The

Necklace
by Guy de Maupassant

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The Necklace
Have you ever felt you were meant for
something better? What if reaching for
your dream cost you everything? Would
it be worth it? Guy de Maupassant's
short story ''The Necklace'' tells of a
woman who longs for more in life and
the mistake that leads to a terrible price
she must pay for her dreams to come
true.

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 Summary
The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant tells the reader about Mathilde Loisel, who desperately wished to marry
a wealthy man. She ended up marrying Monsieur Loisel, a minor clerk in the Ministry of Public Instruction. The
Necklace’s internal conflict is Madame Loisel’s embarrassment of poverty and the belief she’s worth more. She was
dissatisfied with her life but has never seen anything better. Yet, she was convinced that her beauty and charm would
guarantee her the wealthy lifestyle she dreamt of. Mathilde Loisel is spending her days dreaming about the
incredible life she’s not having.

The rising action of The Necklace starts with an invitation. One day, Monsieur Loisel brings home an
invitation to a ball hosted by his boss. He worked hard to obtain it and thought that his wife would be satisfied.
However, Madame Loisel got upset with the fact she had nothing to wear. She asked her husband for 400 francs, and
he hesitantly gave them to her. Yet, it wasn’t enough, and Mathilde threw another fit because she had no jewelry.
Monsieur Loisel suggested she went to see Madame Forestier, who could kindly lend something. Mathilde chooses to
borrow a gorgeous diamond necklace. She feels better from just looking at herself in the mirror with the jewels on
her neck.

As the time of the ball arrives, Mathilde has the time of her life. Everyone admires her. Men wonder who she
is. She spends the night dancing while her husband falls asleep in the other room. At 4 am, Madame Loisel rushes
out into a street, so no one can see that she has no fancy fur coat. As they arrive home, Mathilde makes a sad
 They spend the next days and a week looking for a necklace. Yet, they find nothing. Mathilde writes to
Madame Forestier that the necklace’s clasp is broken, and they have it fixed to buy them some time. However,
the Loisels were at no luck. Therefore, they decided to buy a new necklace to replace the lost one. As they go to
the jewelry store, they learn that it cost 36 thousand francs, twice the amount of money Monsieur Loisel has.
The conflict of The Necklace is that to return the lost necklace, he goes into debt and buys it.

Now massively in debt, the Loisels must change their lifestyle drastically. The falling action of the story
covers the next ten years of hard work and poverty. The Loisels had to dismiss their servants and move out of
their apartment. Mathilde, once dreaming about the rich life, now had to do all the housework herself. Also,
she lost her beauty and charm. Now, she looked like the household’s rough woman, yet facing her part with
unexpected heroism and patience. Ten years later, the debt was paid off.

One day, after a week of hard work, Mathilde decided to take a walk. During the walk, she encountered
Madame Forestier, who remained young and charming. Mathilde was hesitant about approaching her, yet still
did, even though Madame Forestier had a hard time recognizing her. Once she did, Mathilde told her about
the financial situation.

Madame Loisel explains that to return the lost necklace, she and her husband had to buy a new diamond
necklace. Due to this, they spent the last ten years paying the debt. Madame Forestier was shocked by the
story. She said that her necklace was fake and cost five hundred francs at max.
https://www.storyboardthat.com/lesson-plans/the-necklace-by-guy-de-maupassant/plot-diagram
 Characters

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Mathilde Loisel Monsieur Loisel Madame Forestier

Mathilde Loisel
A beautiful woman who yearns for a life of luxery and wealth. When she is invited to a
fancy party, she borrows a necklace from her wealthy friend Madame Forestier because she
refuses to go to the party without expensive jewels and a beautiful gown. After a night of
happiness, during which she immerses herself in the life of glamour that she believes she
deserves, she spends the next ten years paying for her fleeting happiness as a result of losing
the borrowed necklace.

Monsieur Loisel
Mathilde's devoted husband who is content with his humble lifestyle. He finds it
completely incomprehensible that Mathilde does not accept their lifestyle; nonetheless, he
appeases her desires for glamor and fun because he wishes for her to be happy.

