The Necklace

Guy De Maupassant
 About the writer

• Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a French

writer, remembered as a master of the short story
form, and as a representative of the naturalist school
of writers, who depicted human lives and destinies ...
Wikipedia
• Born: August 5, 1850, Tourville-sur-Arques, France
• Died: July 6, 1893, Passy, Paris, France
• Influenced by: Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola, Honoré
de Balzac, Arthur Schopenhauer, Hippolyte Taine
 Background

• Matilda is invited to a grand party.

• She has a beautiful dress but no jewellery.
• She borrows a necklace form a friend…….. and loses
it.
• What happens then?
 Character List

• Mathilde Loisel - The protagonist of the story. Mathilde

has been blessed with physical beauty but not with the
affluent lifestyle she yearns for, and she feels deeply
discontented with her lot in life. When she prepares to
attend a fancy party, she borrows a diamond necklace
from her friend Madame Forestier, then loses the necklace
and must work for ten years to pay off a replacement. Her
one night of radiance cost her and Monsieur Loisel any
chance for future happiness.
 Character List

• Monsieur Loisel - Mathilde’s husband. Monsieur Loisel is

content with the small pleasures of his life but does his
best to appease Mathilde’s demands and assuage her
complaints. He loves Mathilde immensely but does not
truly understand her, and he seems to underestimate the
depth of her unhappiness. When Mathilde loses the
necklace, Monsieur Loisel sacrifices his own future to help
her repay the debt. He pays dearly for something he had
never wanted in the first place.
 Character List

• Madame Forestier - Mathilde’s wealthy friend. Madame

Forestier treats Mathilde kindly, but Mathilde is bitterly
jealous of Madame Forestier’s wealth, and the kindness
pains her. Madame Forestier lends Mathilde the necklace
for the party and does not inspect it when Mathilde
returns it. She is horrified to realize that Mathilde has
wasted her life trying to pay for a replacement necklace,
when the original necklace had actually been worth
nothing.
 THEME

• The theme of the short story, "The Necklace" is to be

happy with who you are and what you have. Madame
Loisel lived in the middle class society but longed to be a
member of high society. She wanted to live above her
means and would do whatever it took to get there. Her
husband provided the stepping stone to enter the world
of the upper class by getting an invitation to a prominent
reception. From there she talked her husband into giving
her the money to have a wonderful dress to fit in with
them and then the final highlight was to borrow a
wonderful diamond necklace from Madame Forestier
wear to the reception.
 THEME

• The ironic situation is the source of her joy, the necklace,

becomes her downfall when she loses it and has to work
the next ten years of her life to replace it. She not only
loses her middle income status but falls into poverty and
spends the rest of her life suffering for her dreams. The
symbolism of the necklace is social acceptance into a
world where she longs to be, but doesn't belong.
 At a glance

• Pretty Mathilde Loisel aspires to the wealth and prestige

of the upper classes, and is frustrated by her lower-
middle-class husband and plain surroundings.
• Her husband finagles an invitation to one of the wealthy
parties Mathilde longs to attend, and when Mathilde
refuses, saying she has nothing to wear, he helps her
purchase an expensive dress.
• Mathilde is again frustrated by her lack of jewelry; she
borrows an extravagant diamond necklace from her friend
Madame Forestier.
 At a glance

• Mathilde has a wonderful time at the party, but afterward

discovers the diamond necklace is lost. The couple spend
their inheritance and take out loans to replace it.
• After years living in penury and debt that ruin Mathilde’s
looks, Mathilde runs into Madame Forestier, to whom she
confesses the whole story; Madame Forestier, deeply
moved, tells her the necklace was a fake.
 Summary

• Mathilde Loisel is attractive and pretty, but unhappy, very

unhappy. She believes that life has played her false. She
feels relegated to a lower station than she deserves. She
wanted to be appreciated and loved by some rich
gentleman from a good family, but instead, having no
dowry, she had to settle for a junior clerk in the Ministry
of Public Instruction.
 Summary

• Her existence is one of constant frustration. She hates her

plain apartment, its absence of pictures on the walls, its
shoddy furniture. Even the sight of her maid, doing
housework, fills her with hopeless regrets and provokes
flights of fancy about more opulent surroundings. Though
other women of her class may come to terms with their
station in life, Mathilde never can.
 Summary

• She is so humiliated by her lower-middle-class existence

that she even refuses to see one of her old friends whom
she has known from her days at the convent school.
Madame Forestier is wealthy, and Mathilde finds visits to
her too painful to bear; so, she spends her days hanging
around her drab flat, sometimes crying the entire time,
overcome with worry, regret, desperation, and distress.
 Summary

• Her husband, on the other hand, seems better adjusted.

