Discuss the similarities and differences in the character of Louise Mallard and Mathilde Loisel.

Louise Mallard is the protagonist from Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour." Mathilde Loisel is the protagonist from Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace." Both women come to find out that life gives and takes without care and concern for mankind.
The women possess far more differences than similarities. Of the few similarities, one that stands out is that each functions as the protagonist in their respective text. The other similarity concerns their downfall in life. Both fail to find success in life.
Louise Mallard is an oppressed woman. This characterization is provided as Louise "mourns" the death of her husband, Brently Mallard. Readers come to find out that Louise has been "repressed" by her husband.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not.

It is obvious that Louise will not miss her husband. She is actually happy he is dead. His death allows her to move on with her life, free to do as she wishes. Brently, in this story, functions as her antagonist. Although readers do not come to know him through anything but Louise's thoughts, they are made painfully aware of the abuse she suffers from his oppressive nature. In the end, as a result of poor communication, Brently shows up at home, and Louise dies. The idea of freedom being taken away from her again kills her.
Mathilde's husband, on the other hand, does not oppress her. In fact, he does everything in his power to help her feel important and successful. In the story, Monsieur Loisel, Mathilde's husband, gets an invitation to the Palace of Ministry. He hopes she will be pleased with the opportunity to attend such a formal event, but Mathilde throws the invitation across the table in disgust. She has no formal attire to wear to such an event. Broken by her poverty, she refuses to go. In the end, her husband gives her money to buy a new gown (money that he had saved for a gun for himself). Ecstatic at the thought, she begins to prepare herself for the event. The only thing she is missing is jewelry. She borrows a necklace from her friend Madame Forestier, a woman whom Mathilde believes has everything. Unfortunately for Mathilde, she loses the necklace, which puts her family into dire financial straits. In the end, Mathilde ends up poorer than when she began.
Unlike Louie, Mathilde's antagonist is societal expectations and poverty. Her end, essentially, comes when she meets Madame Forestier years later. Mathilde admits that she lost the necklace and took out loans, which ruined her and her family, to replace the lost necklace. Forestier, shocked at Mathilde's appearance, tells her the necklace was a fake, simply "paste." Mathilde ruined her life to replace a worthless neckless.
Both women sought out their own personal freedoms, and both failed. Both women lost more than they had to lose in the first place.