"The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant is a short story that explores themes of vanity,

materialism, and the harsh realities of life. Here’s a critical analysis of the story:

Plot Summary

The narrative centers around Mathilde Loisel, a middle-class woman who dreams of a more
luxurious life than her modest circumstances allow. She feels she deserves wealth and beauty
but is trapped in a life of mediocrity. When her husband secures an invitation to a prestigious
ball, Mathilde is unhappy because she has nothing suitable to wear. Her husband sacrifices
his savings to buy her a dress, but Mathilde still feels inadequate without jewelry. To satisfy
her desires, she borrows a diamond necklace from her wealthy friend, Madame Forestier.

After an enchanting evening at the ball, Mathilde discovers that she has lost the borrowed
necklace. In a panic, she and her husband search for it but fail to find it. They decide to
replace the necklace, plunging themselves into a decade of poverty to repay the debt incurred
for the replacement. The story concludes with Mathilde’s chance encounter with Madame
Forestier years later, where she learns that the original necklace was a fake and worth very
little.

Themes

1. Vanity and Materialism: Mathilde’s obsession with wealth and status drives the
story. Her longing for a glamorous life leads her to borrow the necklace, highlighting
how societal values place a premium on appearances over reality.
2. Pride and Shame: Mathilde’s pride prevents her from admitting her situation. She
wants to appear affluent, even if it means borrowing from others. This pride
ultimately leads to her downfall, as she faces years of hardship due to her desire to
maintain an illusion.
3. Irony: The story is rich in situational irony. Mathilde's sacrifice to achieve her dream
life leads to a reality far worse than the one she tried to escape. The ultimate
revelation about the necklace being fake underscores the futility of her struggles and
the deceptive nature of appearances.
4. The Burden of Debt: The story comments on the social expectations placed on
individuals to appear wealthy, often leading them into financial ruin. The Loisels’ ten
years of labour to pay off the debt illustrates how the pursuit of materialism can result
in devastating consequences.

Character Analysis

 Mathilde Loisel: She is portrayed as a complex character driven by dissatisfaction

with her life. Her beauty and charm is overshadowed by her material desires, making
her both relatable and tragic. Mathilde's transformation from a hopeful young woman
to a weary, aged one reflects the harsh realities of life and the consequences of her
choices.
 Monsieur Loisel: Mathilde's supportive husband is a foil to her character. He
embodies practicality and contentment with their life. His willingness to sacrifice for
Mathilde emphasizes the theme of love versus materialism, showcasing how genuine
affection can be overshadowed by greed and vanity.
Symbolism

 The Necklace: The necklace itself symbolizes the superficial nature of wealth and
status. Its transformation from a coveted item to a source of despair reflects the story's
central theme of appearance versus reality.
 The Ball: The event serves as a microcosm of society's class distinctions, where
Mathilde's desire to fit in among the wealthy leads her to take desperate measures.

Conclusion

In "The Necklace," Maupassant masterfully critiques social class, materialism, and the
dangers of vanity. The story serves as a cautionary tale about the perils of valuing
appearances over reality, illustrating how the pursuit of wealth can lead to a loss of what truly
matters in life. The ironic twist at the end leaves readers pondering the nature of happiness
and the cost of societal expectations.

About the narrative:

The short story “The Necklace” is French Guy de Maupassant’s most well-known literary
work. This de Maupassant tale is set in 19th century France and is celebrated for its
surprising denouement. The story revolves around a young woman and her husband who
initially led an ordinary middle class life but became utterly impoverished because of an
unfortunate incident. This is an irony of fate considering that what caused it was the young
wife’s discontent for her social condition and her intense craving for a life that her husband,
a mere government worker, cannot give her. “The Necklace” therefore, offers the reader the
caveat that people who cannot appreciate what little they have and insist on coveting what
they cannot have may find themselves in worse situations than they are presently in.

To expound on the idea that too much discontent and materialism breed deleterious results,
de Maupassant creates the character of Mathilde Loisel whose greatest failing is that she
simply cannot accept her middle class social status that comes from being the wife of a mere
government clerk. Everything in her home from its walls to its trappings is anathema to her:
they are common, they are ugly, they are inelegant and they are simply poor. The thought of
how unfortunate she is for being saddled with a life that deprives her of elegant surroundings
with “quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze” (3)
makes Mathilde cry and despair for days. To comfort herself, she deliberately closes her eyes
to the drudgery of her surroundings and mentally transposes herself to an entirely different
one. Thus, while she takes her meal in the dining table with her husband eating soup from the
tureen and potpie, she instead imagines herself dining with “exquisite dishes, served in
marvelous plates, of compliment whispered and heard with a sphinx-like smile, while she
was eating the rosy flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail (4).

De Maupassant next introduces a conflict that would change the fortune of the couple not for
the better as Mathilde would have liked it, but ironically, for the worse. This begins when
Mathilde loses the diamond necklace that she borrowed from her rich friend Madame
Forestier (a friend she much envied for her wealth) to complement the expensive gown, the
purchase of which she had emotionally wrangled from her husband, that she wore to the
party. Embarrassed with the prospect of telling Madame Forestier of the loss, the couple
spends the last of their savings and obtains several loans to buy a diamond necklace that
could pass off for the original. These loans takes them ten years to pay, makes them give up
all the things they owned including their house and servant, and reduce the once pretty and
gracious Mathilde to a “robust woman, hard and rough, of a poor household. Badly combed,
with her skirts awry and her hands red, her voice was loud and she washed the floor with
splashing water” (104).

As if bringing home the point is not enough, de Maupassant delivers a surprising twist to the
story’s end that manages to make the reader sit up. In the meeting between Mathilde and
Madame Forester ten years after the incident, the former discovers that the diamond necklace
loaned to her by the latter which caused the miserable change in her life was just mere
costume jewelry. The falsity of the diamond necklace seems to symbolize the senselessness
of Mathilde and her husband’s sacrifices for the last ten years. It must have been more painful
for Mathilde to realize that her life became utterly impoverished because of a mere piece of
worthless jewelry.

“The Necklace” is a lesson in discontent and unreasonable materialism. De Maupassant tells

his readers that hankering too much for material things that one cannot obviously have
presently and disregarding the little things that one already has may not lead to good results.
The possibility that such a person may not only not get the things he wanted for himself but
worse lose the very things he has but did not appreciate.

