Disordered and Impoverished
Written as an assignment in a Literature in the Western World Course.
This world often equates happiness with wealth, beauty, and social standing; however, the unhealthy pursuit of these goods can quickly become self-destructive in nature. In “The Necklace,” by Guy de Maupassant, Madame Loisel has a deep-seated desire to escape her modest life causing her to borrow and lose a necklace that she endures 10 years of labor replacing. Augustine, a philosopher of the late Roman and early Medieval periods, delves into the consequences of prioritizing worldly goods over more eternal goods. In Guy de Maupassant’s "The Necklace," Madame Loisel’s obsession with social status and wealth reflects Augustine's philosophy that the pursuit of worldly goods leads to unhappiness, as her relentless desire for material wealth ultimately results in personal loss.
In Augustine’s books, On the Free Choice of the Will and The Confessions, Augustine makes claims and arguments, and builds concepts around the relationship between humans and the various goods that humans can possess.
In On the Free Choice of the Will, Augustine builds his concept of eternal and temporal goods through conversational text with Evodius. Augustine and Evodius define eternal goods as goods that are eternal, divine, unchanging, perceived by the mind, and unable to be stolen. Some examples of these are justice, God, love, or truth. He defines temporal goods as goods that are temporal, worldly, changing, perceived by the body, and able to be stolen. Some examples of these are wealth, property, bodily pleasure, or reputation.
After making these distinctions, Augustine then brings up the concept of the “eternal law.” Augustine says, “Hence the eternal law commands us to turn our love aside from temporal things and to turn it, purified, towards eternal things.” (Augustine 1.15.32.108). Here, he defines the eternal law as the proper ordering of goods, being that eternal goods rule over temporal goods and temporal goods are to be subjected to eternal goods. For example, humans are subjected to justice, being that justice is the eternal good.
Throughout these distinctions, Augustine and Evodius also make a distinction between two types of people: people who love only eternal goods (the wise man) and those who love only temporal goods (the fool). Augustine separates these by explaining their relationship to temporal goods. Augustine says the wise man is “The person who uses them rightly shows that they are goods, but not his own goods, for they do not make him good or better.” (Augustine 1.15.33.113). He says the fool is, “controlled by things that he ought to control, and, in setting them up as goods for himself that need to be put in order and treated properly, he holds himself back from the [true] good.” (Augustine 1.15.33.113). In saying this, he intends to say that, according to the eternal law, temporal goods are not meant to be treated as goods in themselves, but rather as goods because they help reach the eternal goods which are goods in themselves.
Augustine then says that the wise man is bound to live a happy life, stating, “Nor does he make them [temporal goods] like the limbs of his mind (which happens through loving them), so that when they start to be cut off again he is not ravaged by pain and corruption.” and the fool is bound to live a life of suffering due to a fear of losing the good, or grief of losing it. Augustine even argues that because temporal goods can not be willed into existence and a person can inordinately desire a good and not be able to possess it, that is a type of suffering as well.
In Augustine’s The Confession, he writes of an interesting intersectionality between self-reflection and autobiographical writing as he discusses his person. In this work, Augustine consistently refers to the ideas and concepts in his previous work On the Choice of the Free Will. Augustine highlights in “The Confessions”, from beginning to end, using different metaphorical examples, that although temporal goods look like goods in themselves, they are not. Augustine illustrates his blindness to true fulfillment due to his attachment to temporal goods, stating, “For I had my back to the light, and my face to the things enlightened; whence my face, with which I discerned the things enlightened, itself was not enlightened.” In this quote, Augustine distinguishes the goodness of temporal goods from that of eternal goods, as he does in his other work, “On the Free Choice of the Will”, asserting that temporal goods should not be treated as true goods in themselves. Augustine also affirmed his concept from “The Confessions” that one will always suffer if temporal goods are loved as true goods. He states, “Wretched I was; and wretched is every soul bound by the friendship of perishable things; he is torn asunder when he loses them, and then he feels the wretchedness which he had ere yet he lost them” (Augustine). Augustine also addresses how the love of temporal goods seems satisfying due to external validation and self-absorption, saying, “Nor were my good things now without, nor sought with the eyes of flesh in that earthly sun; for they that would have joy from without soon become vain, and waste themselves on the things seen and temporal, and in their famished thoughts do lick their very shadows.” Augustine's imagery of “famished thoughts do lick their very shadows” suggests that seeking external validation is unfulfilling in reality as if trying to satiate hunger by licking one’s shadow.
