Comparing and Contrasting “The Necklace” and “The Gift of the Magi” Essay

The main(prenominal) personality in The Necklaces, and the main slip in The Gift of the Magis, personalities differ from 1 a nonher vastly. In The Necklace, the main character Mathilde Loisel is an ungrateful middle class woman who seeks riches and admiration. Alternatively, the main character in The Gift of the Magi, Della materialization, is compassionate and works very hard to sully her husband a present, and ultimately, selling the one thing that was more unusual to her than anything else, her hair. Mathilde is selfish, and when her friend, Madame Foreister is sympathetic enough to let her borrow her jewelry, Mathilde asks rudely, Havent you anything else? (Maupassant, 39). In contrast, Della is very appreciative when she receives a hairpin, and is very unselfish when giving extraneous her hair to buy a present for her husband. Mathilde and Della argon also both remotely poor. In the beginning of The Necklace, Mathilde and her husband were pretty well despatch, not too r ich, and very simple.But at the end of the story, they are m otherwisefucker poor, having spent 10 years paying debts. On the other hand, Della started aside fairly poor, only being able to gather $1.87 for a Christmas present, tho enjoyed life all the same. These two women are also un want one another because of how they treat their husbands. When thinking ab come forth what to get her husband Jim, Della thought, Something fair and rare and sterlingsomething just a little bit tight to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim. (Henry, 6) This adduce launchs how much Della loves her husband, and how she thinks it is the best thing in the world to be his, and to be married to him. Meanwhile, instead of feeling like her husband won her heart, Mathilde feels like she settled for him. She shows these feelings for her husband when O. Henry writes and she let herself be married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. (Maupassant, 1).Madame Loisel also does not sho w gratitude towards her husband when he acquired the tickets to the party, and when he spent all that money get her a dress when he really could have bought something for himself. On the other hand, Mrs. Young is very flattered when her husband buys her a present, even one that she has no use for. Both The Necklaces, and The Gift of the Magis, endings are ironic. In The Necklace, Mathilde and her husband come about most of their young life paying off a Brobdingnagian debt because of a diamond necklace that she had lost. 10 years later, she ran into the friend from whom she borrowed the necklace from, and found out that the necklace they thought was thirty-six thousand francs was only five hundred.The Gift of the Magi cease in a more comical irony than The Necklaces misanthropical irony. Della had cut her long, lushes hair to buy Jim a chain for his pocket watch, and Jim change his prized pocket watch to buy Della a lavish pin for her hair. The Young couple didnt mind that they both bought something the other one no longer needed, they were just happy to have each other. People are confronted with choices every day, and in The Necklace by Guy De Maupassant and The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry, the main characters make subconscious choices to act selfish, or to act grateful.