"How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved?" Both stories, Maupassant's "The Necklace" and "A Story of an Hour" by Chopin portray two different yet alike women, who refuse to accept their destiny and deny the life of women of their class. They are both lost, and are looking to be saved, however, they find themselves in a big trouble just when they think they succeeded in their search. Nature plays a major role in both of these women's lives. Both struggle to find their independence and the endings of their stories are both triumphant, tragic and ironic.
Both Matilda Loisel and Mrs. Mallard feel like they have been cheated by life. Mathilde suffers from her lifestyle of being middle-class. She has been cheated by life from all of the wonderful things it has to offer. "She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing.
And she loved nothing but that; she felt made for that. She would so have liked to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after." Mrs. Mallard, on the other hand, is a fragile woman afflicted with heart trouble. When she learns that her husband has been killed in a railroad disaster, she is overcome with intense grief, yet she feels a sense of liberation and mourns her lost years of freedom rather than her husband's death.
Both Mathilde and Mrs. Mallard have fantasies and thoughts which may appear selfish and self-involved. However, while Mathilde Loisel is a discontent woman who fantasizes about being a rich classy woman, Mrs. Mallard's envisions in her thoughts how happy her life would become as a result of not belonging to a marriage anymore. As such, on one hand, there is Mathilde, who dreams of "large silent anterooms, expensive silks and...