He does not notice that the tablecloth has been in use for
three days. When he is served a simple casserole, he can
exclaim with pleasure: “Well, a good hot-pot. I don’tknow
anything better than that.” One day, he comes home from
his office with an invitation to a party that is being given
by his superior, the minister of public instruction. Instead
of greeting the news with delight, Mathilde throws the
invitation down on the table, saying that it is no good to
her, because she has nothing suitable to wear for such an
occasion.
 Summary

• Her husband tries to convince her that it was very difficult

for a junior clerk to get asked to such an event. “You will
see the whole world of officialdom there,” he says,
suggesting that she wear that good-looking dress she
once wore to the theater. She refuses and tells him to give
the invitation to a colleague whose wife is better turned
out than she.
 Summary

• Monsieur Loisel tries another tack. He asks her how much

it would cost to get a proper dress. She thinks it over,
trying to estimate what an old pinchpenny like him would
be willing to spend. She decides on the sum of four
hundred francs that, as it happens, is exactly the amount
that he has put away to buy himself a gun so he could join
some friends who go Sunday lark-shooting on the
Nanterre flatlands. He is not happy to forgo his pleasure
but agrees.
 Summary

• An appropriate dress is ordered and is ready before the

date of the dance. Mathilde, however, is still depressed.
Now she complains that she does not have any jewelry to
wear with it. Her husband suggests flowers. She is
unimpressed. He then suggests that she go to her rich
friend Madame Forestier and borrow some jewelry
 Summary

• His wife thinks it a good idea and the next day goes and
explains the situation to her. Madame Forestier is more
than willing to comply and goes to a wardrobe to get a
large jewelry casket. She tells Mathilde to take what she
likes. jewelry.
 Summary

• Such an embarrassment of riches makes it difficult for

Mathilde to make up her mind. She asks to see something
else. Suddenly, she discovers a black satin case that
contains a magnificent necklace, “a river of diamonds.”
With tremulous voice she asks if she may borrow this
item. “But yes, certainly,” says her friend. Mathilde throws
her arms around her friend’s neck, and then joyously
hurries home with her treasure.
 Summary

• At the minister’s party, Mathilde scores a success. She

appears to be the prettiest woman in the room; all men’s
eyes are on her. Even the minister notices her. She dances
throughout the night, leaving her exhausted husband
dozing in a small drawing room with three other husbands
whose wives are also enjoying themselves. When the
party breaks up at four o’clock, Mathilde wants to get
away as fast as possible because she does not want the
other women, who all wear furs, to notice her plain cloth
coat.
 Summary

• She runs out to the street hoping to find a cab, but the
search takes her down to the Seine where, at last, she and
her husband find an old dilapidated brougham stationed
along the embankment. The ride back to their dismal
apartment is sad for Mathilde with her fresh memories of
her triumph.
 Summary

• Once home, as she is taking off her wraps, she discovers

that the necklace is no longer around her neck. They
search her clothes: nothing. Her husband goes out and
retraces their path home. He returns several hours later
having found nothing. The next day, he goes to the police
and files a report.
 Summary

• He then advertises in the lost-and-found in the papers,

but still, nothing. To give them time to continue the
search, they tell Madame Forestier that the clasp on the
necklace is being repaired. After five days, however, when
nothing shows up, they decide that the necklace is truly
gone and they must have it replaced
 Summary

• They take the necklace case from jeweler to jeweler to find a

strand of diamonds that matches the one lost. They finally see
one in a shop at the Palais-Royal. The price, with a four-
thousand-franc discount, is thirty-six thousand francs. The
Loisels pay for it with an eighteen-thousand-franc inheritance
that the husband has received from his father, and by
borrowing the rest in small amounts, thereby mortgaging their
lives for the next decade. The replacement necklace is
returned to Madame Forestier, who remarks rather coldly that
it should have been returned sooner because she might have
needed it. She does not bother to open the case.
 Summary

• The Loisels are left with their debts. They get rid of their
maid. They move to a poorer apartment. The wife now
has to do all the menial work herself: wash the sheets,
carry garbage down to the street, carry up the water, do
her own shopping, bargaining with everybody to save a
few sous. The husband moonlights, working in the
evenings for a bookkeeper and often at nights, doing
copying at twenty-five centimes a page.
 Summary

• This goes on year after year until the debt is paid. The
time of penury has transformed Mathilde into a poor,
prematurely old hag, with a loud voice, red hands, and
neglected hair, but in her misery she often remembers the
minister’s ball, where she had her great success. What,
she asks herself, would have been her fortune had she not
lost the necklace?
 Summary

• One Sunday, as she strolls along the Champs-Elysees, she

sees Madame Forestier taking a child for a walk. Jeanne
Forestier is still young-looking and attractive. Now that the
debt for the necklace has been satisfied, Mathilde Loisel
decides to tell her old friend everything that happened.
She stops to speak to her but is not recognized until she
introduces herself.
 Summary

• She explains that life has been pretty grim. She tells her
about the lost necklace, how she had it replaced and for
the past ten years has been slaving to pay for it. She is
relieved that the long ordeal is over, and naïvely proud
that her friend never knew that a different necklace had
been returned to her.
 Summary

• Madame Forestier is deeply touched. Taking both of her

friend’s hands she says, “Oh! My poor Mathilde! But mine
was a fake. It was worth no more than five hundred
francs!”