(1) The novel tells readers that human destiny is arranged by unexpected "nature". 2
(2) Mathilde's tragic image points out that in a capitalist society centered on money, the only way out for women is decorations. ③
(3) The novel is regarded as an ode to sincere love. ④
(4) It is believed that the novel tells readers through the image of Mathilde that in a society where money is paramount, the pursuit of personal dignity comes at a price. five
Although these statements try to explain the theme from the novel text and the interpretation of the protagonist image, they fail to grasp the main connotation of the protagonist image, so they are still not in place. So what are the connotations of the image of the heroine Mathilde?
One is to love beauty.
The novel depicts the image of the heroine from the perspective of "women naturally love beauty". The first six paragraphs prove this point. The beginning is divided into three layers. The first layer is one or two natural segments. It says that she was born in a small clerk's family and married a small clerk, so she won't pay attention to dressing up. "She feels very unfortunate." Why? "Because in women, beauty, charm and charm are their origins; Natural intelligence, graceful posture and gentle temperament are their only qualifications. " The cloud in On Women shows that the novel shapes the image of the heroine from the perspective of female nature. So the third paragraph (paragraphs 3 to 5) on the second floor begins: "She feels that she was born to live an elegant and luxurious life". Isn't the so-called "life" just "nature" and "nature" Obviously, "elegant and luxurious life" can only be interpreted as "beautiful life" in the context. The novel then uses three, four and five natural paragraphs to describe her crazy dream of a better life of food, clothing, housing and transportation and express her strong desire for beauty. Finally, the sixth paragraph is the third floor. Write about her pain after coming back from her rich girlfriend's house to compare the meaning. At the beginning, a key is preset for readers to interpret the heroine, that is, the heroine portrayed in the necklace has the nature that women love beauty.
After the novel enters the plot, it fully shows that Mathilde is a woman who loves beauty. Making new clothes and borrowing necklaces is not a concrete manifestation of her love for beauty. Mathilde's choice of jewelry vividly describes her love for beauty. Facing the dazzling beautiful world, she has a hesitant attitude of "first look", "second look" and "second look". What makes her happy is the heartbeat when she sees the diamond necklace. She puts on the necklace and looks at herself in the mirror, and jumps, hugs, kisses and runs after borrowing the necklace. The excitement and intoxication of dancing at the party pushed her love of beauty to a climax. After returning home, before removing makeup, she "took a look at herself while this dazzling dress was still on her body", and she loved beauty to the point of being reluctant to part. Even though she was in trouble because of her lust for beauty, she "recalled the dance that year." How beautiful and charming she was that night! " Mathilde loves beauty without regret!
The second is simplicity.
Mathilde became a simple woman again. She changed from a shop assistant's woman to another shop assistant's wife, living in a shop assistant's family. Therefore, she is narrow-minded, inexperienced, poorly educated and unfamiliar with the complex external world. The love of beauty is innate and does not need training: how to love beauty, such as how to distinguish between true and false jewelry, needs education. Mathilde obviously lacks this lesson, and the living environment of the small staff is unlikely to give her this lesson. Besides, Mathilde has never experienced complicated ups and downs in the world. Although she has become Madame Loire, she is still as simple as a girl. To make a new dress, you can only ask your husband's permission with tears; Without jewelry and wanting it, she showed helpless distress. After her husband came up with the idea of borrowing money, "she gave a cry of surprise." Really! I didn't think of that! Didn't the words "unexpectedly" clarify the simplicity of her thinking? After borrowing the necklace, she jumped, hugged, kissed and ran, and vividly wrote a simple woman image, just like an innocent girl. When she bought a real necklace and returned it to her girlfriend, she was worried that her girlfriend would treat her as a thief, and the heroine's innocence almost reached the point of pedantry. Ten years later, she told her girlfriend the truth about the loss of the necklace, and the novel wrote: "She smiled with an innocent and complacent expression." Isn't the innocent smile engraved with the word "simplicity"?
Because of simplicity, she doesn't know that the outside world is complicated and mixed, so there is no concept of "fake" in her mind, let alone distinguish between true and false jewelry. Otherwise, she can't afford real jewelry. Why can't she think of buying cheap and good imitation jewelry? Why didn't she think she would get used to jewelry when she chose jewelry for her girlfriend? When the jeweler boss hinted, why didn't she think that the lost necklace might be a fake? In fact, as long as the following are enough to show that she is a simple woman: when she lost her necklace, her husband took out "18 thousand francs left by her father." This is a lot of property in a small staff family, but Mathilde, as a housewife, knows nothing about it. Isn't this pure and excellent evidence? Mathilde is like a mountain stream before paying off debts, clear but not easy to understand; Like flowers in a greenhouse, beautiful and delicate.