The Necklace | Analysis

The characters in this story are well set up from the start. A middle-class woman who wishes
to be rich, her middle-class husband who wants to give her what she wants, and her upper-
class school friend. The woman, Matilda, lives a life of yearning. She was born beautiful and
feels as though her true destiny was to be part of the distinguished.
Her husband, a clerk, was happy with his lot in life. This directly contrasts his wife’s
outlook on life. In Matilda’s opinion, he was an economical man, and this would imply that
she did not know that he had saved 400 francs to buy himself a gun. He gave up that desire,
however, to accommodate Matilda’s.
It is clear that Matilda was never happy with her lot in life, and was always looking for more.
Something more luxurious, more decadent. This is also represented in her asking “Have you
nothing more?” to her friend when presented with an array of jewels. She was not happy
with what she was given, and asks for more, and takes what she calls a treasure, a string of
diamonds.
Though she had an evening of happiness, this was short-lived. She simply created
an image of herself that could not be sustained. She would not use her wraps so that the rich
women would not know she was not one of them. She was harshly brought back to reality
when she and her husband walked for ages to find a carriage to take them back home. This
was immediately followed by her realisation that she lost the necklace. Her husband still had
to go to work at 10 am, the author is showing us that how much ever she wants to pretend,
reality will always catch up.

Still trying to maintain her image, they shell out their entire savings and take questionable
loans from several lenders. This takes 10 years to repay. She was forced to give up any dream
of being part of the affluent class and ended up a part of the working class. She had no time
for these dreams anymore, but she didn’t forget them. Her contentment with life increased,
and all representations of envy were gone.

In the end, she was faced with her old desires. The same friend, still part of the life she
wanted. Matilda did not turn away, embarrassed, but faced it head-on, as though she was
facing herself. She says she is content, and there is no embarrassment portrayed. She lives her
life in true reality, only to find out that the life she wanted was only ever an image. The
necklace was fake. The luxury was never real.

In the story, she asks herself, where would she have been had she not lost the necklace and
pondered on how life changes with such small occurrences. Had she not lost the necklace, she
would have still been living a life of longing, never being able to accept herself. She is now
content, though on a different plane of life.

The irony is that she never had to give it up at all. She worked for years to make up for losing
the necklace, but all of that could have been avoided if she had just been honest. She
sacrificed her beauty and her money for no reason. On learning that the necklace was fake,
she may spiral back into the same disappointment and despair that she had just escaped
from.

The Necklace | About the Author

Guy de Maupassant, or Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant, was a French author who

usually wrote about human lives with a pessimistic view on destiny and social forces. He is
best known for his mastery of short story writing, and the twist ending is a characteristic of
his style. His magnum opus is ‘Boule de Suif’ which was actually his first published story.
He is hailed as the best French short story writer and has influenced the style of several
writers after him.

He died on 6 July 1893 in Paris, France

In true keeping with de Maupassant’s style, "The Necklace" relies on irony to depict the
difficult realities of its characters’ world. In addition, irony plays a crucial role in developing
the theme of illusion and false appearances in this piece. Much of the irony in this story is
situational, such as the scene in which Madame Forestier reveals that the diamond necklace is
not made of diamonds at all:

Oh my poor Mathilde! My necklace was paste. It was worth at most five hundred francs.
Cite this Quote

Mathilde has just spent 10 years working to pay off the debt that she and her husband accrued
after purchasing a precious necklace to replace Madame Forestier's fake necklace. This is a
perfect example of situational irony, since the necklace she and M. Loisel worked so
tirelessly to replace was made of paste—that is, it was worthless. In keeping with her
obsession with appearances, Mathilde's eventual misery is rooted in her longstanding belief
that something must be valuable if it looks valuable. Now, though, she learns that things
aren't always what they seem. This irony speaks both to the dangers of materialism and a lack
of awareness about the world. Ironically enough, her vanity—which is the very thing that
drove her to borrow Madame Forestier's necklace—is what drives her to ruin, since she's too

proud to admit to Madame Forestier that she lost her necklace. If she could have humbled
herself early on by telling the truth, she wouldn't have ended up ruining her life for 10 years
in order to replace a cheap necklace.
he necklace that Mathilde borrows from Jeanne Forestier represents the idea that
appearances can be deceiving. The necklace looks like it is made of expensive diamonds, but
it is in fact made of paste, costing at most 500 francs. The fact that Mathilde is unable to tell
the difference between the two reveals her inability look beneath the surface to see the true
value of things. From Mathilde’s perspective, the necklace is the physical embodiment of the
class and social status she so desires, and the fact that she picks the most expensive-looking
(but not necessarily the most valuable) item from Mme. Forestier’s jewel box points to her
unrestrained greed and ambition. Likewise, the revelation that the necklace is a fake
demonstrates that Mathilde’s ambition is woefully misguided in the sense that she puts too
much stock in physical objects and their power to change her life. The necklace is also
thematically linked to the dangers of female beauty, especially with regard to the ugliness
that an attractive outward appearance can conceal.

The mirror symbolizes Mathilde’s vanity and the importance she attaches to outward
appearances. One of the few moments in the story in which Mathilde is truly happy is when
she is standing in front of a mirror to admire herself wearing the necklace: “She placed it on
her throat, against her high-necked dress, and remained ecstatic in front of her reflection.”
Mathilde’s ecstasy upon seeing herself in the mirror recalls the story of Narcissus, who fell in
love with his reflection and stared at it until he died. The mirror thus serves as a warning
against vanity while also demonstrating that physical appearances are flat and without
substance, like a reflection. In addition, the mirror reminds the reader that Mathilde’s
appearance of wealth and status is an illusion: the next time Mathilde looks in a mirror the
necklace is gone, as if by magic.

In “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant demonstrates that appearances—especially the

appearance of wealth—are often at odds with reality. Attempting to appear richer than she
truly is, Mathilde Loisel borrows a diamond necklace from her friend Jeanne
Forestier and then loses it at a ball. She and her husband buy an expensive replacement on
credit, return the replacement to the friend as though it’s the original, and then live ten years
in poverty to repay their debts. In the end, however, Mathilde learns that the original necklace
was only costume jewelry—the appearance of wealth she briefly achieved at the ball was
based on false diamonds and she has suffered uselessly to replace those fake diamonds with
real ones, since neither she nor the necklace’s owner noticed the difference. This
uncontrollable slippage between reality and illusion, and the catastrophe it invites, shows that
losing sight of reality in order to cultivate a false appearance can easily lead to ruin.

From the beginning of the story, Mathilde feels that her appearance does not match her
reality, as she is a beautiful woman with refined taste born to a class that she feels is beneath
her. Since she feels that she naturally belongs to a different class, Mathilde is constantly
distressed “the poverty of her apartment, the dinginess of the walls, the shabbiness of the
chairs, the ugliness of the fabrics.” Instead of acknowledging and appreciating her reality, she
lives in a world of daydreams, imagining “hushed antechambers with Oriental hangings,”
“fine furniture carrying priceless knicknacks,” and eating “the rosy flesh of a trout or the
wings of a grouse.” Therefore, Mathilde believes that her reality should match her
appearance, which leads her to believe that she deserves a different life, one which she can
only live in dreams.

