The Necklace

It tells the tale of a dissatisfied middle-class woman whose dreams of wealth and glamour end in
disaster.

Mathilde Loisel is middle class woman and has a kind husband. However, she is cooped up in the
house all day with nothing to do, and her days are marked with boredom beyond belief. Her only way
out of dealing with it is to live in a fantasy world of glamour, wealth, and beautiful people.

Does that situation really seem all that far-removed from today? In many ways, the figure of the
dissatisfied housewife is just as relevant now as it was then. Just like Maupassant's contemporaries,
we're still fascinated by it, perhaps because we're troubled by it. And can't we all relate in some way
to Mathilde's desire to live a more exciting, glamorous life, even if we can only do it in daydreams?

The Necklace Summary

At the beginning of the story, we meet Mathilde Loisel, a middle-class girl who desperately wishes
she were wealthy. She's got looks and charm, but had the bad luck to be born into a family of clerks,
who marry her to another clerk (M. Loisel) in the Department of Education. Mathilde is so convinced
she's meant to be rich that she detests her real life and spends all day dreaming and despairing
about the fabulous life she's not having. She envisions footmen, feasts, fancy furniture, and strings
of rich young men to seduce.

One day M. Loisel comes home with an invitation to a fancy ball thrown by his boss, the Minister of
Education. M. Loisel has gone to a lot of trouble to get the invitation, but Mathilde's first reaction is to
throw a fit. She doesn't have anything nice to wear, and can't possibly go! How dare her husband be
so insensitive? M. Loisel doesn't know what to do, and offers to buy his wife a dress, so long as it's
not too expensive. Mathilde asks for 400 francs, and he agrees. It's not too long before Mathilde
throws another fit, though, this time because she has no jewels. So M. Loisel suggests she go see
her friend Mme. Forestier, a rich woman who can probably lend her something. Mathilde goes to see
Mme. Forestier, and she is in luck. Mathilde is able to borrow a gorgeous diamond necklace. With
the necklace, she's sure to be a stunner.

The night of the ball arrives, and Mathilde has the time of her life. Everyone loves her (i.e., lusts after
her) and she is absolutely thrilled. She and her husband (who falls asleep off in a corner) don't leave
until 4am. Mathilde suddenly dashes outside to avoid being seen in her shabby coat. She and her
husband catch a cab and head home. But once back at home, Mathilde makes a horrifying
discovery: the diamond necklace is gone.

M. Loisel spends all of the next day, and even the next week, searching the city for the necklace, but
finds nothing. It's gone. So he and Mathilde decide they have no choice but to buy Mme. Forestier a
new necklace. They visit one jewelry store after another until at last they find a necklace that looks
just the same as the one they lost. Unfortunately, it's 36 thousand francs, which is exactly twice the
amount of all the money M. Loisel has to his name. So M. Loisel goes massively into debt and buys
the necklace, and Mathilde returns it to Mme. Forestier, who doesn't notice the substitution. Buying
the necklace catapults the Loisels into poverty for the next ten years. That's right, ten years. They
lose their house, their maid, their comfortable lifestyle, and on top of it all Mathilde loses her good
looks.

After ten years, all the debts are finally paid, and Mathilde is out for a jaunt on the Champs Elysées.
There she comes across Mme. Forestier, rich and beautiful as ever. Now that all the debts are paid
off, Mathilde decides she wants to finally tell Mme. Forestier the sad story of the necklace and her
ten years of poverty, and she does. At that point, Mme. Forestier, aghast, reveals to Mathilde that
the necklace she lost was just a fake. It was worth only five hundred francs.

Summary
 The narrator introduces us to a girl. We don't know her name yet, but apparently she's
charming, attractive, and, believes that she should have been born into a rich family.
 Instead she wound up in a family of "employees" and ended up marrying a "little clerk" in
Department of Education (1).
 Our ordinary girl is convinced that she's meant for the extraordinary life of a fabulously rich
girl.
 She hates her own humble surroundings and spends her time dreaming about fancy
tapestries and tall footmen. While her husband slurps his stew she imagines grand banquets.
 A life of luxury is all the girl wants – it's what she's madefor. But sadly, she doesn't lead the
luxurious life of which she dreams.
 Consequently, she spends all her days weeping and feeling sorry for herself.
 One evening, the girl's husband comes in with a large envelope.
 She tears it open to find that she and her husband – M. and Mme. ("Monsieur and Madame)
Loisel – have been invited to a fancy party at the Minister of Education's palace. Her
husband can't wait to see her reaction.
 Mme. Loisel is not happy about this. She's got nothing to wear. This is enough to send her
into tears.
 M. Loisel feels awful, and asks his wife, Mathilde, how much a simple, pretty dress for the
ball would cost.
 Mathilde stops to think it over – how much can she ask for before her husband flips out – and
at last tells him four hundred francs would probably do it.
 M Loisel agrees to give Mathilde four hundred francs. There goes that new gun he'd been
saving for.
 The date of the party approaches, and Mathilde is in a bad mood again.
 This time it's jewels: she doesn't have any to wear over her dress.
 M. Loisel suggests she wear flowers, but Mathilde will have none of that.
 M. Loisel suggests that Mathilde borrow some jewels from her rich friend Mme. Forestier.
Now there's an idea.
 The next day, Mathilde visits Mme. Forestier and tells her about her situation. Mme. Forestier
brings out a big box of jewels and tells Mathilde to pick whatever she wants.
 Mathilde isn't satisfied with anything she sees, but then Mme. Forestier brings her another
box containing a spectacular diamond necklace.
 Mathilde is beside herself. It's the only thing she wants! Mme. Forestier agrees to let her
borrow it.
 The evening of the party arrives, and Mathilde is a smash hit. All the men – including the
Minister – notice her. She's in heaven. Her husband, meanwhile, has also been having a
great time: he's been off dozing in a corner since midnight.
 When it's four o'clock and at last time to go, M. Loisel brings the coats. But Mathilde is self-
conscious: her coat is so shabby compared to the rest of her appearance. So she dashes off
into the street to avoid being seen.
 M. Loisel follows Mathilde into the streets, and they spend a long time wandering around,
shivering, and looking for a carriage.
 At last they find one and head back home, glumly. Mathilde doesn't want to go back to her
ordinary life, and M. Loisel doesn't want to get up for work at 10am.
 As soon as they enter the house, Mathilde rushes to a mirror to see herself all decked-out
one last time. But the diamond necklace is missing. She screams.
 M. Loisel wants to know what the matter is, and Mathilde tells him. They search frantically
through her dress and coat for the necklace, but it's nowhere to be found.
 The Loisels review all the places they've been to figure out where the necklace could have
been lost, and M. Loisel decides it must have been left in the cab. But unfortunately, neither
of them has the cab number.
 M. Loisel goes back out in search of the necklace, and returns at 7am with nothing. He
spends all of the next day searching, visiting the police HQ, the cab company, and still has
nothing.
 Mathilde, meanwhile, spends the day stuck in a chair, too traumatized to do anything.
 When he returns, M. Loisel has Mathilde write to Mme. Forestier to say that they broke the
clasp of the necklace and are having it fixed. They need to buy more time.
 A week passes, and still no sign of the necklace. M. Loisel, who already looks five years
older, decides they have no choice but to replace it.
 He and Mathilde go to see the jeweler whose name was on the necklace box to see about a
replacement. The jeweler says that he did not sell the necklace, just the case.
 M. and Mme. Loisel start going from jeweler to jeweler, hoping to find a necklace just like the
one they remember.
 At last they find one in a jewelry store at the Palais Royale.
 There is just one problem: It's forty thousand francs (thirty-six thousand after bargaining),
which is a ton of money. M. Loisel asks the jeweler to hold the necklace for them a few days.
 It turns out that M. Loisel has only 18,000 francs to his name, in the form of his inheritance
from his father. All the rest of the money to buy the necklace he has to get by taking out
loans.
 So he takes out enough loans to pay for the necklace – and to ensure that his life will be
ruined forever – and then goes back to the jeweler's to buy it.
 Mathilde takes the replacement necklace to Mme. Forestier, who's miffed that she didn't
return her necklace sooner. Mathilde's worried she'll notice the substitution.
 Mme. Forestier does not open the box, and does not see the substitution.
 Now Mathilde and M. Loisel are poor. They have to dismiss the maid and move into an attic.
Mathilde starts to do the housework, and run the errands, haggling at stores over every cent.
M. Loisel works two night jobs.
 This goes on for ten years, until all the interest on the Loisels' loans is paid. Mathilde is now
a rough, hard woman, and her looks are ruined. She occasionally thinks of how her life might
have been different if she hadn't lost the necklace…
 One Sunday, Mathilde goes for a stroll on the Champs Elysées (main street of Paris that you
see in all the movies), and notices a beautiful young-looking woman walking with her child.
 It's Mme. Forestier, who hasn't aged one day. Mathilde decides it's time to tell her everything
that happened.
  When Mathilde greets Mme. Forestier by her first name, Mme. Forestier does not recognize
her former friend, because she looks so different She gives a cry of surprise when Mathilde
reveals who she is.
 Mathilde tells Mme. Forestier that her life's been hard, and all on account of her. Mme.
Forestier doesn't understand.
 Mathilde explains that she'd lost the diamond necklace, but replaced it, and has spent the
last ten years paying for the replacement. (Mme. Forestier apparently hadn't noticed the
difference)
 Mme. Forestier grabs Mathilde by the hands, shaken.
 Her diamond necklace, she tells Mathilde, was a fake. It was worth at most five hundred
francs.

