Reading Log

Mathilde, She Is Not Wrong

Mathilde, If She Were in This Age…

Provided Mathilde were in this age, what would happen to her?

The comments of the story say, “She is one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks.”  

Yes, it was really a mistake of destiny in late nineteenth-century. At that time, French society was organized on a class basis. It was extremely difficult for people to change or move from the class into which they were born. It is exactly the settings of the story The Necklace, which features Mathilde.

She is a sacrifice of that society. She has no dowry, and no means of being known. Women nowadays can make a difference through diligence and intelligence; they can win respect because of wisdom and knowledge, can ask for right of education, of independence and of equality with men. Women’s fate is taken the reins by themselves but not in the control of the men or the destiny.

She is pretty, charming and elegant; she is hard-working and keeps promise. She has ambitions and dreams to lead a decent and luxurious life. So, what would happen to her if she lived in the twenty-first century?

Let us turn our attention to another woman, Hilary. She, of elegance and beauty, with ambitions and wisdom, keep working diligently no matter when she was in law school, or when she acted as a senate or when she acted as a senate. She campaigned for becoming the new President of the United States, the first woman President in the history! Actually, Mathilde, in my mind, has a lot of similar strong points and as Hilary, Rice and Royal. If she were in this age, maybe she would be one of the women candidates for the presidency in some country. At least, she could choose her way of life and steer her boat in a direction she prefers.