Title: The Necklace: Thirteen
Women and The Experiment That Transformed Their Lives
Author: Cheryl Jarvis
Date: 2008
Pages: 222
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 978-0345500724
As a
teacher of literature, I've often had my students read Guy de
Maupassant short story, “The Necklace.” In the story, Madame
Loisel, unsatisfied with her life, almost refuses to attend a society
gather, but relents when her friend loans a spectacular diamond
necklace. With the necklace, Madame Loisel feels like she is the
star of the party, but loses the necklace on the way home. She is
too embarrassed to tell her friend, and goes into deep debt to
purchase a new necklace to replace the lost one. To pay off the
debt, Madame Loisel works harder and longer and become a bitter,
tired old woman. When she meets her friend years later, Madame
Loisel is unrecognizable and she blames her friend for her
misfortunes. If her friend had not loaned her the diamond necklace,
she would not have lost it and gone into debt. When she admits her
deception to her friend, she is confronted with a chilling response,
“"Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth
at the very most five hundred francs! . . . "
Usually
high schoolers are incredulous that Madame Loisel would hid the loss
of the necklace and not just admit it. Often though, adult readers
understand the prideful ego that led Madame Loisel to conceal her
carelessness. Madame Loisel was concerned primarily about how the
world perceived her, she longed to portray herself as wealthy and
influential. Adults also understand how life often works as
ironically as the ending – that what we think is real often is
false, and we pay for this disillusionment.
Why
do I mention Guy de Maupassant's story? Although Cheryl Jarvis's
reporting of the true story of a diamond necklace the belonged to
thirteen women in California in 2004 does not have the dark ending
of de Maupassant's it exposes the facades many women present to
themselves and the world, and how a necklace exposes these masks.
Each
chapter is dedicated to one of the women involved in the time-share
necklace, but the idea originates with Jonell. As a real estate
agent, she frequently rewarded herself with something special after a
good sale. When she sees a $37,000 tennis-style diamond necklace,
she wonders why ordinary people can't experience extraordinary
luxury. If she could convince several other women to buy a share of
the necklace, and share the wearing of it, then everyone could feel
the luxury. After phone calls and emails, she convinces a small
group to time-share the necklace, and with the gracious pricing of
the jewelry store owned who significantly reduced the price to
$15,000, the women had a necklace to wear for 28 days around their
birth date.
The
group met for the first time to set some ground rules – the name of
the necklace became Jewelia and at the end of the time-share, the
woman with the necklace would host the next meeting. Each woman came
to the group with different reasons for buying into the necklace,
different seasons in life, and different expectations of the group.
Without the necklace, many of the women would have never met each
other. However, the necklace inspired each woman to examine herself
and her desires from life. They discarded the masks they wore and began to embrace their potential. Additionally, collectively, the group
began to take up local causes, fund-raise, and become involved in
their local community. In the group, the women found themselves to
be both accepted and challenged. Over time, their experiment in
time-sharing a luxury item become fodder to local and national news.
Each
chapter is a short profile of each of the woman and are not fully
realized, even though the author spent several weeks with each of the
woman. But, as the necklace and group symbolized potential for the
women, the book symbolizes potential for any woman to envision a life
that fulfills her true possibilities. This theme is clearly evident
with the opening quote:
“Here
we are, women who have been the beneficiaries of education,
resources, reproductive choices, travel opportunities, the Internet,
and a longer life expectancy than women have ever had in history.
What
can and will we do?” ― Jean Shinoda Bolen
Title: The Book Thief
