生活中的锁链

文章简介

主人公罗瓦赛尔太太是一个小公务员的妻子。一次，他丈夫接受了部长的邀请，去参加部长举办的晚会。罗瓦赛尔太太由于虚荣心作祟而她没有钱买好衣服和漂亮首饰，于是她向一个贵妇人借了一条项链。后来这条项链不慎在舞会上丢失，罗瓦赛尔太太为了赔给朋友一模一样的项链，落入高利贷的陷阱，就此开始了艰辛的生活，葬送了十年的青春。最后，当她在还清欠款后，偶遇那位贵妇人时，妇人却告诉她那条项链其实是假的。

作者简介

莫泊桑，法国著名小说家，世界短篇小说之王，19世纪后半期法国优秀的批判现实主义作家。他一生写的短篇小说将近300篇，《羊脂球》为其最著名的代表作。其他如《我的叔叔于勒》、《项链》、《俊友》、《温泉》等都是脍炙人口的名篇。莫泊桑的短篇小说构思别具匠心，情节变化多端，描写生动细致，刻画人物世态惟妙惟肖，令人读后回味无穷。

文章片段赏析

SHE was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and distinguished; and she let them make a match for her with a little clerk in the Department of Education.

She was simple since she could not be adorned; but she was unhappy as though kept out of her own class; for women have no caste and no descent, their beauty, their grace, and their charm serving them instead of birth and fortune. Their native keenness, their instinctive elegance, their flexibility of mind, are their only hierarchy; and these make the daughters of the people the equals of the most lofty dames.

She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these things, which another woman of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant. The sight of the little girl from Brittany who did her humble housework awoke in her desolated regrets and distracted dreams. She let her mind dwell on the quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze, and on the two tall footmen in knee breeches who dozed in the large armchairs, made drowsy by the heat of the furnace. She let her mind dwell on the large parlors, decked with old silk, with their delicate furniture, supporting precious bric?a?brac, and on the coquettish little rooms, perfumed, prepared for the five o’clock chat with the most intimate friends, men well known and sought after, whose attentions all women envied and desired.

When she sat down to dine, before a tablecloth three days old, in front of her husband, who lifted the cover of the tureen, declaring with an air of satisfaction, “Ah, the good pot?au?feu. I don’t know anything better than that,” she was thinking of delicate repasts, with glittering silver, with tapestries peopling the walls with ancient figures and with strange birds in a fairy?like forest; she was thinking of exquisite dishes, served in marvelous platters, of compliment whispered and heard with a sphinx?like smile, while she was eating the rosy flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail.

She had no dresses, no jewelry, nothing. And she loved nothing else; she felt herself made for that only. She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be seductive and sought after.

She had a rich friend, a comrade of her convent days, whom she did not want to go and see any more, so much did she suffer as she came away. And she wept all day long, from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and from distress.

But one evening her husband came in with a proud air, holding in his hand a large envelope.

“There,” said he, “there’s something for you.”

She quickly tore the paper and took out of it a printed card which bore these words: “The Minister of Education and Mme. Georges Rampouneau beg M. and Mme. Loisel to do them the honor to pass the evening with them at the palace of the Ministry, on Monday, January 18.”

Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation on the table with annoyance, murmuring: “What do you want me to do with that?”

“But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go out, and here’s a chance, a fine one. I had the hardest work to get it. Everybody is after them; they are greatly sought for and not many are given to the clerks. You will see there all the official world.”

She looked at him with an irritated eye and she declared with impatience:“What do you want me to put on my back to go there?”

He had not thought of that; he hesitated: “But the dress in which you go to the theater. That looks very well to me—”

He shut up, astonished and distracted at seeing that his wife was weeping. Two big tears were descending slowly from the corners of the eyes to the corners of the mouth. He stuttered: “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”