The Necklace Themes

The Necklace Theme of Wealth

"The Necklace" gets its title from the gorgeous piece of diamond jewelry that drives the story's plot.
The expensive nature of the necklace is not the only way in which wealth is central to this story. The
main character of "The Necklace" is obsessed with wealth. She wants nothing else than to escape
from her shabby middle-class life with a shabby middle-class husband and live the glamorous life for
which she was born. She's so jealous of her one wealthy friend it hurts. When Mathilde's given the
chance to get decked out in diamonds and go to a ritzy party to mingle with all the beautiful people, it
seems like her dreams have finally become a reality. Then she loses the borrowed diamond
necklace, gets cast into poverty, and learns what it means to truly live without money.

The Necklace Wealth Quotes

She was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by

a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had
no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known,
understood, loved, married by a man rich and
distinguished. (1)

The first thing we know about Mathilde is that she seems meant for a life of wealth and luxury, but instead is born into
a lowly middle-class family. We don't even know her name yet, but we know this other information about her. The
conflict between what she wants (which is quite a lot) and what she has is established immediately.

She let her mind dwell on the quiet vestibules, hung

with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze,
and on the two tall footmen in knee breeches who dozed
in the large armchairs, made drowsy by the heat of the
furnace. She let her mind dwell on the large parlors,
decked with old silk, with their delicate furniture,
supporting precious bric-a-brac, and on the coquettish
little rooms, perfumed, prepared for the five
o'clock chat with the most intimate friends, men well
known and sought after, whose attentions all women
envied and desired. (3)

Mathilde spends her time living in a dream world, in which she imagines all the fabulous things she'd have if she were
rich. The most detail we get in the otherwise sparse story comes in Maupassant's descriptions of the
fancy stuff Mathilde wants. But being rich also means more than just nice stuff to her: it means having the glamour to
attract men.

She had a rich friend, a comrade of her convent days,

whom she did not want to go and see any more, so much
did she suffer as she came away. (6)

Mathilde wants to be wealthy so badly that she's driven mad with jealousy by the one rich friend she has, Mme.
Forestier. She can't bear to see Mme. Forestier, because it brings her within arm's reach of the world of wealth she
wants so badly, but can't have.

She reflected a few seconds, going over her calculations,

and thinking also of the sum which she might ask
without meeting an immediate refusal and a frightened
exclamation from the frugal clerk. (24)

It looks like Mathilde is milking her husband for all he's worth here. Was her the crying fit put on so she could seize
the opportunity to get a fancy dress from him?

"It annoys me not to have a jewel, not a single stone, to

put on. I shall look wretched. I would almost rather not
go to this party." (33)

OK, so after she's gotten an expensive dress out of her husband, Mathilde refuses to go to the party again. She's still
not satisfied. This time, it's jewels. She needs jewels. Does this mean Mathilde actually expects her husband to get
her a piece of jewelry?

All at once she discovered, in a box of black satin, a

superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to
beat with boundless desire. Her hands trembled in taking
it up. She fastened it round her throat, on her high dress,
and remained in ecstasy before herself. (48)

Maybe diamonds are a girl's best friend. Just seeing and touching something expensive and beautiful drives Mathilde
crazy. She's in "ecstasy" over a necklace. The necklace may be a symbol for wealth, or glamour in the story. Even if it
isn't, it certainly seems to equate to those things for Mathilde.

When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace to Mme.

Forestier, the latter said, with an irritated air: –

"You ought to have brought it back sooner, for I might

have needed it." (95-96)

It's interesting that Mme. Forestier reacts so snippily to having the necklace returned late. One would think that
because she has so much, it wouldn't really matter when one particular piece of jewelry was returned. This could
either mean that her wealth makes her more greedy with what she has or that she considers the necklace one of her
best pieces of jewelry. Which is a little interesting, since we learn later that it's a fake…

Mme. Loisel learned the horrible life of the needy. She

made the best of it, moreover, frankly, heroically. The
frightful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They
dismissed the servant; they changed their rooms; they
took an attic under the roof. (98)

After losing the necklace, Mathilde now finds herself actually poor. Though she felt herself "poor" before, she was
fairly comfortable, and middle class. Now her life is much harder.

The other did not recognize her, astonished to be hailed

thus familiarly by this woman of the people. She
hesitated –

"But – madam – I don't know – are you not making a

mistake?" (111-112)

Mme. Forestier and Mathilde are now greatly separated by their wealth, which translates into social class. The class
difference is so big that it seems improper for Mathilde to even address Mme. Forestier by her first name. Their
classes are also immediately apparent from the way they look.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine were false. At most
they were worth five hundred francs!" (128)

Mme. Forestier reveals that the diamond necklace Mathilde lost was actually a fake. Does the falsehood of the jewels
symbolize the falsehood of wealth? Does it change the way we think of Mathilde's former dreams? Or, on another
note, does it perhaps mean something about Mme. Forestier? If her best piece of jewelry is a fake, maybe she's not
quite as wealthy as she initially seems.

The Necklace Theme of Women and Femininity

Mathilde Loisel, the main character of "The Necklace," is a 19th century French version of
a desperate housewife. Because she's a woman in a man's world, she has almost no control over
her life. She finds herself married to a husband she doesn't care for, and cooped up in a house she
despises. What she wants more than anything else is to be desirable to other men. And what's
particularly irritating is that she has all the "womanly virtues" she needs in order to be desirable:
she's charming, graceful, beautiful. She's just doesn't have the necessary wealth. Does Mathilde
Loisel capture the tragic plight of the modern, middle-class woman? Is she a victim of the patriarchal
society in which she lives? Or is she just a shallow and materialistic character?

The Necklace Women and Femininity Quotes

She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being

known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and
distinguished; and she let them make a match for her
with a little clerk in the Department of Education. (1)

Mathilde's future prospects are not in her own hands. She's a woman, which means the quality of her life will basically
depend upon her family and her husband. And in both respects, she's out of luck, as far as she's concerned. With so
much powerlessness, it's no wonder she's frustrated and dissatisfied.

She was simple since she could not be adorned; but she
was unhappy as though kept out of her own class; for
women have no caste and no descent, their beauty, their
grace, and their charm serving them instead of birth and
fortune. Their native keenness, their instinctive
elegance, their flexibility of mind, are their only
hierarchy; and these make the daughters of the people
the equals of the most lofty dames. (2)

The narrator is suggesting that looks and charm make the woman, not wealth or good birth. According to this train of
thought, a pretty, charming poor woman can be the equal of "the most lofty dame." This is certainly the way Mathilde
feels about herself – she has the looks and the charm to be better at being a "woman" than most rich women. It's
telling that the two "virtues" of a woman are the qualities that make them attractive to men. We don't hear anything
about intelligence, or kindness, or creativity…

She had no dresses, no jewelry, nothing. And she loved

nothing else; she felt herself made for that only. She
would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be
seductive and sought after. (5)

Mathilde wants to be desired by men. To some extent, even her desire for wealth is just derivative of that. Her highest
wish is to be approved of and wanted by someone else.

But by a violent effort she had conquered her trouble,

and she replied in a calm voice as she wiped her damp
cheeks... (20)

Mathilde comes across as overly sensitive and emotional. She has to work very hard to control her emotions. There's
a feminine stereotype for you on which Maupassant is playing.