Madame Forestier
Mathilde's wealthy friend. Every time Mathilde visits her, Mathilde is consumed with
jealousy. Madame Forestier lends Mathilde the necklace for the party; eventually, we
discover that the necklace contained fake diamonds.
https://custom-writing.org/blog/the-necklace-characters
 Quotations
"For women belong to no caste, no race; their grace, their beauty, and their charm serving them in the place
of birth and family."
--p.31, Narrator
This quote, which comes early in the story, speaks to Madame Loisel's dissatisfaction with her current
life and social status. More generally, the quote speaks to the differences in gender roles in 19th century
French society. Women were, to some extent, able to marry above their social class if they were beautiful or
lucky. However, this also points to the vulnerability of women in society: as women above a certain social class
did not work, they did not have much control over their social status besides through marriage.
"She thought of the exquisite food served on marvelous dishes, of the whispered gallantries, listened to with
the smile of the sphinx while eating the rose-colored flesh of the trout or a chicken's wing."
--p.32, Narrator
Mme. Loisel spends much of her time imagining what life would be like if she were wealthy. These lavish
scenes are even more replete with vivid imagery than the descriptions of reality. These dreams of a lavish
dinner party contribute to the irony of Madame Loisel's response when her husband tells her they are invited
to such an event: whereas one would expect the news to bring her joy, it instead causes her to weep.
 "There is nothing more humiliating than to have a shabby air in the midst of rich women."
--p.33, Mme. Loisel
This quote demonstrates that the most important thing to Mme. Loisel is one's apparent social class,
rather than beauty, intelligence, or even one's true social class. Her greatest fear, now that she has been invited
to a social event as she had dreamed, is that she will not seem to fit in due to her attire.
"How would it have been if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How singular is life, and
how full of changes! How small a thing will ruin or save one!"
--p.37, Narrator
In this quote, the narrator speaks rhetorically and directly to the reader, opining on the fickleness of life.
This seems to be the story's moral until the twist ending, at which time these thoughts are nuanced by the
irony of the necklace not being worth the ruin it caused.
"Her hair badly dressed, her skirts awry, her hands red, she spoke in a loud tone, and washed the floors in
large pails of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she would seat herself before the
window and think of that evening party of former times, of that ball where she was so beautiful and so
flattered."
--p.37,
It is hard to tell Madame Loisel's emotion at this point of the story. Though her life has becomeNarrator
much
harder in some ways, she seems to have changed her character so that she is accepting of her position in life,
perhaps even able to feel a fondness when thinking back to the evening party she once attended.
 Setting
The Necklace’s plot shows readers all middle-class life elements in the example of a woman fixated on non-
existent wealth, Mathilde. The action takes place in Paris, which was full of couples struggling with their finances at
the time. The setting of The Necklace is also used to establish the differences between Madame Loisel’s dull home and
Madame Forestier’s more comfortable house. Even the story’s tone is pessimistic and ironic to show the realms of
nineteenth-century Paris’s life.
The author provides no reflection on the actions of the protagonist. Instead, he describes the events and desires
of Mathilde as they were. In the end, there is no opinion or hidden message on what the meaning of the story The
Necklace is. He reports the events. The author’s choice of characters can also be explained by realism. At the end of
the nineteenth century, Paris was full of middle-class families having a hard time getting by. Therefore, the situation
described could happen to anyone there.
When looking at the marriage between the Loisels, the reader won’t find anything surprising. There is no great
love between them, as well as no financial benefit. Monsieur Loisel is attentive and tries to please his wife in possible
ways. Madame Loisel, on the opposite, lives in daydreams, dissatisfied with her current life. Yet, when facing the need
to pay the debt, they bravely spend years working for it.
Maupassant devoted several paragraphs to describe Mathilde early in the story. The protagonist appears to be
an environment’s product, which shows a naturalistic approach to the characterization. Mathilde was dissatisfied
with the financial situation of her family, yet always remained passive. The author showed that characters like her
adapt to the circumstances rather than change them.
 Setting

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 Setting: Analysis
As writer in 19th-century France, Maupassant writes in a style called Literary Realism. The clearest example of this style
comes in the final third of the story, when he describes the poor, working lives of the Loisels. Maupassant contrasts this with the
almost romantic description of the party that the Loisels attend, at which Mathilde wore the titular necklace.
As gender played an important role in 19th-century French society, so too does it in "The Necklace." Women of the
middle and upper classes did not work, instead being taken care of by their husbands. Thus, many of the Loisels’ problems
involve money. Not only is Mme. Loisel bitter about her inability to improve her social class, but the Loisels also value different
things, with those values mapping along gender lines. When invited to the party, Mme. Loisel begins to weep, asking her
husband to lend her the money for a new dress, as clothing and jewelry were especially important indicators of status for
women. In contrast, M. Loisel thinks to himself that he had wanted to save that money to buy a new gun, a manly pursuit that
he could have used to bond with male friends and relax from his busy work schedule.
Beauty is treated in "The Necklace" at times as objective and at times as quite subjective, dependent on social class. On
one hand, Maupassant writes that beauty was the way women could advance their place in society. On the other hand, Mme.
Loisel sees Mme. Forestier's necklace as beautiful largely because of its supposed worth and the social capital it provides. At the
party, it is said that Mme. Loisel felt and looked quite beautiful, and that many men desired to dance with her. In this case, the
reader must ask whether this is because of her natural beauty, the upper-class attire she was able to acquire for the event, or
perhaps simply her confidence from her clothing.
Until the end of the story, Mme. Loisel is not presented as a particularly likeable or sympathetic character. One example
of Mme. Loisel's flaws comes when the couple has just gotten home from the party: Mme. Loisel says, "I have--I have--I no
longer have Mrs. Forestier's necklace."(p.35) In this moment, it seems that she is trying, even in her panicked state, not to take
the blame of what has happened, refusing to admit that she lost the necklace.
 In setting up the eventual irony in one of his classic twist endings, Maupassant is careful to write that the
necklace "seemed to them exactly like the one they had lost"(p.36). This is not enough to alert the reader to
the eventual irony, but it points to the couple's inability to tell the two necklaces apart precisely because they
were not accustomed to lavish jewelry. This in turn raises the question of whether Mme. Forestier would have
recognized the substitution; though she does not let on that she recognizes any difference upon seeing the
replacement for the first time and seems genuinely surprised when she hears Mme. Loisel's tale after ten
years, it is suspicious that a woman of a higher class would not be able to tell the difference.

Finally, the fact that the characters never find out what happened to the necklace points toward the
randomness of life and importance of circumstance. As Maupassant writes, "How would it have been if she
had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How singular is life, and how full of changes! How small
a thing will ruin or save one!"(p.37) This moral of the story may be seen as a critique of the importance of
social class, since the story demonstrates that a simple accident or circumstance forced upon a person (since
the necklace could have been stolen purposefully) can doom a person to a completely different way of life. At
the same time, Maupassant demonstrates that social class does not correlate to happiness, as Mme. Loisel
seems more content in her life and her marriage when in the poor class than when behaving either as a middle-
or upper-class woman.
Thank
You!
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