When the Loisels receive an invitation to an elegant party hosted by the Minister of
Education, Mathilde buys an expensive gown and borrows a diamond necklace from Mme.
Forestier so that she does not look “like a pauper in the middle of rich women.” Maupassant
suggests, however, that the elegant, wealthy appearance the necklace gives Mathilde is
dangerous and illusory. He describes Mathilde in Mme. Forestier’s dressing room as “ecstatic
in front of her reflection” in the mirror, which evokes Narcissus getting so lost in his own
reflection that he died. Furthermore, at the ball, Mathilde is filled with pleasure that seems
dangerous and not quite real. Maupassant writes, “She danced, intoxicated, swept away,
heady with pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her
conquest, in something like a cloud of happiness made of all that homage.” In other words,
Mathilde seems drunk on the admiration of others, forgetting that their admiration is based, in
part, on an appearance of wealth that is at odds with her reality.

In keeping with her unwillingness to acknowledge reality, Mathilde does not tell the truth
when she realizes that she has lost her friend’s necklace. Instead, she and her husband ruin
themselves financially to buy an expensive replacement. In addition, Mathilde seems so
invested in the notion that appearances should match reality that she cannot recognize the
hints that the necklace isn’t valuable. First, the Loisels visit the jeweler whose name was on
the necklace’s box, but he says that the necklace didn’t come from him. The box, therefore,
misled them as to the origin of the necklace—a potent metaphor for Mathilde herself, and a
hint that the necklace might be fake. Furthermore, when Mathilde brings the expensive new
necklace to “return” to her friend, Mme. Forestier doesn’t even open the box and she never
notices that the necklace is different. This suggests that the necklace was never particularly
important to Mme. Forestier to begin with, which would likely not be true for a necklace
worth 40,000 francs.

Through Mathilde and her husband’s suffering in the decade it takes them to pay their debts,
Maupassant seems to be making a straightforward moral argument about the price of greed,
but the twist ending—when Mathilde admits to Mme. Forestier that her family has been
ruined by replacing the diamond necklace, and Mme. Forestier reveals that the original
necklace was fake—complicates the story’s morality. The fact that Mme. Forestier’s necklace
was made of paste shows that the appearance of wealth relies on illusion, even for the rich.
Perhaps, then, the wealth Mathilde believed she was owed is inaccessible not simply to her
but also to everyone else, including the truly wealthy. Furthermore, the fact that the necklace
was a fake makes the Loisels’ sacrifice worthless—they have bought in to the myth that
appearances correspond to reality, and this leads them to lose even the meager ease and status
they once had. Maupassant’s treatment of the disjunction between appearance and reality
therefore seems to be more than a straightforward attempt to caution people against greed and
entitlement—first and foremost, it’s a warning about the catastrophes that can occur when a
person attempts to make reality live up to their illusion.

At the beginning of “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant writes that for women, “their
beauty, their grace, and their charm serve them in lieu of birth and family background” and
that “Their native finesse, their instinct for elegance, their versatile minds are their sole
hierarchy, making shopgirls the equals of the grandest ladies.” His implication is that a
woman’s beauty and poise can offer her upward social mobility. While Maupassant presents
this as being the conventional wisdom—and an idea that Mathilde buys into—the
remainder of his story demonstrates that beauty does not necessarily have the power to
change a woman’s class. Furthermore, the story suggests that believing that beauty has more
power than it does can corrupt women and leave them vulnerable once their beauty is gone.

Mathilde is an exceptionally beautiful woman from humble origins, but her beauty makes her
feel that she “was meant for all delicacies and all luxuries.” Despite this belief, Maupassant
suggests that any entrance into high society that her beauty affords her is temporary. After the
party, for example, Mathilde’s husband covers her with “the modest garments of ordinary
life, their poverty clashing with the elegance of the ball gown,” ruining her fashionable
appearance and bringing the magical night to a sudden end. Although Mathilde’s beauty is
the key to her success at the party, her beauty is not enough to make this brief interlude to
become her permanent reality. Furthermore, her sense of entitlement to wealth, which is
founded on her beauty, makes her greedy and leads her to poor decision making, such as
borrowing the necklace from Mme. Forestier, ultimately leading to her ruin. Beauty, in
this case, does not guarantee upward mobility, but rather leads the Loisels into poverty.

Not only does beauty lack the power to propel Mathilde into a higher class, but Maupassant
shows that beauty also can destroy a person’s character. Mathilde’s behavior throughout the
story is vain and selfish, since her beauty gives her such a high opinion of herself. Outer
beauty, then, can conceal and even create an unattractive personality. Mathilde’s selfishness
is clearest when she spends the money her husband has saved to buy a rife for himself in
order to have an expensive dress for a single night of upper-class celebration. Her vanity is
apparent throughout the story, but it is especially noticeable when she looks at herself in
the mirror, before and after the party, to obsess over her own beauty.

In one sense, since Mathilde’s vanity and selfishness lead her to borrow the necklace that she
ultimately loses, her ruin can in part be seen as a morality tale asserting the importance of
inner rather than outer beauty. Fittingly, then, by the end of the story Mathilde’s outward
appearance comes to match her inner ugliness. Maupassant writes: “Madame Loisel looked
old now. She had become the strong, and hard, and crude woman of poor households.”
Mathilde’s poverty is experienced as a loss of her physical beauty, suggesting that the
advancement of beautiful women will always be short-lived. On the other hand, though,
Maupassant points out that Mme. Forrestier (unlike Mathilde) still looks young and beautiful.
By contrasting the different fates of these two women Maupassant suggests that beauty is
bought by status and not the other way around, revealing the false promise of advancement
created by Mathilde’s remarkable appearance.

Although Mathilde was once admired for her physical beauty, briefly giving her access to
high society, by the end of the story her beauty is gone. Mathilde’s greatest mistake was to
attach too much important to her physical appearance, and her ruin can be read as a
correction to her vanity and selfishness, as well as a tragic end to the false sense of
expectation that beauty can create.

The Necklace” is, at its heart, a story about Mathilde’s social ambition, which takes the form
of a desire to acquire luxurious objects that she cannot afford. Through her ruin, Maupassant
warns against the dangers of greed and criticizes those who ascribe too much value to wealth
and material possessions.

