Fate is defined as the force or power held to predetermine events, fortune, or destiny. I believe that a person's fate is determined by the choices he/she makes in life, not by being dealt a hand of cards, where everything is known. The choices that you make in life, no matter how insignificant they may seem, all serve a purpose and have consequences to them.

In "The Necklace", Madame Loisel chooses to not tell her friend that she lost the necklace and spends 10 years of her life trying to pay for the new one. That is a consequence, or an effect. The choice that she made served as a blessing in disguise. You see, before, Mme. Loisel was a quite materialistic driven person, who longed for the riches that she thought made a woman. After undergoing those ten very unpleasant and horrible years, she became a real woman. One with grace and inner beauty, whom everyone wished they were like. Her life wasn't set out to be this way, that's just the way it became. Because of the choices that she made, she altered her fate. Her having gone through those awful ten years, she lost all her outer beauty, but gained all that she lacked, inner beauty.

In conclusion, there are no set rules to your life, that's why we have choices, so that we can try to make things different. Whether these choices are good ones, we must wait and see. That's fate.