"No; there's nothing more humiliating than to look poor

among a lot of rich women." (37)

Wealth and womanhood are intimately bound up in Mathilde's mind. She wants to look wealthy so she can compete
with the richwomen.

The day of the party arrived. Mme. Loisel was a

success. She was the prettiest of them all, elegant,
gracious, smiling, and mad with joy. All the men were
looking at her, inquiring her name, asking to be
introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to
dance with her. The Minister took notice of her. (53)
Mathilde's a huge hit. She gets all the men to pay attention her, including the most important one of all (the minister).
This is the best moment of her life.

She danced with delight, with passion, intoxicated with

pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her
beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud
of happinessmade up of all these tributes, of all the
admirations, of all these awakened desires, of this
victory so complete and so sweet to a woman's heart.
(54)

The narrator seems to be suggesting here that Mathilde's desires – to look glamorous and beautiful and be desired
by men – are more generally "woman's" desires. That's what makes women happy and pleases their "womanly
hearts." Again, it seems to be entirely stereotyped.

She went away about four in the morning. Since

midnight – her husband had been dozing in a little
anteroom with three other men whose wives were
having a good time. (55)

M. Loisel could care less about the party – he's just happy to have an opportunity to sleep. And he's not the only man
in that situation, either. What does that mean? Maybe being a "man" he has different desires than his wife's womanly
ones. Or maybe he's not interested in scouting out other men's wives because he's already got an attractive and
charming wife of his own. Mathilde, on the other hand, doesn't seem to feel the same way about her husband.

Mme. Loisel seemed aged now. She had become the

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)

Once more, we see a connection between wealth and womanhood. According to Maupassant, Mathilde's poverty
makes her less feminine. She's less attractive, and less graceful. Instead, she's "hard and rough," and older looking.
And apparently has a perpetual bad hair day.

Then, one Sunday, as she was taking a turn in the

Champs Elysées, as a recreation after the labors of the
week, she perceived suddenly a woman walking with a
child. It was Mme. Forestier, still young, still beautiful,
still seductive. (107)
Unlike Mathilde, who's lost her looks and "womanly charms" to poverty, Mme. Forestier still looks good. All of that
even after becoming a mother (another sign of womanhood). This makes us wonder why Mathilde doesn't have a
child?

The Necklace Theme of Pride

You can read "The Necklace" as a story about greed, but you can also read it as a story about pride.
Mathilde Loisel is a proud woman. She feels far above the humble circumstances (and the husband)
she's forced to live with by her common birth. In fact, her current situation disgusts her. She's a vain
one too, completely caught up in her own beauty. It could be that it is also pride that prevents
Mathilde and her husband from admitting they've lost an expensive necklace. After the loss of the
necklace makes Mathilde poor, and her beauty fades, she may learn a pride of a different sort: pride
in her own work and endurance.

The Necklace Pride Quotes

She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every

delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the
poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the
abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these
things, which another woman of her caste would not
even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant.
(3)

Mathilde feels herself to be better than her circumstances. She deserves more than she has, and is angry at the
universe because she isn't getting it. Her dissatisfaction seems intimately connected to pride.

When she sat down to dine, before a tablecloth three

days old, in front of her husband, who lifted the cover of
the tureen, declaring with an air of satisfaction, "Ah, the
goodpot-au-feu. I don't know anything better than that,"
she was thinking of delicate repasts, with glittering
silver, with tapestries peopling the walls with ancient
figures and with strange birds in a fairy-like forest. (4)

Mathilde's husband is the opposite of Mathilde: he's happy with what he has. So far as he's concerned, there's
nothing better than the good old stew his wife puts on the table every evening. All Mathilde can think of at the same
moment is how much better things could be, and how she'd rather be elsewhere. It all seems too low to her.

"Nothing. Only I have no clothes, and in consequence I

cannot go to this party. Give your card to some
colleague whose wife has a better outfit than I." (21)

Instead of being happy with the invitation her husband has worked so hard to get, Mathilde's first reaction is to be
angry about it. If she's going to go, she just has to look the best, and she doesn't have any clothes that are nice
enough Is she everhappy? Then again, would you want to go to the one nice party you've been invited to looking
shabby? It's hard to tell whether Mathilde's vanity, or greed, is making her overreact, or whether she does have
nothing nice to wear.

She saw at first bracelets, then a necklace of pearls, then

a Venetian cross of gold set with precious stones of an
admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments
before the glass, hesitated, and could not decide to take
them off and to give them up. She kept on asking: –

"You haven't anything else?" (45-46)

OK, so the jewel situation looks better: Mathilde's found a treasure trove of the things. But she's still not satisfied.
None of them makes her look as good as she wants to look. Her vanity once again seems to be making her greedy.

The day of the party arrived. Mme. Loisel was a

success. She was the prettiest of them all, elegant,
gracious, smiling, and mad with joy. All the men were
looking at her, inquiring her name, asking to be
introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to
dance with her. The Minister took notice of her. (53)

Mathilde's the happiest she's ever been when everyone is admiring her. For once in her life, she can live up to the
expectations her vanity has set for itself.

He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought to

go home in, modest garments of every-day life, the
poverty of which was out of keeping with the elegance
of the ball dress. She felt this, and wanted to fly so as
not to be noticed by the other women, who were
wrapping themselves up in rich furs. (56)

After a successful evening at the ball, Mathilde's too proud to let herself be seen wearing her shabby wrap. She
needs to keep up the illusion. It could be that her rushing off like this is what causes her to lose the necklace.
At the end of a week they had lost all hope. And Loisel,
aged by five years, declared: –

"We must see how we can replace those jewels." (86-

87)

Why does it never occur to Mathilde or M. Loisel to tell Mme. Forestier they've lost the necklace? Instead, once they
lose hope of finding it, M. Loisel decides the only solution is to buy a new one. Is he too proud to admit that it's been
lost? Or is it something else? (See M. Loisel's "Character Analysis" for more of our thoughts on this.)

Mme. Loisel learned the horrible life of the needy. She

made the best of it, moreover, frankly, heroically. The
frightful debt must be paid. She would pay it. (98)

When Mathilde becomes poor, she is forced to work. Getting down to work and paying off the debts seems to make
her proud in a new way. She can be proud of her hard work, and of her endurance. Meanwhile, her looks – which
used to be her pride and joy – start to disappear.

"I brought you back another just like it. And now for ten
years we have been paying for it. You will understand
that it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last, it is
done, and I am mighty glad." (122)

Mathilde is proud of all the work and suffering she and her husband have put into repaying for the necklace. It was an
honorable and difficult thing to do. But they've succeeded.

"Yes. You did not notice it, even, did you? They were
exactly alike?"

And she smiled with proud and naïve joy. (126-127)

Mathilde is even more proud to learn that Mme. Forestier didn't notice the difference between her original necklace
and the substitute. It adds extra validation to her work: she did fully make up for losing the necklace.

The Necklace Theme of Suffering

"The Necklace" is a difficult story to read. If you think about it, it's about nonstop suffering, caused by
the cruelty of life and chance. At the opening, we meet Mathilde, the classic dissatisfied housewife,
who spends her days weeping about how boring and shabby her life is. Mathilde finds one moment
of real joy when she goes to a ball, but chance is cruel. Her happiest night becomes her worst
nightmare when she loses thediamond necklace she borrowed. Then she and her husband
experience a very different sort of suffering: the suffering of real poverty. And all of this is just the
buildup to one devastating ending…

The Necklace Suffering Quotes

How we cite the quotes:
Citations follow this format: (Paragraph)

She was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by

a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had
no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known,
understood, loved, married by a man rich and
distinguished; and she let them make a match for her
with a little clerk in the Department of Education. (1)

The opening line of the story makes it sound as if Mathilde is almost fated to be unhappy. It's only chance – being
born into one family and not another – that prevents her from living the kind of life she so wants to lead. Naturally,
she's attractive and charming, and if she were born into a rich family rather than an average one, she'd have the life
she wanted. Something that's a result of luck – what family she's born into – becomes a fate fore her, because it
restricts the possibilities for the rest of her life.

She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every

delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the
poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the
abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these
things, which another woman of her caste would not
even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant.
The sight of the little girl from Brittany who did her
humble housework awoke in her desolated regrets and
distracted dreams. (3)

Mathilde is unhappy locked up in her house, just being there makes her suffer. She finds it oppressive. Her only
method of coping with it is to live in a dream world. The question is, does Mathilde just suffer because she's
excessively greedy? Or does she suffer because her life is boring and meaningless?