Mathilde invests objects like the diamond necklace she borrows from Mme. Forestier with
enormous significance, and her happiness is heavily dependent on her possession of the
objects she desires. Mathilde’s distress at the beginning of the story is largely a result of her
unfulfilled desire for material objects: “She had no wardrobe, no jewels, nothing.” This
materialism is inextricable from her social ambition, as she fears that she will be rejected by
the higher classes because she does not appear to be wealthy enough. Once Mathilde obtains
the diamond necklace she wants and is able to wear it at the party, she quickly becomes “wild
with joy.” However, as soon as the party is over Mathilde loses the necklace and is once
again unhappy, suggesting that material possessions cannot guarantee long-lasting happiness,
and that greed, in fact, can lead to ruin.

Mathilde’s desire for material possessions is doubly misguided because she has no concept of
value beyond how much an object is worth. Throughout the story Maupassant assigns many
objects a specific cash value, suggesting that an object’s value is synonymous with its price.
However, Maupassant undermines the adequacy of the conflation of price with value when
the Loisels have to choose whether to spend 400 francs on Mathilde’s evening dress or on the
rifle for which her husband had long been saving. Despite the fact that these two objects have
an equal cash value, the choice of how to spend the money reflects the spender’s moral and
social values. The dress is a somewhat frivolous purchase that corresponds to Mathilde’s
vanity and social ambition. Her “frugal” husband, on the other hand, asks that she buy a
“suitable gown” that could be worn to other affairs. Meanwhile, the rifle (which would enable
him to have a hobby that he shares with friends) seems like a much more reasonable, thought
out, and class-appropriate purchase than Mathilde’s dress—one that will have a lasting value
rather than a temporary, superficial value.

Moreover, Maupassant demonstrates that monetary value is somewhat arbitrary since even
fashionable things can be had cheaply. Mathilde’s husband suggests that she wear roses
costing 10 francs to the ball since “they’re very chic this season,” but Mathilde won’t hear of
having ornaments that aren’t visibly expensive. Furthermore, Mathilde seems only to love
Mme. Forestier’s necklace because she believes it is expensive, though the necklace is
actually made of paste and not worth much at all. Mathilde’s inability to separate price from
value, then, is what leads her to her ruin.

Taken together, Mathilde’s obsession with money and material possessions demonstrates the
dangers of greed. Instead of enjoying the small comforts of life like her husband does—a
servant to do the housework, the pleasure of warm soup—Mathilde is fixated on what she
doesn’t have. She always wants more, and the objects she desires are far beyond her financial
means. Mathilde’s greed drives her to pick the most expensive-looking necklace out of Mme.
Forestier’s jewel box, and the huge debt she and her husband take on to replace the lost
necklace can be seen as a natural consequence of her greediness.

While Maupassant certainly judges Mathilde for her greed and social ambition, he also
mitigates the blame by showing that she is playing into the cultural norms of her time: in late-
nineteenth century France, wealth was synonymous with social status, and both depended on
the ownership of material goods. Maupassant is critical not simply of Mathilde, but also of
the value system in which she lives. “The Necklace” therefore demonstrates how harmful
materialistic social hierarchies can be to those who cannot afford to access the upper classes.

In “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant demonstrates the importance of knowing how to

achieve happiness in a meaningful and lasting way. At the beginning of the
story, Mathilde and her husband live a modest life, but with enough money to live
comfortably. However, Mathilde is perpetually discontented, unable to be happy without the
clothes and jewels of a wealthy woman. Although Mathilde achieves a fleeting moment of
happiness during the party, the next ten years of her life are filled with true suffering, in sharp
contrast with her earlier self-pity which seemed out of sync with the comfortable life she
lived. By experiencing true poverty, Mathilde gains a new perspective on life and learns to be
satisfied with what she has.

Mathilde’s initial unhappiness seems like a choice: she lives a perfectly pleasant life and
could easily be contented with it, but instead of focusing on the good things she has, Mathilde
obsesses over what she doesn’t have, driving her to discontent. Maupassant points out that the
things that make Mathilde so unhappy “wouldn’t have even been noticed by any other
woman of her station,” which suggests that Mathilde’s temperament is not a result of
privation, but rather it is a character flaw. Furthermore, unlike Mathilde, her husband is able
to be happy with their lot: he says, “Ah! A good stew! I don’t know of anything better.” This
demonstrates that happiness is, at least in part, a matter of perception or of choice.

Even when Mathilde experiences a rare moment of happiness at the party, Maupassant
depicts this happiness as fleeting: the party only lasts a night, and her happiness is entirely
dependent on her possession of the dress and the necklace. During the party Mathilde is in a
“cloud of happiness,” giving the scene a dreamlike quality, almost as if it were too good to be
true. However, once the necklace is gone her happiness vanishes. As soon as the Loisels
leave the party, they are “desperate and shivering,” and at the end of the night, Mathilde
remarks “it is over.”

After Mathilde has been forced to spend ten years suffering to pay off the debt she incurred
after losing the necklace, she seems paradoxically more content. The fact that Mathilde is
able to play her part “with sudden heroism” shows that she is no longer prey to the self-pity
and dissatisfaction that characterized her in the first part of the story. She also develops a new
sense of perspective with regard to happiness and suffering. At the end of the story, she
remarks: “What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who
can say? How little there is between happiness and misery!” The idea that things could have
turned out differently shows that Mathilde has learned that happiness is not simply a matter
of owning more money or more things, and the fact that her idle thoughts are contemplations
of happiness and misery rather than the self-pitying daydreams of wealth she had before
shows that she has become more grounded through her experience of suffering.

Mathilde’s new ideas on life and on happiness illustrate the idea that it is better to accept
one’s lot in life than to fight against it. Moreover, by experiencing a truly difficult existence,
Mathilde develops a new perspective on the privileges and small comforts of her earlier life.
Although Mathilde is not happy in her new life, she is more grounded in reality and she is
newly willing to accept things for the way they are

METAPHOR unearthed a superb diamond necklace,

Explanation and Analysis—The Black Satin Box:

An example of foreshadowing in “The Necklace” occurs when Mathilde and her husband,
after losing the necklace, locate the jeweler whose name was on its box. The jeweler reveals
that the necklace was not one of his:

The next day, they took the jewel case to the jeweler whose name was inside. He consulted
his books. "Madame, I’m not the one who sold this necklace, I only furnished the case."

The key moment of dramatic irony in the story is the ball, in which the reader knows that
Mathilde has dressed up in imitation of a wealthy woman, when she in fact is not. This fact is
known to the reader, though not to the other characters in the scene:

Madame Loisel was a great success. She was lovelier than any other woman […]. All the
men gazed at her, asked for her name, and tried to get introduced. All the cabinet attaches
wanted to waltz with her. The minister noticed her.
Cite this Quote

Though this story is told from a third-person limited point of view, it focuses intimately on
Mathilde’s interiority. So, the reader is aware that the interest of the men in the room may be
exaggerated and distorted by Mathilde’s ego, unbeknownst to her (a double irony). The result
is that a kind of narrative tension runs through this scene: the reader wonders just how
effectively Mathilde has truly disguised herself as a wealthy woman. What's more, readers
might wonder how Mathilde will return to her normal life now that she has—apparently—
experienced what it feels like to have wealth and status.

