large number of whites in California. For him, a Native American male, this is a cultural shock. He had never been around Native American people until college. He starts to worry about whether he will fit in or be smart enough to live with new people. He begins to question his American identity and whether or not he belongs at college.

He is aware of the cultural differences between himself and white people. Because of the difference in his education, he feels inferior.

We are still inferior. It is very difficult to feel inferior. It is very distressing to be told by men that your people worship sticks or wood.

The Manitou has forgotten your people and wrote them no book, so your gods could be false.

The setting returns to his hometown and realizes that he is not part of the white civilized. The narrator fears that his return to civilization will cause people to behave differently because he’s been so far away from the culture. The narrator is wrong. He finds that people are welcoming him back and that he really belongs with his people. He is confused by his identity and his place in the world, and he leaves the white society to return home to Wisconsin. But he soon realizes that he is a Native American and will always be. He realized that Native American society was his true home and had to struggle in white civilisation. He feels happy and secure having finally found his identity.

In both stories, the characters experience hardships as they try to discover who and what their reality is. The setting of each scene is gradually mentioned in “The Necklace”. This could be related to Mathilde Liesel’s character change. She feels unhappy living in the apartment and has to work hard on the attic. But she also feels at peace while walking along Champs Elysees. The narrator of “Blue Winds Dancing” discovers who he really is through leaving one setting and returning to his home, where he started.