And she wept all day long, from chagrin, from regret,
from despair, and from distress. (6)

In case you needed any additional proof that Mathilde is miserable, she spends all day crying. Her life has essentially
nothing enjoyable in it.

She danced with delight, with passion, intoxicated with

pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her
beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud
of happinessmade up of all these tributes, of all the
admirations, of all these awakened desires, of this
victory so complete and so sweet to a woman's heart.
(54)

This represents Mathilde's one moment of genuine joy. It's just about the only such moment in the whole story, and
forms a high point between two long bouts of unhappiness.

It brought them to their door, rue des Martyrs; and they

went up their own stairs sadly. For her it was finished.
And he was thinking that he would have to be at the
Ministry at ten o'clock. (61)

And just like that, the fabulous night at the ball is over. The happiness was fleeting, and is replaced by the dull
unhappiness of daily life.

And he went out. She stayed there, in her ball dress,

without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, on a chair,
without a fire, without a thought. (79)

The object which made Mathilde's glorious night possible has become her worst nightmare just a few hours later.
She's so traumatized she can't even get out of her chair. How quickly the situation reverses. The fact that Mathilde's
hasn't even changed out of her lovely ball gown captures that reversal in an image.

He gave promissory notes, made ruinous agreements,

dealt with usurers, with all kinds of lenders. He
compromised the end of his life, risked his signature
without even knowing whether it could be honored; and,
frightened by all the anguish of the future, by the black
misery which was about to settle down on him, by the
perspective of all sorts of physical deprivations and of
all sorts of moral tortures, he went to buy the new
diamond necklace, laying down on the jeweler's counter
thirty-six thousand francs. (94)

Mathilde's not the only one suffering now. By losing the necklace, she's ruined her husband's life too. He's gone from
living a comfortable life to a life plagued by fear and uncertainty. M. Loisel knows at this point that life is about to get
unpleasant, and he's afraid.

She learned the rough work of the household, the odious

labors of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, wearing
out her pink nails on the greasy pots and the bottoms of
the pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and the
towels, which she dried on a rope; she carried down the
garbage to the street every morning, and she carried up
the water, pausing for breath on every floor. And,
dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the
fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm,
bargaining, insulted, fighting for her wretched money,
sou by sou. (99)

Now Mathilde has to live the life of a poor woman, and it's a hardlife: dirty, busy, and exhausting. Where before she
had a maid to do her work (and could spend the day dreaming or crying), now Mathilde has to do all the house
chores herself, and they're never ending. She can no longer even afford to be graceful or charming; she has to be
rough and aggressive, because she's so poor that she has to pick fights over pennies. Her "dissatisfied" life before
has been replaced by real suffering.

What would have happened if she had not lost that

necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How singular life
is, how changeable! What a little thing it takes to save
you or to lose you. (106)

You could say that last sentence sums up the whole story. All it took was one little thing – losing one piece of jewelry
after a party one night – to completely change the course of the Loisels' life forever. If only Mathilde had paid more
attention for an hour or so that night, she wouldn't have lost the necklace, and everything would be different. People's
lives are so terribly vulnerable to chance; it's almost too easy to ruin them.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine were false. At most

they were worth five hundred francs!" (128)
Mathilde's just found and out that she and her husband have spent the last ten years suffering to replace a fake
necklace not worth a fiftieth of what they thought. Mathilde could have avoided the whole situation if she'd only told
Mme. Forestier about it and found out it was a fake. But she didn't, and so all the suffering she and her husband have
gone through was for nothing. Suffering becomes a whole lot worse if it seems meaningless.

Mathilde Loisel
Character Analysis

Mathilde Loisel wants to be a glamour girl. She's obsessed with glamour – with fancy, beautiful,
expensive things, and the life that accompanies them. Unfortunately for her, she wasn't born into a
family with the money to make her dream possible. Instead, she gets married to a "little clerk"
husband and lives with him in an apartment so shabby it brings tears to her eyes (1). Cooped up all
day in the house with nothing to do but cry over the chintzy furniture and the fabulous life
she's not having, Mathilde hates her life, and probably her husband too. She weeps "all day long,
from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and from distress" (6). She dreams day after day about
escaping it all.

Mathilde the Material Girl

When it all comes down to it, Mathilde's kind of a material girl. The most obvious thing she wants out
of life is: expensive stuff.

She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury… She let her mind
dwell on the quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze, and on
the two tall footmen in knee breeches who dozed in the large armchairs, made drowsy by the heat of
the furnace. She let her mind dwell on the large parlors, decked with old silk, with their delicate
furniture, supporting precious bric-a-brac, and on the coquettish little rooms, perfumed, prepared for
the five o'clockchat with the most intimate friends… (3)

Now why does Mathilde want all of these expensive, material possessions? It doesn't sound like she
just wants it because she's money-obsessed. No, for Mathilde, the rich life is attractive because
it's glamorous, beautiful, exciting, fine, and unlike the dingy apartment in which she lives. The
glamorous life has a certain kind of magical allure to it. A lot of the objects Mathilde wants are
magical, like the "tapestries peopling the walls with ancient figures and with strange birds in a fairy-
like forest" (4). For Mathilde, being wealthy amounts to living in a fairy tale. Being middle class
amounts to boredom. She wants the fairy tale.

Does her wish to live the fairy tale life make her "greedy"? Well, you ever notice how throughout the
first part of the story, Mathilde's never satisfied with anything? When her husband brings her the
invitation all she can think about is the dress she wants. When she gets the dress, all she can think
about is the jewels she doesn't have. And when she visits Mme. Forestier, she's not really satisfied
with any of her jewel collection – she keeps on asking, "You haven't anything else?" (46). At least
until she sees the most fabulous, expensive looking piece of jewelry, that is: the diamond necklace.

So yes, by many standards, Mathilde is probably greedy. But her greed's not the end of the story.
Material things aren't the only things she wants. And there's also a deeper reason for her greed:
dissatisfaction. We can't help but thinking that if she truly were satisfied with her life as it is (i.e.,
marriage, home, etc.) that she wouldn't be day-dreaming of a life she could never have.

Mathilde and Men

The other thing Mathilde wants? Men. Rich, attractive, charming, powerful men. That passage we
quote above finishes with: "the most intimate friends, men well known and sought after, whose
attentions all women envied and desired" (3). Just a little afterwards, we're told:

She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be seductive and sought after. (5)

What's interesting about Mathilde's man-craze is that she seems to be more interested in seducing
men than in the men themselves. That's because what Mathilde really wants is to be wanted. More
than being just desired, Mathilde wants to be glamorous — gorgeous, charming, graceful, and
thoroughly decked out in diamonds. The ultimate measure of being glamorous just happens to be
being attractive to glamorous men. It all forms part of one big glamorous, fairy-tale world, the world
about which Mathilde fantasizes.

What's particularly frustrating to Mathilde is that she knows she's got the natural looks and charms to
be a splash with the rich playboy types she wants to impress. She just needs the outward signs of
being wealthy, but can't afford the necessary clothing and jewelry. Mathilde's quite vain about her
"feminine charms." Her vanity may be why she's unwilling to go to the ball unless she looks better
than everyone else there. And when she does go to the ball, that's exactly what she is:

The day of the party arrived. Mme. Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest of them all, elegant,
gracious, smiling, and mad with joy. All the men were looking at her, inquiring her name, asking to
be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to dance with her. The Minister took notice of
her. (53)

So Mathilde may be vain, but she's at least not deluding herself about her attractiveness. Mathilde's
vanity about the ball might seem a little extreme, but think of it this way: so far as she knows, that
ball might be the one chance she has to experience the life she dreams about. If you were in her
shoes, wouldn't you want to make it absolutely perfect?
Mathilde the Desperate Housewife

We know Mathilde can be a hard character to like. She can seem vain, greedy, and shallow,
especially compared to her husband, who goes to great lengths to please her. He's happy with what
he has, while she always wants more. He seems to care a great deal for her, while she almost never
shows any sign of caring for him. Does Mathilde have any redeeming qualities?

We don't know, but we do think Mathilde deserves a little sympathy. Think about what it means to be
a middle-class woman in 19th century France. Because she's a woman, Mathilde has almost no
control over her life: her family marries her off to her husband, and once she's married, he's her
master. He goes out and works, and gets to go out on hunting expeditions with his buddies, while
she has to stay in the house all day. She doesn't seem to have a terribly close bond to her husband,
or find him attractive. She doesn't seem to have many friends – how would she meet them? She
doesn't have any kids to occupy her time. She doesn't even have anything to do, since the maid
takes care of the housework. Her life seems to be miserably boring. In fact, she doesn't have
anything to do except to daydream about a different life. That makes Mathilde a classic case of the
desperate housewife. (For the classic case, head on over and check out Emma Bovary, the leading
lady of Flaubert'sMadame Bovary.