Ultimately, the reader is also aware that the interest that these men take in Mathilde probably
will not change her life. Realistically, it cannot: Mathilde’s identity as a wealthy society
woman is borrowed for a night, and it will be returned with the necklace in the morning.
However, Mathilde clings to the fantasy of wealth she feels she has attained, and she seems to
invest great importance in retaining their attention. The result is that Mathilde’s self-
absorption and greed are laid bare for readers to see.
Symbolism: The necklace that Mathilde borrows from Jeanne Forestier represents the idea
that appearances can be deceiving. The necklace looks like it is made of expensive diamonds,
but it is in fact made of paste, costing at most 500 francs. The fact that Mathilde is unable to
tell the difference between the two reveals her inability look beneath the surface to see the
true value of things. From Mathilde’s perspective, the necklace is the physical embodiment of
the class and social status she so desires, and the fact that she picks the most expensive-
looking (but not necessarily the most valuable) item from Mme. Forestier’s jewel box points
to her unrestrained greed and ambition. Likewise, the revelation that the necklace is a fake
demonstrates that Mathilde’s ambition is woefully misguided in the sense that she puts too
much stock in physical objects and their power to change her life. The necklace is also
thematically linked to the dangers of female beauty, especially with regard to the ugliness
that an attractive outward appearance can conceal. About the narrative:

The short story “The Necklace” is French Guy de Maupassant’s most well-known literary
work. This de Maupassant tale is set in 19th century France and is celebrated for its
surprising denouement. The story revolves around a young woman and her husband who
initially led an ordinary middle class life but became utterly impoverished because of an
unfortunate incident. This is an irony of fate considering that what caused it was the young
wife’s discontent for her social condition and her intense craving for a life that her husband,
a mere government worker, cannot give her. “The Necklace” therefore, offers the reader the
caveat that people who cannot appreciate what little they have and insist on coveting what
they cannot have may find themselves in worse situations than they are presently in.

To expound on the idea that too much discontent and materialism breed deleterious results,
de Maupassant creates the character of Mathilde Loisel whose greatest failing is that she
simply cannot accept her middle class social status that comes from being the wife of a mere
government clerk. Everything in her home from its walls to its trappings is anathema to her:
they are common, they are ugly, they are inelegant and they are simply poor. The thought of
how unfortunate she is for being saddled with a life that deprives her of elegant surroundings
with “quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze” (3)
makes Mathilde cry and despair for days. To comfort herself, she deliberately closes her eyes
to the drudgery of her surroundings and mentally transposes herself to an entirely different
one. Thus, while she takes her meal in the dining table with her husband eating soup from the
tureen and potpie, she instead imagines herself dining with “exquisite dishes, served in
marvelous plates, of compliment whispered and heard with a sphinx-like smile, while she
was eating the rosy flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail (4).

De Maupassant next introduces a conflict that would change the fortune of the couple not for
the better as Mathilde would have liked it, but ironically, for the worse. This begins when
Mathilde loses the diamond necklace that she borrowed from her rich friend Madame
Forestier (a friend she much envied for her wealth) to complement the expensive gown, the
purchase of which she had emotionally wrangled from her husband, that she wore to the
party. Embarrassed with the prospect of telling Madame Forestier of the loss, the couple
spends the last of their savings and obtains several loans to buy a diamond necklace that
could pass off for the original. These loans takes them ten years to pay, makes them give up
all the things they owned including their house and servant, and reduce the once pretty and
gracious Mathilde to a “robust woman, hard and rough, of a poor household. Badly combed,
with her skirts awry and her hands red, her voice was loud and she washed the floor with
splashing water” (104).

As if bringing home the point is not enough, de Maupassant delivers a surprising twist to the
story’s end that manages to make the reader sit up. In the meeting between Mathilde and
Madame Forester ten years after the incident, the former discovers that the diamond necklace
loaned to her by the latter which caused the miserable change in her life was just mere
costume jewelry. The falsity of the diamond necklace seems to symbolize the senselessness
of Mathilde and her husband’s sacrifices for the last ten years. It must have been more painful
for Mathilde to realize that her life became utterly impoverished because of a mere piece of
worthless jewelry.

“The Necklace” is a lesson in discontent and unreasonable materialism. De Maupassant tells

his readers that hankering too much for material things that one cannot obviously have
presently and disregarding the little things that one already has may not lead to good results.
The possibility that such a person may not only not get the things he wanted for himself but
worse lose the very things he has but did not appreciate.

The Necklace | Analysis

The characters in this story are well set up from the start. A middle-class woman who wishes
to be rich, her middle-class husband who wants to give her what she wants, and her upper-
class school friend. The woman, Matilda, lives a life of yearning. She was born beautiful and
feels as though her true destiny was to be part of the distinguished.
Her husband, a clerk, was happy with his lot in life. This directly contrasts his wife’s
outlook on life. In Matilda’s opinion, he was an economical man, and this would imply that
she did not know that he had saved 400 francs to buy himself a gun. He gave up that desire,
however, to accommodate Matilda’s.
It is clear that Matilda was never happy with her lot in life, and was always looking for more.
Something more luxurious, more decadent. This is also represented in her asking “Have you
nothing more?” to her friend when presented with an array of jewels. She was not happy
with what she was given, and asks for more, and takes what she calls a treasure, a string of
diamonds.
Though she had an evening of happiness, this was short-lived. She simply created
an image of herself that could not be sustained. She would not use her wraps so that the rich
women would not know she was not one of them. She was harshly brought back to reality
when she and her husband walked for ages to find a carriage to take them back home. This
was immediately followed by her realisation that she lost the necklace. Her husband still had
to go to work at 10 am, the author is showing us that how much ever she wants to pretend,
reality will always catch up.

Still trying to maintain her image, they shell out their entire savings and take questionable
loans from several lenders. This takes 10 years to repay. She was forced to give up any dream
of being part of the affluent class and ended up a part of the working class. She had no time
for these dreams anymore, but she didn’t forget them. Her contentment with life increased,
and all representations of envy were gone.

In the end, she was faced with her old desires. The same friend, still part of the life she
wanted. Matilda did not turn away, embarrassed, but faced it head-on, as though she was
facing herself. She says she is content, and there is no embarrassment portrayed. She lives her
life in true reality, only to find out that the life she wanted was only ever an image. The
necklace was fake. The luxury was never real.

