Rich people love to buy fakes, Maupassant's "Necklace" has long been written

I was recently reading Maupassant’s collection of short stories, and it was amazing. Every story is really interesting, and the ending is unexpected. The ravines of human nature are vividly portrayed.

Moreover, I found that writers like “Masters of Human Nature” should not meet too early. When one’s own experience is not enough, one cannot read the depth and richness of the work, and will only find it bizarre, or be misled by routine interpretations.

For example, the story of “The Necklace” was selected into the text of our middle school. At that time, I felt that the heroine was vain and stupid. She was an ordinary family, but she had to go to a high-end banquet. In order to show off at the banquet, she had to borrow a diamond necklace from a rich friend.

After she lost the necklace, she could tell her the truth to her friend. After she said it, her friend told her that the necklace was fake, so she could pay a few hundred dollars. However, she had to hide from her friends and buy an identical diamond necklace. Not to mention all her savings, she also spent ten years as a coolie to pay off her debts.

I can’t remember how the Chinese teacher interpreted it. In addition to criticizing the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, it seems to praise the honesty of the working people.

Now I read this story with 30 years of experience and have a completely different feeling.

First, I can understand the heroine’s curiosity about the upper class, as well as her vanity. She is a beautiful girl. Beauty has always been closer to wealth, because beauty is also a scarce resource.

Maupassant used this sentence to express the true thoughts of these naturally beautiful girls of ordinary background: “Women originally have no class and variety; their beauty, their charm, and their charm can be used as their background. and Mendi”.

But what is reality?

Class barriers will always exist, and a woman will not be exempted because of her beauty.

Because the heroine was of ordinary background and did not have a generous dowry, she could only marry an equally ordinary small civil servant. She was full of unwilling resentment about her origin and her marriage.

Because she has never really been in contact with the upper class, the heroine’s imagination is distorted. She thinks that if she wears beautiful clothes, eats exquisite food, and uses expensive furniture, her life will be extremely happy.

And poor and beautiful girls are often more vain. Beauty is dominant and everyone can see it, while wealth is hidden. They hope to use their beauty and gorgeous clothes to conceal their true class and gain the favor of the rich-because they do With this opportunity, not a beautiful girl, don’t even imagine.

Second, I found that human nature is really complicated, and it is not possible to completely deny a person because of their obvious shortcomings. Also, desires can be nurtured, and loving someone can sometimes contribute to his weakness.

Although the heroine is vain, her mind is always full of dream bubbles about the upper class, but she does have a good quality and responsibility.

She lost the necklace, she didn’t deny it, and she didn’t want to go wrong. Are there many such people? Actually not much.

Being responsible is a very precious quality. In fact, such people can do any job well.

In addition, there is another detail in the story that when the heroine’s husband received the invitation to the banquet, the heroine’s first reaction was that he did not want to attend.

Because she doesn’t have nice clothes.

And the heroine’s husband really loves her. In order to make her happy, he asked him how much it would cost to make a beautiful dress? The hostess said, 400 francs. Coincidentally, the husband had just saved 400 francs, which he originally planned to use to buy a shotgun, which he had been looking forward to for a long time.

But because he loves the heroine, he gave the money to buy clothes for the heroine.

Then the hostess bought clothes and said that there was no necklace to match. Her husband suggested to her that she could borrow it from the rich girlfriend. So there was a subsequent accident.

Found out that no, people always want to be pampered, but loving to the point of pampering will actually contribute to your weakness. This is also a double-edged sword.

Third, I also discovered a point that I never thought of when I was a child, that is, rich people really love to buy fakes!

The rich friend in “The Necklace”, the heroine has known her for many years, and is a classmate at a boarding school. The heroine often doesn’t want to interact with her, because every time they meet, she will be very stimulated and in pain.

She imagined rich people very noble, thinking that they are superior to others in terms of material and spirituality, and that all good qualities are also related to them.

When the hostess went to borrow the necklace, her rich friend took out a lot of jewelry for her to choose, which seemed very generous. She would never have imagined that rich people would buy fakes, it was not within her knowledge at all.

Moreover, I have a black-bellied guess that all the jewelry that a rich friend took out for her to choose should be fake. That is to say, even if the female protagonist did not pick the diamond necklace, but other jewelry, in all likelihood, it was a cheap fake!

This reminds me of the scene where Fang Sijin’s boss bought a fake Hermes for her in the TV series “Settle Down”.

Explain two minds:

1. Rich people don’t treat low-class people as friends at all.

2. They dare to send fake goods and lend them fake goods because they judge that the poor cannot afford them and cannot identify them.

All in all, blatant contempt.

The fact that rich people love to buy fakes is now often used to ridicule.

I interviewed a girl who sells luxury goods A. She said that they would be very frank in the copywriting that the store only sells high-end products, so don’t disturb the middle- and low-end people!

I laughed so hard, I asked her how to sell a fake bag and divide people into three, six, nine, and so on. How dare you be so arrogant.

Of course, she said, the clients are rich people.

She revealed to me that people who come to buy A goods are basically a mix of real and fake products. There is a rich woman group who often buys Hermès’s super A in a group. . In fact, the small circle within them will not be hidden, and everyone will communicate with each other. On the contrary, the poor are embarrassed to buy fake ones, they will save a few months or even a year’s salary and go to the counter to buy genuine products.

I heard this inside story a few years ago and it really was an eye-opener.

But it makes sense to think about it now, because:

Rich people can afford genuine products, so there is no psychological worship of luxury goods, but a flirtatious and playful psychology. Precisely because they are rich, they carry a fake, and others think it is real. And people who save half of their salary to buy a LV, if they recite the truth, others will think it is fake.

Interestingly, from the era of “The Necklace” to the present, no matter what class, human nature, human desires, and human psychology, many things have not changed.

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