In those circumstances, can you blame Mathilde for creating a fantasy world that's more glamorous,
more exciting, more beautiful than her own? Can you blame her for wanting to be wanted by
somebody rich and important? Back then, if you were a woman, being wanted by a man was
practically the only way to be anybody at all. And Mathilde feels like a nobody, wanting to be a
somebody.

Still, we can't sympathize completely with Mathilde. It does seem like at some level her complete and
total unhappiness has got to be self-induced. Her situation makes her unhappy, but she also refuses
to try to make herself happy. She refuses to try to be content with what she does have. Which is too
bad, because, as she finds out when she loses the necklace, things can get a lot worse.

Mathilde's poverty later in the story raises another question though. When Mathilde's poor, she
certainly seems to be worse off. Her impoverished life suddenly becomes difficult
and uncomfortable in a way her middle-class life never was. She's constantly busy doing physically
demanding chores. She gets exhausted. She has to be rude to people, and pick fights over pennies.
Her good looks disappear. But then again, once she's poor, at least Mathilde is doing something.
She can no longer be bored and useless. And all her hardship and work has a purpose: she and her
husband have to repay the debts. So maybe, in a certain way, Mathilde's better off when she's poor.
What do you think?

M. Loisel
Character Analysis

M. Loisel is the "little clerk in the Department of Education" (1) to whom Mathilde's family marries
Mathilde off. Mathilde herself, as we're quick to find out, isn't terribly happy about her middle-class
husband. She hates the shabby "averageness" of their life, and is miserable being cooped up in their
apartment all day, dreaming of the luxurious life she wants to be leading. M. Loisel, on the other
hand, seems quite happy with their situation. Unlike Mathilde, he enjoys his life as it is, especially
that good old homemade pot-au-feu (stew):

When she sat down to dine, before a tablecloth three days old, in front of her husband, who lifted the
cover of the tureen, declaring with an air of satisfaction, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu. I don't know
anything better than that," she was thinking of delicate repasts, with glittering silver, with tapestries
peopling the walls with ancient figures and with strange birds in a fairy-like forest… (4)

Yes, M. Loisel appreciates the little things. He also seems devoted to his wife. After all, he goes to
all that trouble to get her the invitation to a fancy party, which he couldn't care less about himself (he
sleeps through it). He sacrifices the hunting rifle he's spent months saving up for so Mathilde can
buy a dress for the ball. And when she loses the necklace, he's the one who goes all over the city
searching for it. Most importantly, M. Loisel spends his life's savings replacing it.

So M. Loisel seems like the simple, happy, good guy in the story, a foil for his perpetually dissatisfied
wife. They make the classic unhappy bourgeois couple, in other words. But you can wonder about
two things…

Is M. Loisel an insensitive husband?

M. Loisel enjoys his domestic life quite a lot, unlike Mathilde, but think about the difference in their
situations. He's got a life outside his home, a group of buddies to go on hunting trips with, and a
gorgeous wife who serves his favorite stews for him when he comes home from work. He doesn't
have to stay cooped up in the house all day with nothing to do. Doesn't something seem a little unfair
about that situation, then, as if his enjoyment might come at her expense?

Clearly, M. Loisel cares for his wife for all the reasons we said. And he at least knows her well
enough to know that the invitation to his boss's fancy party will be important to her. But he doesn't
know her well enough to understand that the invitation won't be enough, and he's stunned by her
reaction to it. When she explains she can't go without a dress, the narrator tells us simply that "He
had not thought of that" (16). And he's "astonished" to see how upset she gets. That suggests he
himself might not understand just how different things are for women and men (at least during the
19th century). He doesn't have to worry about what he looks like; she does.

It could be that Mathilde is the real problem, because she's so hard to please, and refuses to be
content with what she has. But it could also be that because of her situation as a woman, her
life is just a lot worse than her husband's (see Mathilde's "Character Analysis" for more on this), and
he doesn't understand that. Then again, even if he did, what could he do? It's not clear what he
could do to make Mathilde happier, short of divorcing her (which would probably make her worse
off), or somehow miraculously getting rich.

At the end of the day, we still do think M. Loisel is a good guy. But perhaps he should try and
appreciate a little more how different his life is from his wife's.
Is M. Loisel too proud?

Some readers place the blame for the story's unhappy ending on Mathilde. She's too proud to tell
Mme. Forestier that she's lost the necklace after her husband's efforts to find it have failed.
Intuitively, that might make sense, since she is the vain one in this story. But if you look at the events
of "The Necklace," it seems like M. Loisel is the one who doesn't want to tell Mme. Forestier what
has happened. Before they've given up hope of finding the necklace, he tells Mathilde to lie to Mme.
Forestier and say that the necklace is having its clasp replaced, so that they can have more time to
search for it. Then, when it still hasn't come up, he seems to just jump to the conclusion that they
have to replace it without informing Mme. Forestier:

At the end of a week they had lost all hope. And Loisel, aged by five years, declared:—

"We must see how we can replace those jewels." (86-87)

Given that, we think it's hard to lay the blame entirely at Mathilde's feet. Her husband is at
least as responsible, if not more responsible, for not telling Mme. Forestier the truth about the
necklace.

But why should we be laying blame at all? Pride certainly isn't the only thing that could motivate M.
Loisel to jump to the conclusion he has to replace the necklace without telling Mme. Forestier. He
doesn't seem like a proud man, quite the contrary. Given his humble circumstances, it could just as
easily be fear that motivates him: he's afraid of what the wealthy Mme. Forestier will do if she finds
out they've lost her necklace. Would you want to tell someone much richer and more powerful than
you that you and your wife have just lost her fabulously expensive piece of jewelry?

On the other hand, M. Loisel could think that buying Mme. Forestier a new necklace secretly is
the honorablething to do. After all, if he and his wife told Mme. Forestier that they had lost the
necklace (which as far as they're concerned is hugely expensive), the ball would be in her court, and
there'd be a certain pressure on her to let them off the hook. She's got to know that they're not rich,
and couldn't possibly afford a replacement. That wouldn't feel right to M. Loisel. He's an honorable
fellow, and feels obliged to make up the loss.

So it could be pride, fear, or honor that motivates M. Loisel to do what he does. Most likely, we think,
it's some mix of all three. Aren't people's motivations usually a bit jumbled?

Mme. Jeanne Forestier

Character Analysis
Mme. Jeanne Forestier is wealthy. That's basically all you need to know. She's the rich friend: the
person you turn to when you need something absolutely fabulous to wear to that ball next weekend
but don't have the money to buy anything appropriate. That's Mme. Forestier's role in this story:
she's that friend for Mathilde. It's also Mme. Forestier who reveals at the end that her necklace was
false and thereby single-handedly triggers the twist ending.

Apparently Mathilde and Mme. Forestier have known each other for a while, since their convent
days. Around the time of the ball, though, it doesn't sound as if Mathilde's seen much of her lately,
because it makes Mathilde too unhappy to visit her rich friend and see the life of luxury that she's not
living. It doesn't sound like they see much of each other after Mathilde returns the substitutediamond
necklace, either. The two women most likely don't meet again until they run into each other on the
Champs Elysées ten years later. Mathilde's too ashamed to let her friend see the poverty she's living
in, and is afraid to explain why she became poor (since that would mean admitting she lost the
necklace).

Character Roles (Protagonist, Antagonist...)

Character Analysis

Protagonist
Mathilde Loisel

No doubt about it, Mathilde's the central character of the story. There aren't many other characters,
and no one else gets anywhere near the screen time. The opening's all about Mathilde, and it's her
dissatisfaction and her desires for wealth and glamour that set the plot in motion. The story's high
point is her moment of happiness, and she's also the character on whom the good luck falls. She
may not be the most sympathetic protagonist, but it's hard not to feel for her at least a little,
especially once her life becomes genuinely tough.

Antagonist
Bad luck? Mathilde's pride or greed? Patriarchal society?