In the story, she asks herself, where would she have been had she not lost the necklace and
pondered on how life changes with such small occurrences. Had she not lost the necklace, she
would have still been living a life of longing, never being able to accept herself. She is now
content, though on a different plane of life.

The irony is that she never had to give it up at all. She worked for years to make up for losing
the necklace, but all of that could have been avoided if she had just been honest. She
sacrificed her beauty and her money for no reason. On learning that the necklace was fake,
she may spiral back into the same disappointment and despair that she had just escaped
from.

The Necklace | About the Author

Guy de Maupassant, or Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant, was a French author who

usually wrote about human lives with a pessimistic view on destiny and social forces. He is
best known for his mastery of short story writing, and the twist ending is a characteristic of
his style. His magnum opus is ‘Boule de Suif’ which was actually his first published story.
He is hailed as the best French short story writer and has influenced the style of several
writers after him.

He died on 6 July 1893 in Paris, France

In true keeping with de Maupassant’s style, "The Necklace" relies on irony to depict the
difficult realities of its characters’ world. In addition, irony plays a crucial role in developing
the theme of illusion and false appearances in this piece. Much of the irony in this story is
situational, such as the scene in which Madame Forestier reveals that the diamond necklace is
not made of diamonds at all:

Oh my poor Mathilde! My necklace was paste. It was worth at most five hundred francs.
Cite this Quote
Mathilde has just spent 10 years working to pay off the debt that she and her husband accrued
after purchasing a precious necklace to replace Madame Forestier's fake necklace. This is a
perfect example of situational irony, since the necklace she and M. Loisel worked so
tirelessly to replace was made of paste—that is, it was worthless. In keeping with her
obsession with appearances, Mathilde's eventual misery is rooted in her longstanding belief
that something must be valuable if it looks valuable. Now, though, she learns that things
aren't always what they seem. This irony speaks both to the dangers of materialism and a lack
of awareness about the world. Ironically enough, her vanity—which is the very thing that
drove her to borrow Madame Forestier's necklace—is what drives her to ruin, since she's too

proud to admit to Madame Forestier that she lost her necklace. If she could have humbled
herself early on by telling the truth, she wouldn't have ended up ruining her life for 10 years
in order to replace a cheap necklace.
he necklace that Mathilde borrows from Jeanne Forestier represents the idea that
appearances can be deceiving. The necklace looks like it is made of expensive diamonds, but
it is in fact made of paste, costing at most 500 francs. The fact that Mathilde is unable to tell
the difference between the two reveals her inability look beneath the surface to see the true
value of things. From Mathilde’s perspective, the necklace is the physical embodiment of the
class and social status she so desires, and the fact that she picks the most expensive-looking
(but not necessarily the most valuable) item from Mme. Forestier’s jewel box points to her
unrestrained greed and ambition. Likewise, the revelation that the necklace is a fake
demonstrates that Mathilde’s ambition is woefully misguided in the sense that she puts too
much stock in physical objects and their power to change her life. The necklace is also
thematically linked to the dangers of female beauty, especially with regard to the ugliness
that an attractive outward appearance can conceal.

The mirror symbolizes Mathilde’s vanity and the importance she attaches to outward
appearances. One of the few moments in the story in which Mathilde is truly happy is when
she is standing in front of a mirror to admire herself wearing the necklace: “She placed it on
her throat, against her high-necked dress, and remained ecstatic in front of her reflection.”
Mathilde’s ecstasy upon seeing herself in the mirror recalls the story of Narcissus, who fell in
love with his reflection and stared at it until he died. The mirror thus serves as a warning
against vanity while also demonstrating that physical appearances are flat and without
substance, like a reflection. In addition, the mirror reminds the reader that Mathilde’s
appearance of wealth and status is an illusion: the next time Mathilde looks in a mirror the
necklace is gone, as if by magic.

In “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant demonstrates that appearances—especially the

appearance of wealth—are often at odds with reality. Attempting to appear richer than she
truly is, Mathilde Loisel borrows a diamond necklace from her friend Jeanne
Forestier and then loses it at a ball. She and her husband buy an expensive replacement on
credit, return the replacement to the friend as though it’s the original, and then live ten years
in poverty to repay their debts. In the end, however, Mathilde learns that the original necklace
was only costume jewelry—the appearance of wealth she briefly achieved at the ball was
based on false diamonds and she has suffered uselessly to replace those fake diamonds with
real ones, since neither she nor the necklace’s owner noticed the difference. This
uncontrollable slippage between reality and illusion, and the catastrophe it invites, shows that
losing sight of reality in order to cultivate a false appearance can easily lead to ruin.

From the beginning of the story, Mathilde feels that her appearance does not match her
reality, as she is a beautiful woman with refined taste born to a class that she feels is beneath
her. Since she feels that she naturally belongs to a different class, Mathilde is constantly
distressed “the poverty of her apartment, the dinginess of the walls, the shabbiness of the
chairs, the ugliness of the fabrics.” Instead of acknowledging and appreciating her reality, she
lives in a world of daydreams, imagining “hushed antechambers with Oriental hangings,”
“fine furniture carrying priceless knicknacks,” and eating “the rosy flesh of a trout or the
wings of a grouse.” Therefore, Mathilde believes that her reality should match her
appearance, which leads her to believe that she deserves a different life, one which she can
only live in dreams.

When the Loisels receive an invitation to an elegant party hosted by the Minister of
Education, Mathilde buys an expensive gown and borrows a diamond necklace from Mme.
Forestier so that she does not look “like a pauper in the middle of rich women.” Maupassant
suggests, however, that the elegant, wealthy appearance the necklace gives Mathilde is
dangerous and illusory. He describes Mathilde in Mme. Forestier’s dressing room as “ecstatic
in front of her reflection” in the mirror, which evokes Narcissus getting so lost in his own
reflection that he died. Furthermore, at the ball, Mathilde is filled with pleasure that seems
dangerous and not quite real. Maupassant writes, “She danced, intoxicated, swept away,
heady with pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her
conquest, in something like a cloud of happiness made of all that homage.” In other words,
Mathilde seems drunk on the admiration of others, forgetting that their admiration is based, in
part, on an appearance of wealth that is at odds with her reality.

In keeping with her unwillingness to acknowledge reality, Mathilde does not tell the truth
when she realizes that she has lost her friend’s necklace. Instead, she and her husband ruin
themselves financially to buy an expensive replacement. In addition, Mathilde seems so
invested in the notion that appearances should match reality that she cannot recognize the
hints that the necklace isn’t valuable. First, the Loisels visit the jeweler whose name was on
the necklace’s box, but he says that the necklace didn’t come from him. The box, therefore,
misled them as to the origin of the necklace—a potent metaphor for Mathilde herself, and a
hint that the necklace might be fake. Furthermore, when Mathilde brings the expensive new
necklace to “return” to her friend, Mme. Forestier doesn’t even open the box and she never
notices that the necklace is different. This suggests that the necklace was never particularly
important to Mme. Forestier to begin with, which would likely not be true for a necklace
worth 40,000 francs.