The third is courage.
After losing the necklace, Mathilde's living environment has changed greatly, and a new feature has appeared in her character-courage and fortitude. In order to pay off her debts, she is not discouraged, pessimistic, devious, and does not sell her beautiful and moving appearance (beautiful appearance is priceless property in a commodity society). She relied entirely on her own will, spirit and strength, and relied on her own hands to "save her hard-earned money one by one." She "made up her mind" and "repaid this terrible debt" with unwavering confidence. She really succeeded. No wonder even the writer behind the calm and potential novel paper stood up and publicly praised: "She showed her heroism at once." Ten years of debt repayment tempered the heroine, made her mature and strong, and made her a brave woman.
Love of beauty, simplicity and courage constitute the three levels of Mathilde's image. Love of beauty is her nature as a woman; Simplicity is the personality formed by her birth, upbringing, experience and personal temperament; Courage is the deep quality of loving beauty and simply developing towards goodness.
two
After reading the image of the heroine Mathilde portrayed in the novel, we need to look at another character who is entangled with the heroine and causes conflicts to build a plot chain. Who is this? Loire or Madame Frais? Neither. These two people do not conflict with the heroine in the novel. The novels are mainly written by Mathilde, Loisel and Fraser. Where are the other characters? Yes, the novel also writes a very important "character", which is very helpful for the interpretation of the theme. The conflict with Mathilde constitutes the plot chain of the novel, but it is ignored by us. This is the "necklace" (diamond necklace). The "necklace" in the novel is no longer jewelry in the usual sense, nor is it a pure object. It embodies the writer's "meaning" and makes it an image in the novel. So, as a character in the novel, what does "necklace" mean?
One is a foreign beauty.
Look at it: "Suddenly she found a beautiful diamond necklace in a blue satin box, and her heart jumped with joy." She was trembling with a necklace. She hung it around her long neck and stood in front of the mirror for a long time. "The description of Mathilde's Heartbeat, Handshake and Trance strongly shows that The Necklace has unparalleled beauty-its beauty is left to readers to conceive. (According to China's classical poems, this artistic technique is called "All the guests bow down to the Lord", such as Han Yuefu's "Sang in Shang Mo" and the beauty of Luo Fu. )
The second is internal leave.
The appearance of the necklace is outstanding and incomparable, but the inner quality is fake. At the end of the novel, the hypocrisy of the necklace is exposed.
External beauty and internal leave are the image connotation given to the necklace by the writer. External beauty is the superficial meaning of the necklace, which is extremely confusing and deceptive; The false inside is the inner meaning of the necklace, which is extremely concealed and harmful.
"Necklace" is a "role" with other things inside and outside.
Now we can clearly see that the plot of the novel is constructed by the contradiction between Mathilde and the necklace; Mathilde, who loves beauty but is simple, collides with the necklace with beautiful appearance and hypocritical heart, forming the plot chain of the novel: combination-separation-parting. Mathilde's choice of necklace is the result of the attraction of beautiful women and foreign beautiful women. It is the combination that first intoxicated Mathilde at the dance, and then the necklace disappeared silently. This is "separation". "Separation" led to tragedy. After leaving the necklace, Mathilde pulled herself together from the pain, bravely fought against bad luck and finally paid off her debts. This is a farewell.
The theme of the novel is contained in the plot chain of "combination-separation-parting".
From "combination" to "separation", Mathilde's tragic process is interpreted (novels are naturally divided into "borrowing necklace", "missing necklace" and "missing necklace" in a staggered form). In this process, we saw the cause of the tragedy. There is no doubt that there is a fake necklace inside, which is the external cause of the tragedy. Imagine, if it is a genuine diamond necklace, will it fall and leave quietly? It is because of the beauty, confusion and deception of the necklace that Mathilde is fascinated; It is precisely because the necklace is hidden and harmful that it is easy to be damaged and fall off without being noticed, which leads to Mathilde's tragedy. The inner cause of tragedy is the simplicity in Mathilde's character. Simplicity has advantages and disadvantages. In a complex world where truth and falsehood are mixed, simplicity will inevitably lead to tragedy. Mathilde's pure love of beauty, the external clutter, many-hued's world lack of due understanding and sufficient discrimination, how can she see through the truth of the necklace "false inside"? She was cheated by that necklace, which was beautiful outside and fake inside, because of her own simplicity. Simplicity, ignorance of the world, lack of experience and ability to distinguish between true and false are the internal causes of Mathilde's tragedy.