There's no "bad guy" in this story who opposes Mathilde and actively thwarts her desires at every
turn. Mathilde's miserable at the beginning, but just what's responsible for making her miserable is
debatable. It all depends on how you assign responsibility. You could say it's just her bad luck to be
born into a middle-class family, or you could also think it's her own frustrated greed which makes her
unhappy. You could even say that the antagonist is the patriarchal society in which she lives. After
all, it's the man's world that forces her to live the middle class woman's life that bores her to death.

Likewise, who's responsible for Mathilde's fall into poverty? You could say it's the pride of Mathilde
or her husband. If they'd only initially confessed everything to Mme. Forestier they could have
avoided the whole mess. You could also say it's Mathilde's greed, which led her to borrow the
necklace and made the situation possible in the first place. Then again, you could find the actions of
Mathilde and her husband entirely understandable, and think it makes no sense to blame them. In
that case, it's probably just a matter of bad, rotten luck.

Foil
M. Loisel to Mathilde

Mathilde and her husband are two fundamentally different people. Mathilde's miserable and bored in
her middle-class life, and always wants grander things. She also doesn't seem to give a darn about
her husband. M. Loisel, on the other hand, is quite happy with his simple life, and cares for Mathilde,
as far as we can tell. He could not be less uninterested in the kind of glamorous life Mathilde lusts
for. At the ball, Mathilde's in heaven and is having the time of her life. Her husband, however, is in a
corner somewhere, sleeping.

Tools of Characterization
Character Analysis

Thoughts and Opinions

The narrator opens the story with a long look into Mathilde's lively dream world. We see all of the
fancy things she desires: the Oriental tapestries, the footmen, the good food, the fancy parties. The
narrator also repeatedly tells us that Mathilde thinks she was meant for a different kind of life: the
lush life of high society. The opening trip into Mathilde's head gives us enough insight to form an
opinion of her. And by bringing us right away into the world of her thoughts and dreams, Maupassant
makes us feel as if we understand her immediately.

Actions

M. Loisel is the kind of guy who'll work long and hard to get hiswife the invitation to a fancy party
she's always wanted, even though he could care less about it. He's also the kind of guy who then
gives up the gun he's been saving for months just to buy her a dress. Mathilde is the kind of girl who
bursts into tears after getting the invitation her husband worked so hard for because she doesn't
have a fancy enough dress to go in. That kind of says it all, doesn't it?

Social Class

Mathilde is the classic "middle-class" woman who's bored with her average middle-class life and
wants to live a rich and fabulous life. Her life is caught up in fantasies about class. Her middle-class
husband, on the other hand, is a classic "little clerk" (1): hard-working, responsible, and happy with
his lot. Also somewhat cowed by his wife. Mme. Forestier is the rich woman whose money enables
her to casually lend expensive (or fake) jewels to friends, and to stay away from work so she can
keep herself young and pretty. By the same token, Mathilde's fall into poverty seems to transform
her character by forcing her to work and become less caught up in her dream world.

Names

Loisel is related to l'oiseau, the French word for "bird." This seems a fitting last name for "flighty"
Mathilde, who at the start of the story spends her days in dreamland. She wants to "fly away" from
her own world and into a higher one.

Mathilde Loisel Timeline and Summary

 We meet Mathilde (although we don't learn her name right away), an attractive, charming
young girl who's born into an average family, but believes that she has the right qualities to
be rich and fabulous.
 Mathilde likes to spend her days hating her life and living in dreamland. She dreams of
Oriental tapestries, footmen, and seducing men. If only she were rich…
 Mathilde receives an invitation to a ball the Minister of Education is throwing from
her husband. Just what she always wanted…but she has no dress. Fortunately, she is able
to get four hundred francs from her husband. Dress? Check.
 Mathilde finds something else to be upset about right before the party: no jewels. She goes
to Mme. Forestier to borrow some, and after rifling through her whole collection finds the
one: a diamond necklace. Jewels? Check.
 Mathilde goes to the party, has the time of her life, and seriously works it. She's desired by
all the men present, including her husband's boss.
 Mathilde leaves the ball in a rush at 4am – she can't be seen in her raggy wrap. She and her
husband wander around for a while before they finally catch a cab and go home.
 Once she gets home, Mathilde has to look at herself one last time in the mirror. But when
she does she finds out that the necklace is gone.
 Mathilde spends the next day traumatized in a chair getting over the fact the necklace is
gone, while her husband searches for the necklace all over Paris.
 Mathilde goes with M. Loisel to get a new necklace. After finding a look-alike, they spend all
of their money and are forced to take out loans to buy it.
 Mathilde returns the replacement necklace to Mme. Forestier.
 Mathilde spends the next ten years living a poor woman's life. She loses her good looks, but
learns how to work.
 Over ten years after the fateful party, Mathilde decides to take a stroll on the Champs
Elysées, where she meets Mme. Forestier, who, unlike her, still looks young and beautiful.
 Mathilde decides to tell Mme. Forestier the truth about the necklace she returned, and the
last ten years of her life.
 Mme. Forestier tells Mathilde that the necklace she ruined her life to replace was a fake.
 We never get to see how Mathilde reacts to this crushing news.

M. Loisel Timeline and Summary

 M. Loisel is introduced as the "little clerk in the Department of Education" Mathilde's family
marries her off to (1). Mathilde doesn't seem too happy about the whole thing.
 We learn, from a telling comparison about how they eat their dinner that M. Loisel is quite
content with his life, while Mathilde is not.
  M. Loisel comes home with an invitation to a fabulous ball his boss is throwing. Mathilde
surprises him by having a fit because she doesn't have a dress. He agrees to buy her a new
dress. There goes that hunting rifle for which he had been saving.
 M. Loisel finds his wife (who's bought the dress) upset again only a few days before the ball.
This time, she's upset that she doesn't have any jewelry to wear with the dress. He tells her
to borrow some from Mme. Forestier, and she takes his suggestion.
 M. Loisel goes to the ball with Mathilde, and sleeps through most of it. He leaves with her at
4am, and takes a cab back home.
 M. Loisel is just as alarmed as Mathilde to discover the necklace is missing. After spending a
while searching her clothes, he goes out to tell the police, the newspapers, and the cab
company. He spends the next week searching. Nothing.
 M. Loisel decides that he and Mathilde have no choice but to buy Mme. Forestier a new
necklace. They find a replacement at a jeweler's shop.
 M. Loisel gives up his life's savings and goes into massive debt in order to buy the necklace.
 M. Loisel spends the next ten years repaying the debts, working as a book-keeper and
a copier in the time that's not spent working for the ministry. After ten years, he pays off the
last debt.

Mme. Jeanne Forestier Timeline and Summary

 Mme. Forestier is mentioned anonymously as the "rich friend" whom Mathilde knew back in
the convent days. Apparently Mathilde feels too jealous to see her much.
 Following her husband's idea, Mathilde visits Mme. Forestier to borrow jewelry to go to the
ball.
 Mme. Forestier shows Mathilde various jewels, which leave her unimpressed until she finds
the diamond necklace. Mme. Forestier lets her borrow it.
 Mme. Forestier gets the necklace back from Mathilde more than a week after the ball. She's
miffed because it has taken so long to get it back. She also doesn't seem to notice that her
necklace has been replaced by another one.
 Mathilde meets Mme. Forestier strolling down the Champs Elysées with her daughter one
fine Sunday afternoon, a little more than ten years after the fateful party.
 Mathilde comes clean spills her beans about the necklace, that it was replaced.
 Mme. Forestier spills her beans about the necklace, that it was a fake in the first place.

The Necklace Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory

The Necklace

The necklace could very well be just a necklace, but it could also be something more. It's so flashy
and beautiful, and so seemingly valuable. Despite its convincing outside, it turns out to be "false." It's
all show, in other words, with no substance. Doesn't that description sound like it could fit any
number of other things?

For one, you could easily read the necklace as a symbol of "wealth" itself – flashy, but false, in the
end. Like "wealth," the necklace is the object of Mathilde's mad desire. Perhaps the revelation of the
necklace's falseness at the end is meant to mirror the falseness of Mathilde's dream of wealth.
Having wealth is not worth the trouble, any more than the false necklace was worth ten years of
poverty. Then again, wealth has its advantages: it certainly seems to do wonders for Mme.
Forestier's looks, for instance, while poverty ruins Mathilde's.
Maybe that connection between wealth and looks is a telling one. Even deeper than wealth, the
necklace might representappearance, the world in which it's the outside that matters. Wealth
belongs to the world of appearance, because money buys glamour. Mathilde's unhappy because of
the way her own shabby house looks, and the way her lack of money prevents her from wowing the
people she wants to wow with her natural charm and good looks. The necklace is glamorous, and it
also gives her the opportunity to be the woman she wants to be, for one evening. Beneath the fancy
exterior, though, the necklace is not worth anything – it's a fake. In that respect, it fits Mathilde's own
situation at the party: though she fools everyone there, she's not really wealthy. At the end of the day
she is still a clerk's wife in a fancy party dress with some borrowed jewels.

