The Necklace Short Story

The short story“The Necklace” by Gui de Maupassant follows Madame Loisel and her husband who are living in the middle-class during the rise of the middle class in Paris, France.There are many different examples of irony throughout the short story, demonstrating Maupassant's talent at commenting on the society in which he was immersed in. The theme of “The Necklace” is revealed through the character Madame Loisel, irony, and symbolism.

The necklace serves as a symbol for greed. When Mathilda Loisel loses the necklace that she believed was worth forty thousand francs, she desperately retraces her steps and gets her husband to help her find it as well. It ends up taking ten years to pay off the debt. The ten years were hard on Mathilda Loisel and her husband, and Maupassant told the reader that she “looked old now… with hair half combed, with skirts award, and reddened hands” (6). However, even after the long ten years of manual labor all because she lost the necklace, she “sat down near the window and though of that evening at the ball so long ago, when she has been so beautiful and so admired” (6). The necklace symbolizes that when greed controls emotions and decisions, it never leads to good results.

Her husband tries and tries until he comes up with a great idea to give her an invitation to a ball. She cheers up a little until she realizes she can’t afford a dress. Her husband asks how much and had given her the money to purchase herself a nice dress. She has the dress but still doesn’t feel pretty nor happy after she put the dress on. She wanted more than just the dress which was jewels but didn’t have any. Someone suggested that she should use flowers, but didn’t find happiness in the flowers. Madame Forestier offer Mathilde to borrow her diamond necklace, which gave her the emptiness that she needed to feel happy. She had a great night and was on her way home when she went to feel for the necklace but found that it was gone. She started to panic and retraced her steps but couldn’t find it anywhere. She and her husband went from jeweler to jeweler to find the exact necklace and to replace it. They worked and worked until they had paid it off and returned it to Madame Forestier. She was a little annoyed since she had got it a few weeks after the ball. Eventually she admitted to what she had done and was surprised with what she was told. She was informed that the necklace was a fake. That it was costume jewelry. In this story the Madame was an outsider towards Mathilde. Mathilde didn’t know who she was and had taken the necklace to wear for the

Around the world, values are expressed differently. Some people think that life is about the little things that make them happy. Others feel the opposite way and that expenses are the way to live. In Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, he develops a character, Madame Loisel, who illustrates her different style of assessments. Madame Loisel, a beautiful woman, lives in a wonderful home with all the necessary supplies needed to live. However, she is very unhappy with her life. She feels she deserves a much more expensive and materialistic life than what she has. After pitying herself for not being the richest of her friends, she goes out and borrows a beautiful necklace from an ally. But as she

‘The Necklace’ is a morality tale written by Guy de Maupassant where he portrays the life of a beautiful but dissatisfied girl named Mathilde who desires to live a luxurious life despite being born into a clerk’s family and marrying a clerk too. Mathilde’s discontentment in life instigates her to pretend someone rich that she is not. Moreover, it leads her to severe trouble that caused ten years of hardship to Mathilde and her husband. So, this suffering is a punishment for Mathilde which taught her a lesson and changed her dramatically over the course of the story by making her a person of completely different personality for whom appearances

The internal conflicts established in “The Necklace” were a result of Madame Loisels perception of happiness. Because of her ungrateful and dejected views on life, she didn’t realize nor recognize true merriment. In the text, Guy De Maupassant shows how Madame “..was one of those pretty and charming girls born as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of

Madame Loisel’s pride demands more: “It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single stone, nothing to put on. I shall look like distress” (Maupassant 2). Ironically, it is Monsieur Loisel who suggests that his wife borrow jewelry from Madame Forestier, and subsequently has to spend the next ten years borrowing money to replace it. As May puts it, “Her husband exhausts his meager inheritance and then borrows the rest, mortgaging their life away to buy a replacement for the necklace” (May 7). Monsieur Loisel sacrifices everything to salvage his wife’s pride.

