Chekhov and Mauassant
?The Darling? by Anton Chekhov and ?The Necklace? by Guy de Maupassant are very similar pieces of writing even though they were written fifteen years apart and in two separate countries (Russia and France respectively). In both stories we have a woman who loses something at a point in her life, and she is forever a different person because of it. Precisely looking at a passage from ?The Darling? and a passage from ?The Necklace,? one can notice many similarities between the two stories.
The passage from Chekhov?s ?The Darling? starting on page 298 and finishing on page 299 from ?Now she was absolutely alone.? (298) To ?And she would shake the kitten off her skirt and say?? (299). This passage, written in the third person, takes place after the main character Olenka (Olga) is ?absolutely alone.? At this point, her father has been dead for a long while, her first husband Kukin had passed away, her second husband Pustovalov had just died, and her ?friend? Vladimir Platonitch had left her.
At this point, she is very depressing, yet no one feels sorrow for her any longer. They no longer ?look at her as they used to?
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