The fact that the necklace is a fake may or may not have some kind of moral meaning. You could
take it to mean that wealth, or appearances more broadly, are false. Against the backdrop of wealth
and appearance, we have the contrast of Mathilde's poverty. Being poverty stricken may ruin her
appearance, but it forces her to become responsible and hard working, and perhaps makes her
appreciate what she had before. You could take away a moral such as, wealth just keeps you
wanting more until you ruin yourself, while poverty teaches appreciation.

Then again, Maupassant never comes out and gives us this moral explicitly. And it's up to the reader
to decide if giving up good looks, comfort, and your own personal maid for a work ethic and a little
more appreciation is agood deal. After all, the world of wealth and appearances may be false, but it's
still kind of fabulous. Just like the necklace.

The Necklace Setting

Mathilde dreams of being rich, but doesn't seem to think a whole lot about being noble. At her time,
money (plus a little bit of charm) practically makes nobility. Money's what enables you to pay for the
"high life," and surround yourself with fancy, fabulous things. And the fancy, fabulous things that
Mathilde fantasizes about – the oriental tapestries, "tall lamps of bronze," the "precious bric-a-brac"
in "coquettish little rooms" – all hint at the fashions of the time, as does the intimate," small-party
social life that she idolizes.

Mathilde wants money, posh "comfort," and fancy, fashionable baubles.

The Necklace Narrator:

Third-Person Omniscient

The story's focus is certainly on Mathilde, but the narrator does not speak from her point of view.
Instead, he talks about Mathilde as if he were from the outside looking in. When he brings her up at
the beginning, she's just "one of those girls" (1). It sounds like he's seen a lot more of them than just
this one. That's omniscient, all right. Mathilde's also not the only character whose thoughts he can
see into; he's able to speak into her husband's thoughts just as easily, when he wants to.
The Necklace Genre
Realism, Literary Fiction, Parable (?)

"Realism" as a literary genre. Realism meant more than just writing about real-seeming situations in
a realistic way. More specifically, it often meant writing about "average" people – not super-rich, or
famous, or holy, or good, or even happy people. Not terribly exciting people either. Usually the
"average" person meant a middle-class person, and particularly the bored, unhappy middle-class
person who longs to live the more exciting life of the rich and famous. call "The Necklace" is a
literary fiction.
"The Necklace" has a clear moral message(for example, "Be honest," or "Wealth is always false"),
you might want to call the story a parable, which is a simple work meant to illustrate a "moral."

The Necklace Tone

Observant and Worldly-Wise, Detached but Understanding

Maupassant writes like a sophisticated fellow who knows the world, and particularly the world of
"society" (high society). He's an excellent social observer who's willing to share his insights with his
readers, casually throwing off large summary statements like:

..she was unhappy as though kept out of her own class; for women have no caste and no descent,
their beauty, their grace, and their charm serving them instead of birth and fortune. Their
native keenness, their instinctive elegance, their flexibility of mind, are their only hierarchy; and these
make the daughters of the people the equals of the most lofty dames.

You also get the sense that Maupassant is detached from what he describes. Though he
understands the society scene, he's not caught up in it, which is why he can describe it so easily.
And he seems to know the world of the poor (when the Loisels fall) just as well as that of the middle
and upper classes.

Maupassant's descriptions of his characters are an interesting mix of detachment and intimate
understanding. He sees into the emotions of Mathilde, his main character, clearly, and can make us
as readers feel "inside" her world. But the narrator doesn't share her emotions, and we don't either.
That doesn't mean Maupassant seems cold or indifferent to the characters, though. In the few telling
moments when he moves beyond detachment, it is to express what looks like sympathy, or even
admiration:

Mme. Loisel learned the horrible life of the needy. She made the best of it, moreover, frankly,
heroically. The frightful debt must be paid. She would pay it.

Maupassant's detachment also keeps his narration from ever being judgmental, which is remarkable.
You might want to judge Mathilde, but Maupassant never does.
The Necklace Writing Style
Unadorned, Economical, Effortless, and Elegant

What's amazing about Maupassant's writing is how economical it is –he does a lot with only a little
bit of space. His control over timing and pacing is incredible. Think about the scope of the story. It
begins with an introduction to Mathilde that makes us feel like we know her intimately in a matter of
sentences. Then there's the invitation – the dress-necklace-ball sequence. Then we see the losing
the necklace – the sequence of searching for it, not finding it, and buying a new one. Next is the ten
long years of poverty and hard living which Mme. and M. Loisel must confront. Finally, there's the
conclusion on the Champs Elysées. That's a ton to cover in only five or six pages, and Maupassant
does it effortlessly. His writing never feels strained or rushed, or incomplete, even though the story's
practically short enough to be its own summary. How does Maupassant do it? It all comes down to
simplicity, and knowing how to make all these details into a coherent whole.

One trick Maupassant uses is writing lots of really short paragraphs; this technique keeps the story
moving at a clip. Often the paragraphs are little more than a single, simple sentence (the sentences
are usually short too). Check out this passage describing the day after the Loisels discover they've
lost the necklace:

Her husband came back about seven o'clock. He had found nothing.

Then he went to police headquarters, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to the cab company; he
did everything, in fact, that a trace of hope could urge him to.

She waited all day, in the same dazed state in face of this horrible disaster.

Loisel came back in the evening, with his face worn and white; he had discovered nothing. (80-83)

That's a whole day, with two characters and lots of scene changes, caught in only a few lines of text.
Note that there's barely any description in this passage, a fact highlighted by the distinct lack of
adjectives, adverbs, and descriptive language. It just says what it needs to. And it reads like a
charm. Even though it moves us along at a fast pace, it flows. Maupassant knows exactly what he
needs to put in a passage to make it work, and uses no more.

When he does write longer paragraphs, Maupassant's got another notable technique. One after
another, he'll string together sentences that begin with the same word and have the same basic
structure. There are a lot of "She did this…She did this…She did this…" paragraphs (he's unusually
fond of pronouns, it seems). As in:

She learned the rough work of the household, the odious labors of the kitchen. She washed the
dishes, wearing out her pink nails on the greasy pots and the bottoms of the pans. She washed the
dirty linen, the shirts and the towels, which she dried on a rope; she carried down the garbage to the
street every morning, and she carried up the water, pausing for breath on every floor. And, dressed
like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm,
bargaining, insulted, fighting for her wretched money, sou by sou. (99)

If you think about it, starting every sentence with "she learned" or "she washed" seems almost like
an elementary and basic writing technique. If you used this technique in an essay, your teacher
would probably scold you for "lack of variety" in sentence structure. Yet Maupassant makes it work.
When he mixes things up ever so slightly in that last sentence, by starting with the "And, dressed…"
phrase before returning to "she went," it's just enough to keep things interesting, and bring a sense
of closure to the paragraph. And all the repetition just feels ordered, and neat. In Maupassant's
hands, simplicity becomes elegance.

What’s Up With the Title?

The story revolves around the spectacular diamond necklace that Mathilde borrows from Mme.
Forester for a ball. That set of jewels gives Mathilde the best night of her life. It also ruins it a few
hours later, when she loses the necklace and spends the next ten years paying to replace it. And it's
also thanks to the necklace that we get the final, gut-wrenching twist at the end.

What’s Up With the Ending?

The ending to "The Necklace" may just be the mother of all twist endings. But just how does it work?
What makes it a "twist ending?" The short answer: the twist ending depends upon suddenly
revealing some bit of completely unexpected but hugely important information right at the close of
the story. Somehow, that bit of information radically changes the meaning of what came before it.
Why don't we have a closer look to see how the twist plays out in the story.

Mathilde's problem is that she accidentally loses something expensive and has to replace it. It
seems sad, and maybe a little pointless, that her whole life is ruined on account of one little
necklace, but what else can she do? She's got to make up for the valuable thing she lost. And so her
ten years of hard work, her poverty seems kind of necessary: it has a purpose, and we admire the
way she slogs through it all. Mathilde's experience of suffering appears to have helped her grow, and
it's given her something to be proud of. And now she's ready to move on. When she meets Mme.
Forestier on the street, all she has to do is come clean about substituting the necklace, and that
whole episode of her life will be over. It looks like the ending will leave us feeling resolved and
optimistic, even if it's not exactly a "happy" one.

