Guy De Maupassant The Necklace (1884)
The form my writing is taking for this small project is part of a short story, a narrative written with a God's eye view. I also wrote a short essay, a little thought piece on knowledge and memory.
The short story 'brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters. The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot' (Short Story n.d) This is the perfect form for a chapbook and although I am writing this as half of another story I do think the first three chapters have the characteristics listed here.
I am going to look at another short story here as an example of this form and compare how this is written to my own writing. The story I have chosen is Guy de Maupassant's 'The Necklace'. It concerns a young woman who is envious of the social status of others and wished to rise through society but in this small story her chance of this ever happening is blown when she steals a necklace to wear at a ball, then loses it and so to replace it has to spend the rest of her life paying off this debt, only to discover that the necklace was not worth anything really at all. It is interesting to note that I have the book version of this and I also looked up the web version the web translation is poor by comparison so I will hand type from the book version as this is about writing well after all!
So I will compare my opening paragraph with that of Maupassant. Maupassant begins;
'She was one of those pretty and charming young girls who continue to be born from time to time, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She has no dowry, no expectations, no means of coming across any rich or distinguished man who would understand, love, and marry her. She let herself be married to a minor civil servant in the Ministry of Education' (de Maupassant G. 2008:55)
Maupassant writes using literary realism and in my own work I will be doing the same, I want the characters and atmosphere to ring as true to life as possible.
My own first paragraph begins:
'Honey sat on his dilapidated porch, in his house in Miles City, Montana. He was just on the cusp of everything going in the right direction. His PhD thesis was going well, his Professor at the University had agreed that he could go to England, and he really wanted this, no needed this for his PhD to succeed. So why, when he sat here in his favourite pair of jeans and t-shirt with the legend Elton John did he feel like he would rather bum around Miles City with his mates for the next three years. Perhaps he was afraid that this was the point life would get too serious. He would also have to fit in with all those stuck-up English people who probably knew more than he did and even if they didn't with their posh British accent would sound like they did. Honey ruffled his slightly long wavy brown hair, he should get clean and get ready for work.' (Van-de-Velde 2023)
In Maupassant there is a concise use of language that, like poetry has said much in very few lines, we may not yet know the girl's name in Maupassant but we know she is pretty, poor, with no prospects, and is she is married, probably not happily but there it is. In my own piece, we understand that Honey is American, likes, Elton John, and bumming around but he has dreams about his PhD and going to England. I have used a much more wordy and descriptive approach which is perhaps more acceptable in a longer novel, I suspect that really I am trying to write a longer novel and really my three chapters do only just begin the story..
In Maupassant's tale, the girl is obsessed with social status and it pains her;
'Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself intended for the delicacies and luxuries of life. She distressed at the poverty of her pension. at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the ugly curtains. All these things. of which another woman of her rank would never even have been concious, tortured her and made her angry' (de Maupassant G. 2008:55)
Here we now know how she feels inside, we are taken into her heart and to understand her, her anger at her poor status, laid out before her every day in the home that she feels is not good enough for her. Again here the text is concise yet still manages to convey depth of feeling through use of adjectives for her house and the use of alliteration such as 'suffered ceaselessly' and the depth of her anger is strengthened by how her own house 'tortured' her with its shabby appearance.
In my own story, Honey is also from a poor background which is alluded to throughout by the house, furnishings and his belongings
Honey Devlin had never travelled outside the United States, actually he had never travelled really in the United States, his parents were fairly poor working in menial jobs that just made ends meet. Honey had stayed at home when he started university, and worked in the bar to pay his parents rent and to have just enough to go out occasionally. Honey realised as he pulled the old suitcase out from under the stairs that belonged to his Father that really he did not know what he should pack. After giving the suitcase a good clean, his Father must have used it back in the 70s when he was a young travelling salesman, he genuinely sold Bibles door to door, he always said it was the best job he ever had, until people stopped believing in God and started to believe more in MTV and technology. (Van-de-Velde 2023)
The fact that this begins that he has never travelled shows that he does not have the means, he comes from a poor background and he has stayed home to go to university so he can afford, here on his first trip he is using an old suitcase from the 1970s because that is what he has. Here I have written less descriptively but this highlights more of his history and social status through his parents and his background.
Here comparing my own work briefly to the work of Maupassant, I realise I am less consistent and in places, I do need to be more concise and precise. I still have to go over my drafts again and I will rework some of the text as it certainly could be improved for the final piece.
References
Short story (no date) Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/short-story (Accessed: February 14, 2023).
de Maupassant G. (2008) first published between 1877 and 1891, On Horseback and Other Stories, forward by Anthony Guise, Capuchin Classics, London
Short stories: The necklace by Guy de Maupassant (no date) East of the Web. Available at: https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Neck.shtml (Accessed: February 14, 2023).
The necklace (no date) enotes.com. enotes.com. Available at: https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-two-examples-alliteration-necklace-505935 (Accessed: February 14, 2023).
