Mathilde feels herself entitled to better things in life. She leads a pretty ordinary, lower middle-class existence as the wife of a minor official at the Ministry of Education. Although she herself comes from a family of clerks, Mathilde genuinely believes that she has noble blood in her veins and often fantasizes about living a charmed life among the aristocracy.
But the huge gulf between fantasy and reality is starkly illustrated for Mathilde whenever she goes to visit her rich friend. Witnessing at firsthand the luxurious lifestyle that her old school friend leads brings home to Mathilde just how far away she is from living out her dreams. This makes her incredibly upset, so much so that she weeps with sorrow for days upon returning home. So deeply traumatized is Mathilde by these visits that she stops going to see her friend altogether.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Why did Mathilde weep with misery after visiting her schoolmate?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
"Mistaken Identity" is an amusing anecdote recounted by the famous author Mark Twain about an experience he once had while traveli...
-
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman was enormously influential. We can see its influences on early English feminist Mary Woll...
-
As if Hamlet were not obsessed enough with death, his uncovering of the skull of Yorick, the court jester from his youth, really sets him of...
-
In both "Volar" and "A Wall of Fire Rising," the characters are impacted by their environments, and this is indeed refle...
No comments:
Post a Comment