At this point, the theme of the novel has surfaced. Through the tragedy of Mathilde's loss of a necklace, the novel sends a serious warning to women who love beauty: simple love of beauty, lack of experience, lack of ability to be involved in the world, lack of vision to distinguish truth, goodness, beauty from falsehood, ugliness and ugliness, and only looking at the appearance without looking at the essence will pay a painful price! Mo Bosang sounded the alarm for women who love beauty with the art of novels.
The theme of the necklace is more than just a warning. If the novel only provides warning significance, then the plot of "parting" in the novel (the novel is divided into "paying off debts" in a staggered way) can be completely eliminated, or at least written a little. Obviously, Mo Bosang didn't want to be satisfied with the warning of the novel. His humanitarian concern made him give great sympathy to the heroine's tragedy, and also made her blossom brilliantly. The shallowness in simplicity leads to tragedy, and the sincerity in simplicity will also glow with courage, strength and perseverance in the bumpy life journey. Mo Bosang deeply sympathizes with women who love beauty, hoping that they will grow up in the storm, not be pessimistic, not sink or degenerate in the face of bad luck, and conquer difficulties and win new victories with their own hands and spirit. Therefore, the novel also contains the implication of giving great encouragement to the deceived and troubled beauty-loving women.
The warning and encouragement to women who love beauty constitute the theme of Mo Bosang's novel The Necklace.
The above theme explanation is based on my understanding of the unique creative art of necklace novels. Critics have been reading this novel under the framework of critical realism, thus labeling Mathilde as a "petty bourgeoisie" and carving the theme of the novel as "criticizing the capitalist system". In fact, the writer has no intention to "reproduce the typical characters in the typical environment". Therefore, when interpreting the theme of necklaces, we should pay attention to the following points:
This novel plays down the social environment in which the characters live. Realism attaches great importance to the description of the environment in order to "reproduce the typical characters in the typical environment", and always depicts the characters' personalities from the specific environment in which they live, reflecting the essence of social relations in a certain historical period. However, it is difficult for readers who have read The Necklace to describe the environment of the heroine's social relations, at least it is difficult to clearly outline this environment. Inferring from the external factors of the novel (such as the time of novel creation), the heroine lives in the French capitalist society in the19th century; However, the novel itself does not set a capitalist social environment for the characters, nor does it set a small environment for the characters' activities to reveal social contradictions and class contradictions. The novel obviously downplays the realistic environment of the characters' lives, and does not want to describe the theme of the characters' expression from the specific environment (the so-called "typical environment" in literature and art) in which a social system embodies the essence of social relations.
(2) The concreteness of the "beginning" set in the novel. Generally speaking, the beginning of a novel is the beginning of its plot. This is not the "beginning" of the necklace. The plot of the novel begins with "one night", and her husband comes home with an invitation to the dance issued by the Minister of Education. Obviously, "beginning" has nothing to do with this plot, and it is completely an independent plate outside the plot. What is the trend of this special structure? I have pointed out in the first part of this article that "the beginning" is a key to interpret the heroine. The novel gives the key to the reader first, which shows that the author is afraid of being misunderstood by the reader. The careless reader failed the writer's painstaking efforts, ignored the original intention of "beginning" and failed to grasp the key of "women are born to love beauty". Imagine how to interpret the theme of the novel in place without the key provided by the "beginning".
(3) Mathilde's tragedy is a personal tragedy and a personality tragedy. Reading The Necklace based on the realistic paradigm always thinks that Mathilde's tragedy is a social tragedy, which is caused by the capitalist system. This is not in line with the reality of the novel. The novel doesn't touch the essence of capitalist social system at all; And no one imposed the necklace on Mathilde, but she chose it on her own initiative. She chose a diamond necklace because of her love for beauty and her simple personality and temperament. If she has the ability to distinguish between true and false jewelry, will it lead to tragedy? Therefore, Mathilde is simply making his own bitter wine and asking for it. The main reason is simplicity and lack of discrimination.
The above three points are very beneficial for us to interpret The Necklace and explore the theme of the novel. When we get to know the heroine from the perspective of "women naturally love beauty", it is not difficult for us to understand the eternal reason of the necklace theme because of her simple personal temperament. Everyone has a love of beauty. Won't people who love beauty learn from Mathilde's tragedy forever? It is very beneficial for middle school students who are inexperienced, naive and love beauty to include "necklace" in middle school Chinese textbooks. Isn't it a warning and encouragement?