Many great stories have been compared and contrasted. "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant and "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry have many similarities and differences. In both stories, the main character struggles financially, however, their reaction to their circumstances differs greatly. In "The Necklace", Madame Loisel receives an invitation to an upper-class ball. After insisting that she has nothing to dress up in and assuming “there’s nothing more humiliating as looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women”, she borrows a necklace from her rich friend, Madame Forestier, and ends up losing it. She and her husband work ten years of their lives to try to pay it back, only to find that the lost necklace was a cheap replica.
In "The …show more content…
Madame Loisel gawks at herself for her shabby furnishings and poor lifestyle. “She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs and ugly curtains. All these things, of which other women of her class would not have been aware, tormented and insulted her.” Even though appearance is mostly superficial, Madame Loisel feels as if it is everything. However, that is not the case with O. Henry’s character. Della’s main concern is finding something for her husband, Jim, that will show him her gratitude for being his wife and not going through Christmas Day without giving him a gift. “Many a happy hour she had spent planning something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling - something just a little bit near to being worthy of being owned by Jim,” O. Henry writes. Della could not care less of how she looks or what furnishes her eight-dollar-a-week flat. She is more concerned about making her significant other feel so social and