The Necklace

The first time I read “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, I was in eighth grade. At the time, I closely related it to that Christmas story where the lady chopped off all her hair to buy her husband a pocket watch chain and her husband sold his pocket watch to buy her a comb for her hair. Sure, the main character in “The Necklace” was a lot more vain, but the circle of work that is required for no reason just depressed me. How was the whole hair story supposed to make you feel good about Christmas? “It’s the thought that counts” never sufficed for me in that story.

Anyway, “The Necklace” follows Mathilde, a woman who was “pretty and charming” but was born into “a family of clerks” and had “no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, and wedded by any rich and distinguished man” (887). Even without ever having experienced the luxuries the rich can afford, the woman still suffered “from the poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the walls, from the worn out chairs, to the ugliness of the curtains” (887). She dreamt of jewels and delicate meals and parties.

Her ridiculous fantasies are not please when her husband finally does find a way for her to go to a party of which she had always dreamed. Instead, she complains that she has no dress to put on her back. Greedily, she asks for four hundred francs that her husband with which he had meant to buy a gun. When her dress is finished, she is still not satisfied. She needs jewelry.

Her solution? Running to her rich friend, Mme. Forestier. She finds a “superb necklace of diamonds” which makes “her heart…beat with an immoderate desire” (889). With her outfit complete, she happily attends the high brow social event.

At the end of the night however, she loses the necklace. Both Mathilde and her husband Loisel search in vain, retracing the path of the carriage ride and trying to remember the cab number. In the end, they come to the conclusion that they must simply buy a new one.

Of course, the price of the necklace is absurdly high, but they borrow money from friends. Every month, more money was due to multiple people. It took ten years of hard labor to repay every penny. Her looks change so much that her friend Mme. Forestier does not recognize her at all. Mathilde tries to blame her for causing her so much pain from losing the necklace at the ball ten years before. Mathilde confesses to giving her a real diamond necklace back. The catch? Mme. Forestier’s necklace “was paste” and was “worth at most five hundred francs” (893).

I suppose it’s good that Mathilde’s vanity wears off, but the suffering of ten years without any break whatsoever? Living in a constant fear of debt and bankruptcy? The story is written well enough to feel like the ending was not completely out of the question, but who would torture their characters so harshly?

Fate is not kind to the characters at all. Mathilde was born into poverty with strikingly good looks and yearns for acceptance from the upper class. In that way, she has no say in the matter. However, when she loses a fake necklace and replaces it with a real one, she could have easily avoided the mishap by telling Mme. Forestier in the beginning. Surely if they were friends enough, she would have been angry but fine if the necklace was real and Mathilde offered to buy a replacement! Anyway, in the latter case, Mathilde just did not think the entire situation through.