Through Mathilde and her husband’s suffering in the decade it takes them to pay their debts,
Maupassant seems to be making a straightforward moral argument about the price of greed,
but the twist ending—when Mathilde admits to Mme. Forestier that her family has been
ruined by replacing the diamond necklace, and Mme. Forestier reveals that the original
necklace was fake—complicates the story’s morality. The fact that Mme. Forestier’s necklace
was made of paste shows that the appearance of wealth relies on illusion, even for the rich.
Perhaps, then, the wealth Mathilde believed she was owed is inaccessible not simply to her
but also to everyone else, including the truly wealthy. Furthermore, the fact that the necklace
was a fake makes the Loisels’ sacrifice worthless—they have bought in to the myth that
appearances correspond to reality, and this leads them to lose even the meager ease and status
they once had. Maupassant’s treatment of the disjunction between appearance and reality
therefore seems to be more than a straightforward attempt to caution people against greed and
entitlement—first and foremost, it’s a warning about the catastrophes that can occur when a
person attempts to make reality live up to their illusion.
At the beginning of “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant writes that for women, “their
beauty, their grace, and their charm serve them in lieu of birth and family background” and
that “Their native finesse, their instinct for elegance, their versatile minds are their sole
hierarchy, making shopgirls the equals of the grandest ladies.” His implication is that a
woman’s beauty and poise can offer her upward social mobility. While Maupassant presents
this as being the conventional wisdom—and an idea that Mathilde buys into—the
remainder of his story demonstrates that beauty does not necessarily have the power to
change a woman’s class. Furthermore, the story suggests that believing that beauty has more
power than it does can corrupt women and leave them vulnerable once their beauty is gone.

Mathilde is an exceptionally beautiful woman from humble origins, but her beauty makes her
feel that she “was meant for all delicacies and all luxuries.” Despite this belief, Maupassant
suggests that any entrance into high society that her beauty affords her is temporary. After the
party, for example, Mathilde’s husband covers her with “the modest garments of ordinary
life, their poverty clashing with the elegance of the ball gown,” ruining her fashionable
appearance and bringing the magical night to a sudden end. Although Mathilde’s beauty is
the key to her success at the party, her beauty is not enough to make this brief interlude to
become her permanent reality. Furthermore, her sense of entitlement to wealth, which is
founded on her beauty, makes her greedy and leads her to poor decision making, such as
borrowing the necklace from Mme. Forestier, ultimately leading to her ruin. Beauty, in
this case, does not guarantee upward mobility, but rather leads the Loisels into poverty.

Not only does beauty lack the power to propel Mathilde into a higher class, but Maupassant
shows that beauty also can destroy a person’s character. Mathilde’s behavior throughout the
story is vain and selfish, since her beauty gives her such a high opinion of herself. Outer
beauty, then, can conceal and even create an unattractive personality. Mathilde’s selfishness
is clearest when she spends the money her husband has saved to buy a rife for himself in
order to have an expensive dress for a single night of upper-class celebration. Her vanity is
apparent throughout the story, but it is especially noticeable when she looks at herself in
the mirror, before and after the party, to obsess over her own beauty.
In one sense, since Mathilde’s vanity and selfishness lead her to borrow the necklace that she
ultimately loses, her ruin can in part be seen as a morality tale asserting the importance of
inner rather than outer beauty. Fittingly, then, by the end of the story Mathilde’s outward
appearance comes to match her inner ugliness. Maupassant writes: “Madame Loisel looked
old now. She had become the strong, and hard, and crude woman of poor households.”
Mathilde’s poverty is experienced as a loss of her physical beauty, suggesting that the
advancement of beautiful women will always be short-lived. On the other hand, though,
Maupassant points out that Mme. Forrestier (unlike Mathilde) still looks young and beautiful.
By contrasting the different fates of these two women Maupassant suggests that beauty is
bought by status and not the other way around, revealing the false promise of advancement
created by Mathilde’s remarkable appearance.

Although Mathilde was once admired for her physical beauty, briefly giving her access to
high society, by the end of the story her beauty is gone. Mathilde’s greatest mistake was to
attach too much important to her physical appearance, and her ruin can be read as a
correction to her vanity and selfishness, as well as a tragic end to the false sense of
expectation that beauty can create.

The Necklace” is, at its heart, a story about Mathilde’s social ambition, which takes the form
of a desire to acquire luxurious objects that she cannot afford. Through her ruin, Maupassant
warns against the dangers of greed and criticizes those who ascribe too much value to wealth
and material possessions.

Mathilde invests objects like the diamond necklace she borrows from Mme. Forestier with
enormous significance, and her happiness is heavily dependent on her possession of the
objects she desires. Mathilde’s distress at the beginning of the story is largely a result of her
unfulfilled desire for material objects: “She had no wardrobe, no jewels, nothing.” This
materialism is inextricable from her social ambition, as she fears that she will be rejected by
the higher classes because she does not appear to be wealthy enough. Once Mathilde obtains
the diamond necklace she wants and is able to wear it at the party, she quickly becomes “wild
with joy.” However, as soon as the party is over Mathilde loses the necklace and is once
again unhappy, suggesting that material possessions cannot guarantee long-lasting happiness,
and that greed, in fact, can lead to ruin.

Mathilde’s desire for material possessions is doubly misguided because she has no concept of
value beyond how much an object is worth. Throughout the story Maupassant assigns many
objects a specific cash value, suggesting that an object’s value is synonymous with its price.
However, Maupassant undermines the adequacy of the conflation of price with value when
the Loisels have to choose whether to spend 400 francs on Mathilde’s evening dress or on the
rifle for which her husband had long been saving. Despite the fact that these two objects have
an equal cash value, the choice of how to spend the money reflects the spender’s moral and
social values. The dress is a somewhat frivolous purchase that corresponds to Mathilde’s
vanity and social ambition. Her “frugal” husband, on the other hand, asks that she buy a
“suitable gown” that could be worn to other affairs. Meanwhile, the rifle (which would enable
him to have a hobby that he shares with friends) seems like a much more reasonable, thought
out, and class-appropriate purchase than Mathilde’s dress—one that will have a lasting value
rather than a temporary, superficial value.

