Introduction
The Necklace is a short story written by a French writer Guy de Maupassant. The story was first published in the French Newspaper Le Gaulois on 17 February 1884 and was subsequently included in his 1885 collection of short stories titled Tales of Day and Night. The hallmark of de Maupassant’s style in this story is the twist in the ending and like most of his short fiction, it became widely read and adapted to television and film several times. The story has a well detailed social commentary, well-rounded characters and a tight plotting. This paper contains an analysis of The Necklace and how the author brings out the ironic ending of the story.
Storyline
The story begins with a brief description of Madame Mathilde Loisel, a young woman born to a low class family. In addition, she is forced by her parents to get married to a clerk from the Board of Education and according to her, they are not well off financially. In her life, she always dreamt of a life of leisure, a large home full of attentive servants, delicious meals at her disposal, and good clothes (Maupassant, 1951). This made her to hate herself, her marriage life, their food and home, and her lack of jewelry and fine clothing. She gets jealous of her old school friend Madame Forestier who has become rich.
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Madame Loisel rather than being happy when provided with an invitation letter by her husband, she is upset and complains that she has nothing appropriate to wear to a ball event that the Loisels had been invited. This is ironic because it was expected that since she loved elegant things she will be happy to attend such a fancy party. She forces her husband into spending all the money he has been saving for his hunting gun to buy her a dress for the occasion. She tells her husband that she does not have jewels to wear and her husband suggests she borrow those items from her old school friend. Out of her greediness, she agrees and goes to see her friend where she chooses the most expensive necklaces (Maupassant, 1951). Due to her beauty, the dress and necklace, she looks elegant at the ball event and men want to dane with her. On returning home she realizes that she has lost the necklace. Their frantic efforts in search of the necklace to an extent of involving the police bear no fruits. They decide to replace 36,000 francs’ necklace using Monsieur Loisel fathers will of 18,000 francs and the remaining amount they borrowed from friends making ruinous promises of paying back promptly. Madame Loisel put the new necklace in the original case and returned it without arousing suspicion of Madame Forestier.
To repay their debt, they work tirelessly day and night and after ten years they manage to pay it. All these activities change Madame Loisel into a hardened woman. In her old age, she thinks back in time wondering how her life would have been had she not lost the necklace. Later she met her old school friend and revealed to her the entire story of how she lost her necklace and the means they used to replace it. In response, Madame Forestier informs her that the original necklace was made of fake diamonds and its actual cost was less than 500 francs (Maupassant, 1951). There is a twist in this ending as most people would expect Madame Forestier to get angry and make demands of how her original necklace was very expensive, precious, or a valuable inheritance that was not supposed to be replaced or sold.
Analysis
The main point of view in this story is the comparison between appearance and reality. For instance, Madame Loisel is a beautiful lady and is admired at the ball event but inside, she is full of discontent of her poor lifestyle and does not want her friend to know she is poor. Because of her pride, she spends most part of her life working tirelessly to replace a necklace she lost only to find out that the original necklace was fake. The author tries to explain the falsely wealthy appearance of Madame Forestier just like Madame Loisel herself. The author further demonstrates the value of being honest for if Mathilde was honest enough to tell her friend what happened, she may have replaced the necklace with far less money than what she spent (World Literature Association, 2009). The ironic way the author presents this theme of deceptiveness of appearances is fantastic as she is able to illustrate to readers the illusory world that Madame Loisel lives in. her actual life does not match the ideal life that exists in her head.
Mathilde believes that objects have the power to change the status of someone’s life. The author uses the absence of beautiful objects in her house to show how people can feel like outsiders. And when she loses the necklace, her life that had been transformed by the new dress and the necklace becomes even worse. But together with her husband they are able to raise enough money to pay their debt which indicates that the power does not lie with the objects but within a person (World Literature Association, 2009). On the other, the writer brings a contrasting character of Madame Foriester who does not value objects that much. She seems careless and casual about her possessions and she does not even notice that the necklace returned was not the original one (Miller, 2014). She owns fake jewels but ironically she is reach. For her, the beauty in objects is dependent on people’s perception. This is a classic twist ending because readers are surprised to learn that a woman of high class like Madame Forestier who was used to jewelry does not realize the difference between the original necklace and what her friend returned.
Maupassant uses symbolism to explain the irony of this story. The necklace is beautiful and makes Mathilde look gorgeous and attractive to men at the ball event however towards the end, readers find out that the necklace is fake and of very little value. Mathilde borrows her friend a necklace to make look wealthy but Madame Forestier does not reveal to her that the necklace is fake because she too wants to give the illusion of being wealthier than she actually is. Beauty is treated as objective and at times as subjective in this story and it all depends on the social class. Maupassant writes that beauty was the only way women could improve their social status in the society when he says that in the party Mathilde looked beautiful and everyone wanted to dance with her. This leaves the reader with the question whether men were attracted to her natural beauty because earlier we learnt that she was beautiful or was it because of her upper-class attire she wore for the event? However, the irony behind the necklace is that Mathilde believes her friend is wealthy and she cannot not give her fake diamonds (Miller, 2014). These perception leads her into paying much more than the value of the original necklace. This is a form of situational irony because the necklace was supposed to make her look rich but it actually made her poorer than before.
Conclusion
The whole story has a dramatic irony but the main irony is that the Loisels take on a huge debt in order to replace an apparently expensive necklace that in real sense was a cheap item they lost. The author Guy de t Maupassant manages to create an ironic ending that leaves all readers perplexed by the fact that the necklace that was perceived earlier to be very expensive quoted at 36,000 francs was actually less than 500 francs. And the fact that the owner of the necklace had stayed with tit for more than 10 years but never noticed it was not the original necklace she had given her friend. This story has a symbolic explanation of our everyday activities in the struggle to make our lives better and cautions us on not being too much materialistic in life and the repercussions of those who decide to go down that line. One lesson learnt from this story is that vanity is worthless. According to me, Maupassant managed to bring out an incredible ironic ending associated with short stories.
References
Maupassant, G. (1951). Tales of day and night . London, UK: Thomas Werner Laurie Publishers.
Miller, B. (2014). Marxist Criticism: The Necklace. World Literature Journal, 304, 23-54.
World Literature Association. (2009). Critical Analysis of the Necklace by Guy de Maupassant. World Literature Journal, 232, 122-159.