“The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant introduces Madame Loisel in the light of someone stricken by terrible misfortune. The narrator states, “She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries,” expressing Loisel’s deep longing for those materialistic luxuries that women of higher status possessed (Maupassant 1). Following the statement are many sentences of imagery of Loisel’s idealizations that she longed for, such as an “oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra” and “delicate furniture”.
When presented with the opportunity to attend a ball by her husband, she was ungrateful as she felt ill-prepared for the occasion with nothing to wear. She was given money to buy beautiful attire and was still unsatisfied as she spoke, “It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single stone, nothing to put on” (Maupassant 2). She was prompted to borrow a necklace from her friend and attended the ball. Loisel was so blinded by her worry for a beautiful dress and jewels that she was unable to recognize the thoughtfulness of her husband. The narrator states, “She danced with intoxication, with passion, made drunk by pleasure, forgetting all, in the triumph of her beauty in the glory of her success in a sort of cloud of happiness composed of all this homage, of all this admiration, of all these awakened desires, and of that sense of complete victory which is so sweet to woman's heart,” illustrating how the presence of her newfound clothing and jewels gave her such confidence and happiness as she was fueled by the validation of those who remarked her (Maupassant 3). The narrator paints this feeling of wealth, confidence, and aligned desire as the wants of a woman’s heart.
After spending years repaying the debt it cost to replace the jewels, the narrator contemplates the life Loisel might have had if she had not lost the necklace, saying, “How little a thing is needed to be lost or to be saved.”(Maupassant 5). Loisel’s infatuation with riches and social rank leads her to live the life that she once disdained, which is more impoverished than it began. This obsession not only causes her suffering after the loss of the necklace, but before as well, as she was so sickened with grief that she could not process this inordinate desire.
According to Augustine’s philosophy, Madame Loisel would be categorized as the “fool” as she is constantly controlled by her desire for wealth and external validation, and it leads her to live a life of unhappiness. Loisel constantly places her desire for temporal goods, such as wealth, property, and reputation, over the eternal goods in her life, such as the love of her husband, truth, and wisdom. Due to this, Loisel was also in violation of Augustine’s eternal law. This states that an individual should turn their love away from temporal goods and towards eternal goods. Loisel violates the eternal law not only because she upholds temporal goods over eternal goods, but also because the eternal law also commands that temporal goods are subjected to its higher goods, and Loisel, throughout the story, subjects herself to those lower temporal goods. Augustine labels this ordering of goods as disordered according to the eternal law.
Loisel’s disregard for the eternal law, driven by her love for temporal goods, leads her to suffer through ten years of working ceaselessly to repay what she has lost. Even Loisel’s trade of truth for the appearance of responsibility leads her to endure ten years of work that is essentially unwarranted, given that the necklace was not real diamonds.
Madame Loisel’s infatuation with temporal goods throughout “The Necklace,” by Guy de Maupassant, leads her to become a fool according to Augustine's philosophical works, On the Free Choice of the Will and The Confessions. Loisel embodies the traits Augustine associates with the fool, as she constantly puts temporal goods such as wealth and reputation over eternal goods such as love and truth. This ordering of goods violates Augustine’s eternal law, which, Augustine highlights, leads to a life of suffering. Driven by her love for temporal goods, Madame Loisel lives a life of impoverished suffering, embodying the life of a fool that Augustine outlines.
Augustine, Saint. “On the Free Choice of The Will.” WordPress, 2010, philonew.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/augustine-augustine-on-the-free-choice-of-the-will-on-grace-and-free-choice-and-other-writings-2010.pdf. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
Augustine, Saint. “The Confessions of St. Augustine.” The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Confessions of Saint Augustine, by Saint Augustine, 2 Nov. 2024, www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3296/pg3296-images.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
Maupassant, Guy. “The Necklace.” The Necklace, susannahfullerton.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/The-Necklace.pdf. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
Shelley, Mary. “Frankenstein.” The Project Gutenberg eBook of Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1993, www.gutenberg.org/files/84/84-h/84-h.htm. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.