According to the narrator in “The Necklace,” Madame Loisel has a low middle-class economic status which causes her agony. Madame Loisel focuses on her inability to maintain a luxurious lifestyle. She feels, “that all the attributes of a gracious life, every luxury, should rightfully have been hers” (de Maupassant 333). She cares more about her wants rather than her needs while thinking she deserves a wealthy lifestyle. Madame Loisel’s selfish personality cannot compare to Della’s humble disposition.

Madame Loisel felt her only option is to buy her friend a new necklace when she loses the original one she borrowed for a party. Instead of confronting her friend and telling her the truth about the necklace she and her husband went to the jewelers to price a replacement. As she said "We must see about replacing the diamonds," (Maupassant 340) to save herself from the embarrassment of being irresponsible.

In Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, Madame Loisel is described as a self-absorbed woman with an elevated dignity, since she cares only for her own enjoyment but not her husband’s feelings. Near the beginning of the story, when Madame Loisel’s husband hands her the invitation, she tells him, without compassion, to give it someone else. At that point, the narrator describes Monsieur Loisel as “heart-broken” (2). She does not value her husband’s effort at all, and her sharp words of rejection not only wound her husband’s feelings, but also implicate her cold-heartedness and self-centeredness. When she finally agreed to go to the ball, she dresses herself to be the most elegant woman present. After the party ends, however, the narrator

nothing to wear on my dress (Maupassant 75).” That shows that she's embarrassed of what she has and wants expensive things, causing her to be materialistic. Greedy was another characteristic that Mme. Loisel had.

In “The Necklace”, Guy de Maupassaut uses the irony with the necklace to criticize Madame Loisel’s need to make a false impression and her equally false desires. Madame Loisel shows her desire for everything throughout this short story.  Guy de Maupassant uses an angry tone showing the reader he disapproves of Madame Loisel actions and need for attention. In the beginning of this short story, Guy describes Madame Loisel as “one of those pretty and charming girls born” (CITATION). Guy de Maupassant immediately lets the reader know Madame Loisel is incredibly beautiful. Her husband even says “Why the dress you go to theatre in. It looks very nice to me” (CITATION), yet Madame Loisel does not care.  Madame Loisel needs to make a false impression

Mr. Loisel was obviously excited the day that The Chancellor of Education had invited them to an exquisite dinner. Surely he thought that this was finally a way that he could provide an outlet for Mathilde's deepest desires. Unfortunately, instead of being thrilled as he had predicted, Mathilde acted like a spoiled child, throwing the invitation on the table. "She had no decent dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but these; she believed herself born only for these" (5). She couldn't have been more manipulative than when she began to cry about not having anything to wear. Of course Mr. Loisel suddenly fell into her trap and suddenly decided to give her all of the money in his savings account to buy her a new dress. Most would assume that she'd be satisfied at this point; her husband has just made a huge financial sacrifice for her. However, as time drew near to the night of the party, she became insecure and restless because she thought she would look poor if she didn't have any fancy jewels to wear; she thought she'd look like a beggar. `I'd almost rather not go to the party (30)", she said.

“She was one of those pretty and charming girls, born, as if by an accident into a family of clerks” this is what Guy de Maupassant started “The Necklace” off by saying (Maupassant 221). Also, this helps describe the main character and to give the readers a visual of Mathilde Loisel. “The Necklace” is a short story that Mathilde Loisel, the main female character, wants to be a higher class than she really is. Mathilde’s life drastically changes one night after she loses the necklace. Guy de Maupassant incorporates his use of the social class into the short story.

But he said: ‘Very well. I will give you four hundred francs. And try to have a pretty gown’” (3). This generosity, in consequence, makes Madame Loisel become even more spoiled. Madame Loisel’s unhappiness, in turn, causes Monsieur Loisel to become even more adulating, as he not only pays for her dress, but also allows her to dance with other men while he sleeps in the anteroom instead of his own home. Finally, Monsieur Loisel’s suggestion to lie to Madame Forestier about the necklace causes Madame Loisel to become strong and hard-working in order to pay off their debt, “Thereafter Madame Loisel knew the horrible existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with sudden heroism. That dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it” (8). These mutual changes in response to the other’s flaws, such as Madame Loisel becoming more hedonistic as her husband becomes more sycophantic and Madame Loisel