But then Mme. Forestier reveal that the necklace Mathilde lost was a fake. That's totally unexpected
and it changes the situation completely. If Mathilde and M. Loisel had just known the real value of
the necklace – or if they'd just told Mme. Forestier what about what happened –they could have paid
for it easily, without any debt. This whole time they thought that they were suffering necessarily, for a
reason, they were actually suffering needlessly. By the way, revealing that contradiction between
what the characters think about their situation, and what their situation actually is, technically makes
this a moment of irony. Irony's often an ingredient of the best twist endings.
Mathilde's suffering, in other words, is now revealed to be pointless suffering (and easily avoidable
pointless suffering at that). And if there's one thing that gets us down, it's pointless suffering. Not
only that, the story's conclusion has suddenly shifted from being optimistic and forward-looking
(anticipating how Mathilde will move on with her life) to being regretful and backward looking
(dwelling on how pointless the last ten years were, and feeling wretched about it). Just imagine how
Mathilde feels right now.

Does this ending have a "point"? According to one common reading of "The Necklace," it's all about
how bad pride is. If Mathilde had just been honest and told Mme. Forestier she had lost the
necklace, she would have learned it was a fake and avoided the whole thing. It's only pride that
keeps her from doing that. According to this reading of the story, it might then seem like Mathilde
did something to deserve this. But we don't think that the pride reading makes much sense. M.
Loisel seems more responsible than Mathilde does for deciding not to tell Mme. Forestier, and he
doesn't seem to have any of her character flaws. It might also not be pride that keeps the Loisels
from telling Mme. Forestier at all. It could be fear, or a sense of honor or obligation. (Check out M.
Loisel's character analysis for more of this.)

On another "moral of the story" reading, it's about how bad greed is. Although Mathilde's greed is not
directly responsible for the loss of the necklace, it's because of her greed that she winds up with the
necklace in the first place. You might also think that the false jewels symbolize the "falseness" of
wealth. According to this reading, "The Necklace" is about how wealth is all show, no real value, and
can be more trouble than it's worth. Mathilde's flaw was wanting so much more than she had, or
needed. That reading, we think, makes more sense, although please feel free to disagree with us.
We're also not sure the story does send the message that wealth is all bad.

Then again, if you're more of a cynic than a moralist, the take-home message could just as easily be:
people suffer for nothing, and they're slaves to the cruel whims of fortune. There's nothing they do to
deserve what they get. And all it takes is the loss of one little necklace, or one bad decision, to ruin
your life.

Tough-O-Meter
(3) Base Camp

Maupassant at times uses slightly old-fashioned language and everything about the story is blissfully
short and simple.

The Necklace Plot Analysis

Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict,
complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the
recipe and add some spice.
Initial Situation
Miserable Mathilde

At the beginning of the story, essentially nothing happens. The narrator's interested in telling us
about Mathilde (even though we don't yet know her name). We learn about her back-story, her
character, and her unhappiness with her mediocre life. This represents a classic initial situation.

Conflict
It's a party and I'll cry if I want to…

The action proper begins when M. Loisel (Mathilde's husband) comes home with the invitation to the
fabulous ball and Mathilde reacts by having a fit. Now we have a specific problem: Mathilde's now
has the best opportunity she's ever had to have a taste of the high life, but she has nothing to wear.
That problem sets the rest of the plot in motion.

Complication
Diamonds are this girl's best friend

Mathilde solves the first problem when her husband gives her money for a dress. But then she runs
into a second problem: she's needs to have some jewels. Luckily, her friend Mme. Forestier is able
to provide her with a fabulousdiamond necklace. But now Mathilde's been entrusted with something
expensive that belongs to someone else and we have the potential for disaster. It's true that the
complication is often when things "get worse," and that doesn't really happen here (for that, we have
to wait for the climax). In fact, after borrowing the necklace, Mathilde has the time of her life. But it's
when she borrows the necklace that the possibility opens up for something really bad to
happen…and it does.

Climax
The necklace is missing!

Mathilde's discovery is the most exciting and dramatic moment in the story (until that crazy twist in
the last line). It's also the turning point in the plot. Before, the story was a build-up to Mathilde's one
glorious night with the rich and famous. Now it transitions into a desperate search. We have a feeling
things are not going to end well.

Suspense
Diamonds, when lost, are a girl's worst nightmare

After the loss of the necklace, we're kept in constant suspense. First, there's the search for the
necklace: will it be found? When it becomes clear it isn't going to be, the question becomes: what will
the Loisels do? Will they find a replacement? And when they do, the question is: how the are they
going to pay for it? It turns out paying for it takes quite a toll on them – their lives are ruined for ten
years.

Denouement
A fateful stroll down the Champs Elysées

When Mathilde meets Mme. Forestier on the Champs Elysées, it looks like we're just about to tie up
the last looseend in the story. The main action is over – the Loisels have finally finished paying off
their debts for the necklace. All that remains is for Mathilde to see whether her friend ever noticed
the substitute necklace, and tell her the sad story of the whole affair. But then things don't quite wrap
up the way we expect.

Conclusion
Come on baby, let's do the twist…

Sometimes critics say that the twist ending is the climax of the story. You could think that the twist is
the most exciting moment of the story, and represents a turning point since it reverses everything
that came before. But we're sticking to our guns, and saying that the twist ending isn't the climax, but
the conclusion. A climax is technically the point of the plot that everything builds up to, and
that's not true of the twist. What makes the twist so effective is that by the time it happens the plot
has already "risen and fallen," and seems to be wrapping up naturally. Then, right in the
denouement, everything changes. Unlike your run-of-the-mill conclusion, this conclusion is exciting,
and it upsets everything.

The Necklace as Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis: Tragedy Plot

Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot
structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy,
Tragedy, and Rebirth.

Plot Type :

Anticipation Stage
Mathilde's hates her middle-class life and dreams only of riches.

The story opens with a long description of how wretched Mathilde is with her middle-class life. All
she wants is to be rich, glamorous, and desired by men. It seems as if this will never happen.
Dream Stage
Mathilde receives an invitation, buys a dress, borrows a necklace, and goes to the ball
dressed to kill.

Mathilde finally gets a chance to taste the life she's always dreamed of: she gets the invitation to the
Minister's ball. And now she starts to move a bit beyond her normal circumstances: she gets
her husband to buy her a genuinely nice dress, and borrows a gorgeous necklace from a rich friend
(which will set her up for disaster). Then she goes to the ball, and is the most popular woman there.

Frustration Stage
The necklace is lost.

Mathilde's trip to cloud nine comes to an abrupt end when she discovers she's lost the necklace.
After a week of searching, it still doesn't show up, so and her husband decide to find a replacement.
But now she and her husband are in a real crisis: how can they afford to replace it? Answer: they
can't.

Nightmare Stage
Mathilde and M. Loisel fall into poverty to by a replacement and slowly repay their debts
over ten years.

From one perspective, Mathilde's life is now worse than it's ever been – it's a nightmare. She's gone
from an unremarkable but comfortable life to a grueling and difficult one. And this drags on for ten
years. From another perspective, Mathilde's poverty forces her to start working hard, and she does.
The debts get paid off. And Mathilde seems to have grown from the experience. It doesn't look as if
this will actually have to be a tragedy.

Destruction or Death Wish Stage

Mathilde learns the truth about the necklace.

Three-Act Plot Analysis

For a three-act plot analysis, put on your screenwriter’s hat. Moviemakers know the formula well: at
the end of Act One, the main character is drawn in completely to a conflict. During Act Two, she is
farthest away from her goals. At the end of Act Three, the story is resolved.
Act I

We meet Mathilde, and learn about her dream of being wealthy and glamorous. M. Loisel delivers
the invitation to the ball to Mathilde, who throws a minor fit and gets him to buy her a dress. She
borrows the diamond necklace from Mme. Forestier.

Act II

Mathilde goes to the fabulous ball. She and her husband return home at 4am, and discover the
necklace is missing. M. Loisel and Mathilde spend the day searching, and find nothing.

Act III

After a week of searching, M. Loisel and Mathilde decide they have to buy a new necklace. They do,
and get buried up to their eyes in debt. The Loisels fall into poverty and spend ten years paying off
their debts. One day Mathilde meets Mme. Forestier on the Champs Elysées and learns the
necklace she lost was a fake.