The Necklace – Literary Overview

The story “The Necklace”-written in 1884–strives to teach us an age old lesson that we still struggle to achieve today. It is best to be ourselves rather than lead people to believe we are something we are not. This theme is developed through a strong–yet simple–plot, imagery, and the main character herself.

Mathilde Loisel, the protagonist of the story, is miserable with her life because she feels she deserves more than her middle-class rank in society. She spends the days fantasizing of an extravagant lifestyle instead of appreciating what she does have. She is ashamed of herself, and of her husband who only a clerk with the Ministry of Public Instruction. Her deception begins during the rising action of the story, when she manipulates her husband into spending his savings to buy her a new dress. He has obtained an invitation to a ball by his employers, and presents this to her to make her happy. She breaks down in tears, telling him she has nothing to wear. When asked how much she would need to purchase a new dress for the ball, “she reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.” .

Still concerned with how the other high ranking officials at the ball may view her, she is unhappy as the day approaches. She tells her husband she now needs jewelry to complement her new dress. He suggests she borrow some from a rich friend of hers. When visiting her friend, she is allowed to choose any jewels from her collection to borrow. She chooses the most expensive-looking piece-a diamond necklace.

She has a wonderful time at the ball, believing she has deceived others into believing she was wealthier than she was. When their evening was over, Mathilde discovers she has lost her friend’s necklace. Her dishonesty reigns again when she writes her friend a letter to explain that she was having the broken clasp fixed, and it would take her a bit longer to return it. She does this in hopes that she will be able to recover the necklace. When that fails, she and her husband take out multiple loans to afford a duplicate to return to her friend. Mathilde is too ashamed to admit a mistake, and paying for this she will suffer ten years of real poverty.

Ten years is what it takes to repay what has been borrowed. They dismiss their servant, and Mathilde learns how tough housework can be. They move to a less favorable side of town. The years had erased the beauty she once had, for life was hard on her. At the end of the story, she runs into her friend for the first time since the incident.. Mathilde finally tells the truth behind the necklace and the duplicate she replaced it with. At this her friend is moved, and tells her that the original was just costume jewelry; a fake. It was not worth much more than the dress Mathilde has purchased in the beginning of the story.

The imagery of this story is of the necklace itself. It is not worth what it appears to be, just as Mathilde appeared at the ball. Mathilde was deceived by its appearance, and she spent ten long years learning what real poverty was like. In today’s western society, we still have the need to keep up with the Joneses. For us it is easier to be impulsive, for it is easy to obtain credit to purchase the things we believe we need. However, it is also easier for a woman to take control of her life. It was uncommon in Mathilde’s time for women to become successful and earn a lot of money. She needed to rely on her husband, which caused bitterness in herself.

Her materialism is the antagonist of this story, and in the end the antagonist wins. She suffers for her greed, just as any human with greed should rightly suffer. Guy De Maupassant creates her to be almost like a spoiled child-in that she does not value the lot in life she is been given. We are hoping she learns her lesson, and we pity her husband. But in our modern culture… can we blame Mathilde for her feelings? She has no control over her life; and her husband is satisfied with their mediocrity. Perhaps she is deceptive because she does not want to put her husband down, and make him feel he is not good enough. If we were to compare this story to today’s scale of standards, her actions may be very commonplace. Suppose a woman of a middle-class lifestyle were invited to a ball at the White House. Surely, that $45 dress from Target would be insufficient to wear to such an affair. “Most of us … are puppets, controlled by the world around us. We crave approval. We need to fit in. In many ways, this is just a characteristic of being human – we are social animals and need to fit into the group to survive. But this natural and healthy tendency has taken over our lives to such an extent that we are often paralyzed by a fear of the outside world and obsessed by how others see us. .

As for losing her friend’s necklace, Mathilde was afraid of what her friend’s reaction may be. Mathilde believed it was her finest piece of jewelry, and did not want to disappoint her friend’s generosity and trust. Perhaps what she did in this story was the noblest thing to do in this situation. She paid for her mistake. Believing it was truly an expensive piece of jewelry, she needed to make up for losing it. Going to her friend with the truth and asking for forgiveness would have seemed ridiculous had it been genuine. In her friend’s kindness, she would have thought Mathilde unable to replace it, and Mathilde could not live with the result of someone pitying her for having less money.

Mathilde had a hard time with her life, but reflected on the night of the ball when she was down. To her this night was so magical; it was worth the ten years of poverty to make up for it. De Maupassant writes that “she took her part, moreover, all of a sudden, with heroism” . When we read about her before the loss of the necklace, she seems to be living in a false sense of reality. She is very conscious of what people will think of her, afraid of feeling lower than they are. Although she feels she is living a life of poverty when the story begins, she really is not. They have a servant to do all of the housework and shopping, and reside in a decent neighborhood. It is only after those ten years of hard work that we hear of Mathilde being honest, and unworried about how she may appear. If Mathilde’s character had remained unchanged through these years, she may have chose to avoid her friend on the street that day. She would have been ashamed of the way she was dressed and the lack of beauty she once had. Instead, she confronted her friend, and told her what had happened. This shows that Mathilde changed greatly in these years, and she now was not as worried about appearances. Her hard work had strengthened her, and perhaps increased her own self-worth.

After reading many stories in the Bedford text over the course of the last two or three months, “The Necklace” stood out in my memory. I chose it because it was written over one hundred years ago and still holds a valuable and relevant lesson in today’s world. Although the first version was written in French and this story has been translated by a few different people, the ultimate moral remains the same. The first being that it is important to be proud of who you are, and not strive to be something unattainable. The second is that hard work and an honest lifestyle do build character. These two themes can be intertwined. A person with strong character and self-esteem are satisfied with who they are, and will not attempt to be someone they are not. Also, we are apt to work hard if we believe in ourselves, and this-in return-will build our character even more. It is important to work for what we want in order to appreciate it. Mathilde truly enjoyed her night at the ball more as the years passed on and she reflected upon it. This is because as she worked hard, she felt she was making up for that special night. She was able to appreciate it as she felt she was earning it.

It is easy for us to fall into the trap of not working for what we want in this society. As I mentioned before, it is easy to ‘buy now and pay later’. Many of us need to drive fancy cars, live in houses above our means, and constantly shop and replace clothing that is perfectly suitable for wear. We do this because others are doing it. We feel pressured by society to live beyond our means. We feel we deserve the finer things, because they are so readily available. It is important to realize what we need in life, and what is purely greed. “The Necklace” was written from a man’s point of view, in a time long ago and a country far away. But the similarities of Mathilde and women today are too close to be coincidence. There is a Mathilde Loisel in all of us, and we must be aware that eventually we need to pay for the things we want.

References

Maupassant, G. D. (1884). The Necklace. In J. E. Gardner, B. Lawn, J. Ridl, & P. Schakel, Literature: A Portable Anthology, Second Edition (pp. 59-65). Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Miles, M. (2008). Why Is It So Hard to Be Yourself? Retrieved May 8, 2009, from PickTheBrain: http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/why-is-it-so-hard-to-be-yourself/