Six Lenses on Two Stories: Reviewing the Key Aspects of Prose

25 min

Let's begin

Comparison is how we judge. We say a meal, a footballer or a song is good by setting it beside others. Literary comparison works the same way: two texts placed side by side show things that neither shows alone. This unit teaches you to compare prose works in the national examination. First, you need a reliable set of lenses to look through. This lesson reviews them using two short stories that are often taught together.

Story 1: "The Necklace" (Guy de Maupassant, France, 1884)

Summary. Mathilde Loisel is pretty and charming but married to a modest clerk at the Ministry of Education in Paris, and she spends her days dreaming of luxury. When her husband proudly brings home an invitation to a grand ball, she weeps because she has nothing to wear. He gives her the four hundred francs he had saved for a gun, and she borrows a diamond necklace from a rich friend, Madame Forestier. At the ball she is a triumph. At home, she finds the necklace gone. The Loisels borrow from moneylenders, buy an identical necklace for thirty-six thousand francs and return it without a word. For ten years they live in poverty to repay the debt; Mathilde scrubs floors and bargains in the market, and her beauty fades. When the debt is finally paid, she meets Madame Forestier in the street and tells her the whole story. Her friend, deeply moved, takes her hands and tells her that the original necklace was imitation, "worth at most five hundred francs".

Story 2: "The Gift of the Magi" (O. Henry, United States, 1905)

The story opens:

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies.
O. Henry, "The Gift of the Magi" (1905)

Summary. It is Christmas Eve in New York. Della Young has saved $1.87, coin by coin, to buy a present for her husband Jim, who earns little and with whom she shares a cheap furnished flat. The couple own two treasures: Jim's gold watch, inherited from his father and grandfather, and Della's long, beautiful hair. Della sells her hair for twenty dollars and buys a platinum chain for Jim's watch. When Jim comes home he stares at her short hair, then gives her his present: a set of expensive combs for the hair she no longer has. He has sold his watch to buy them. The narrator ends by calling the two young people, who "most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house", the wisest of all who give gifts: "They are the magi."

Word	Meaning
the magi	the wise men who, in the Gospel of Matthew, brought gifts to the infant Jesus
paste	glass made to look like precious stones
moneylender	a person who lends money, often at very high interest
twist ending	an unexpected final turn that changes the meaning of what came before

Definition

key aspects of prose: the elements a critic examines in any prose work: plot and structure, character, setting, theme, narrative point of view, and style (language and tone).
tone: the writer's or narrator's attitude to the subject and to the reader: for example ironic, tender, bitter or comic.
characterisation: the methods a writer uses to present a character: description, action, speech, thought, and other characters' reactions.

Six lenses on two stories

Lens	"The Necklace"	"The Gift of the Magi"
Plot and structure	Rise (the ball), fall (the loss), ten years of decline, then a twist ending that makes the sacrifice pointless	Short, one day; a double twist: each gift is made useless by the other's sacrifice
Character	Mathilde: vain, dissatisfied, but later brave and hard-working; her husband: patient, generous	Della and Jim: poor, loving, each willing to give up the thing they value most
Setting	Paris of the 1880s, a city of strict social classes	A cheap New York flat on Christmas Eve
Theme	Pride and the desire to appear rich can destroy a life; appearances deceive	Love is measured by sacrifice, not by the value of a gift
Point of view	Third person, cool and detached, staying mostly with Mathilde	Third person with a chatty, intrusive narrator who addresses the reader
Style and tone	Plain, economical, ironic; the narrator does not comment	Playful, sentimental, full of humorous asides; the final paragraph moralises warmly

Already the table suggests the main line of comparison: both stories turn on a sacrifice and an ironic twist about the value of an object, but one ends in waste and bitterness, the other in tenderness.

Worked example: applying one lens closely

Lens: point of view and tone. How does each narrator want us to feel at the end?

"The Necklace": the narrator gives Madame Forestier the last words and adds nothing. We are left alone with the shock that ten years were wasted. The coldness makes the irony cruel.
"The Gift of the Magi": the narrator steps forward and tells us how to judge: the couple were "wisest". The irony of the useless gifts is turned into praise.
Conclusion: the same device, a twist ending, produces opposite effects because of the narrator's tone. That is a comparison point you could build a paragraph on.

Tip

Make a six-lens grid for every set book. Fill one row per lens with two or three short quotations or references. When an exam asks you to compare, your evidence is already sorted.

Warning

Don't give one lens to each paragraph and stop there. Lenses overlap: the narrator's tone shapes how we see the characters.
Don't judge characters only by modern standards without considering the setting; say what the society around them expected.

"The Necklace – Story Summary", from GradeSaver. Check its summary against the one above, and note any details it adds about Mathilde's character.

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Practice

List the six key aspects (lenses) of prose.
Why does Mathilde weep when she receives the invitation?
What do Della and Jim each sacrifice, and what does each buy?
Explain the meaning of the title "The Gift of the Magi".
Give one similarity and one difference in the structure of the two stories.
Write a theme statement for each story.
Is Mathilde a victim or the cause of her own misfortune? Write a paragraph that considers both views.

Show answersHide answers

Plot and structure, character, setting, theme, point of view, style (language and tone).
She has no fine dress to wear, and she feels humiliated at the thought of appearing poor among the rich.
Della sells her hair and buys a platinum watch chain; Jim sells his gold watch and buys combs for her hair.
The magi were the wise men who brought gifts to the infant Jesus, and so began the custom of Christmas gifts. The narrator calls Della and Jim the true magi because their gifts, though useless, show the wisest kind of giving: love that sacrifices.
Similarity: both end with a twist that changes the meaning of the sacrifice. Difference: "The Necklace" covers ten years; "The Gift of the Magi" covers one day.
For example: "Pride in appearances can cost far more than it gains"; "True love gives what it values most."
Victim: of a rigid class society and of bad luck; she works bravely for ten years. Cause: her vanity led her to borrow the necklace, and her pride stopped her telling her friend the truth, which would have saved everything. A balanced paragraph weighs both.

Sources and credits

"The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant (1884) and "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry (1905) are public domain; the summaries are Ganzaa's, and the short quotation from "The Necklace" follows an early twentieth-century public-domain English translation.
Image: Guy de Maupassant, 1888, Nadar, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Video: The Necklace – Story Summary, GradeSaver, embedded from YouTube.
Tables, worked example and practice written by Ganzaa.

1Story 1: "The Necklace" (Guy de Maupassant, France, 1884)

2Story 2: "The Gift of the Magi" (O. Henry, United States, 1905)

3Six lenses on two stories

Story 1: "The Necklace" (Guy de Maupassant, France, 1884)

Story 2: "The Gift of the Magi" (O. Henry, United States, 1905)

Six lenses on two stories