The Necklace Essay

689 Words3 Pages
Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace,” puts an ironic twist on the not-so-classic riches to rags adventure. The story begins by introducing the reader to the main character, Mathilde Loise. Mathilde desires a life of delicacy and luxury, but lives a rather normal lifestyle. When Mathilde’s husband scores an invitation to an upper-class dinner event, Mathilde becomes concerned about what she will wear in order to blend in with the rest of the crowd. She then frantically decides to ask one of her friends to borrow jewelry for the event. Mathilde finds a necklace that she falls in love with, and wears it to the dinner. As the night continues, Mathilde becomes the center of attention and admired by all. She is living the life she always…show more content…
In this frantic rush, Mathilde loses the necklace. She notices as soon as she gets home, and sends her husband to search for the missing jewelry. With no luck, Mathilde and her husband decide to take out loans and purchase a new 35,000 franc necklace as a replacement, for her friend. The plan works, but condemns The Loisel’s to ten years of hard work and labor to make up for this costly expenditure. When Mathilde runs into her friend ten years later and shares with her this grand adventure, her friend just laughs and says that the necklace she borrowed was a fake and not worth much money at all. Guy de Maupassant utilizes the literary technique of irony to express that flaws in the human condition, such as greed, envy, and pride, are compensated by humans being generally good by…show more content…
Mathilde’s envy of the rich, upper-class is what drives her to desire such fancy, luxurious items. Mathilde feels that she should have been born into this lifestyle and would often cry herself to sleep because she could not live the life she desired. “She had a rich friend, an old friend whom she refused to visit, because she suffered so keenly when she returned home.” (Maupassant) Mathilde’s envy seemed to get the best of her when she would visit her old friend. Because of her envy toward the rich and upper-class, it seemed like nothing was good enough for Madame Loisel. Her husband would always try to provide her with the means to make her happy, like giving her the four hundred francs he was saving up to buy her dress for the dinner. The envy Mathilde had toward the rich is what made her borrow the necklace from her friend. If she wouldn’t have borrowed the necklace, she would not have lost it, and she would not have had to spend ten years working extremely hard to make up the money to pay for the replacement

More about The Necklace Essay

Open Document