Moreover, Maupassant demonstrates that monetary value is somewhat arbitrary since even
fashionable things can be had cheaply. Mathilde’s husband suggests that she wear roses
costing 10 francs to the ball since “they’re very chic this season,” but Mathilde won’t hear of
having ornaments that aren’t visibly expensive. Furthermore, Mathilde seems only to love
Mme. Forestier’s necklace because she believes it is expensive, though the necklace is
actually made of paste and not worth much at all. Mathilde’s inability to separate price from
value, then, is what leads her to her ruin.

Taken together, Mathilde’s obsession with money and material possessions demonstrates the
dangers of greed. Instead of enjoying the small comforts of life like her husband does—a
servant to do the housework, the pleasure of warm soup—Mathilde is fixated on what she
doesn’t have. She always wants more, and the objects she desires are far beyond her financial
means. Mathilde’s greed drives her to pick the most expensive-looking necklace out of Mme.
Forestier’s jewel box, and the huge debt she and her husband take on to replace the lost
necklace can be seen as a natural consequence of her greediness.
While Maupassant certainly judges Mathilde for her greed and social ambition, he also
mitigates the blame by showing that she is playing into the cultural norms of her time: in late-
nineteenth century France, wealth was synonymous with social status, and both depended on
the ownership of material goods. Maupassant is critical not simply of Mathilde, but also of
the value system in which she lives. “The Necklace” therefore demonstrates how harmful
materialistic social hierarchies can be to those who cannot afford to access the upper classes.

In “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant demonstrates the importance of knowing how to

achieve happiness in a meaningful and lasting way. At the beginning of the
story, Mathilde and her husband live a modest life, but with enough money to live
comfortably. However, Mathilde is perpetually discontented, unable to be happy without the
clothes and jewels of a wealthy woman. Although Mathilde achieves a fleeting moment of
happiness during the party, the next ten years of her life are filled with true suffering, in sharp
contrast with her earlier self-pity which seemed out of sync with the comfortable life she
lived. By experiencing true poverty, Mathilde gains a new perspective on life and learns to be
satisfied with what she has.

Mathilde’s initial unhappiness seems like a choice: she lives a perfectly pleasant life and
could easily be contented with it, but instead of focusing on the good things she has, Mathilde
obsesses over what she doesn’t have, driving her to discontent. Maupassant points out that the
things that make Mathilde so unhappy “wouldn’t have even been noticed by any other
woman of her station,” which suggests that Mathilde’s temperament is not a result of
privation, but rather it is a character flaw. Furthermore, unlike Mathilde, her husband is able
to be happy with their lot: he says, “Ah! A good stew! I don’t know of anything better.” This
demonstrates that happiness is, at least in part, a matter of perception or of choice.

Even when Mathilde experiences a rare moment of happiness at the party, Maupassant
depicts this happiness as fleeting: the party only lasts a night, and her happiness is entirely
dependent on her possession of the dress and the necklace. During the party Mathilde is in a
“cloud of happiness,” giving the scene a dreamlike quality, almost as if it were too good to be
true. However, once the necklace is gone her happiness vanishes. As soon as the Loisels
leave the party, they are “desperate and shivering,” and at the end of the night, Mathilde
remarks “it is over.”

After Mathilde has been forced to spend ten years suffering to pay off the debt she incurred
after losing the necklace, she seems paradoxically more content. The fact that Mathilde is
able to play her part “with sudden heroism” shows that she is no longer prey to the self-pity
and dissatisfaction that characterized her in the first part of the story. She also develops a new
sense of perspective with regard to happiness and suffering. At the end of the story, she
remarks: “What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who
can say? How little there is between happiness and misery!” The idea that things could have
turned out differently shows that Mathilde has learned that happiness is not simply a matter
of owning more money or more things, and the fact that her idle thoughts are contemplations
of happiness and misery rather than the self-pitying daydreams of wealth she had before
shows that she has become more grounded through her experience of suffering.

Mathilde’s new ideas on life and on happiness illustrate the idea that it is better to accept
one’s lot in life than to fight against it. Moreover, by experiencing a truly difficult existence,
Mathilde develops a new perspective on the privileges and small comforts of her earlier life.
Although Mathilde is not happy in her new life, she is more grounded in reality and she is
newly willing to accept things for the way they are

METAPHOR unearthed a superb diamond necklace,

Explanation and Analysis—The Black Satin Box:

An example of foreshadowing in “The Necklace” occurs when Mathilde and her husband,
after losing the necklace, locate the jeweler whose name was on its box. The jeweler reveals
that the necklace was not one of his:

The next day, they took the jewel case to the jeweler whose name was inside. He consulted
his books. "Madame, I’m not the one who sold this necklace, I only furnished the case."
The key moment of dramatic irony in the story is the ball, in which the reader knows that
Mathilde has dressed up in imitation of a wealthy woman, when she in fact is not. This fact is
known to the reader, though not to the other characters in the scene:

Madame Loisel was a great success. She was lovelier than any other woman […]. All the
men gazed at her, asked for her name, and tried to get introduced. All the cabinet attaches
wanted to waltz with her. The minister noticed her.
Cite this Quote

Though this story is told from a third-person limited point of view, it focuses intimately on
Mathilde’s interiority. So, the reader is aware that the interest of the men in the room may be
exaggerated and distorted by Mathilde’s ego, unbeknownst to her (a double irony). The result
is that a kind of narrative tension runs through this scene: the reader wonders just how
effectively Mathilde has truly disguised herself as a wealthy woman. What's more, readers
might wonder how Mathilde will return to her normal life now that she has—apparently—
experienced what it feels like to have wealth and status.

Ultimately, the reader is also aware that the interest that these men take in Mathilde probably
will not change her life. Realistically, it cannot: Mathilde’s identity as a wealthy society
woman is borrowed for a night, and it will be returned with the necklace in the morning.
However, Mathilde clings to the fantasy of wealth she feels she has attained, and she seems to
invest great importance in retaining their attention. The result is that Mathilde’s self-
absorption and greed are laid bare for readers to see.
Symbolism: The necklace that Mathilde borrows from Jeanne Forestier represents the idea
that appearances can be deceiving. The necklace looks like it is made of expensive diamonds,
but it is in fact made of paste, costing at most 500 francs. The fact that Mathilde is unable to
tell the difference between the two reveals her inability look beneath the surface to see the
true value of things. From Mathilde’s perspective, the necklace is the physical embodiment of
the class and social status she so desires, and the fact that she picks the most expensive-
looking (but not necessarily the most valuable) item from Mme. Forestier’s jewel box points
to her unrestrained greed and ambition. Likewise, the revelation that the necklace is a fake
demonstrates that Mathilde’s ambition is woefully misguided in the sense that she puts too
much stock in physical objects and their power to change her life. The necklace is also
thematically linked to the dangers of female beauty, especially with regard to the ugliness
that an attractive outward appearance can conceal.