The Necklace
Published 1882
Author Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5, 1850, in Fécamp, Normandy, France. The intimate friendship his mother and maternal uncle had with Gustave Flaubert, the author of Madame Bovary, became of utmost importance in Maupassant’s early literary development. Laure de Maupassant divorced her husband and devoted herself and the considerable settlement she received to the upbringing of her two sons. Maupassant was educated at the school of Etretat and by his mother until the age of 13; she was a highly lettered person and conveyed to him a strong enthusiasm for Shakespeare. He studied briefly at the seminary of Yvetot, where his antireligious and amorous verses earned him many rebukes, before being expelled as an insubordinate pupil for stealing and drinking the faculty’s choice wines. Subsequently, at a school in Rouen, he had Louis Bouilhet for a teacher, who (with the help of Gustave Flaubert’s letters, in a kind of correspondence-school) gave direction to Maupassant’s increasing interest in literary expression.
During the Prussian invasion in 1870, Maupassant served in the army, gathering experiences and observations which were of great use in his future writing. Eight months after the armistice was signed, he returned to civilian life. In endless literary discussions with French writers in Flaubert’s home, Maupassant resolved to commit himself to a literary career as a poet, a precarious existence that would need the support of a job with regular income. He became a clerk doing routine printing and distribution of stationery supplies for the Ministry of Marine in Paris, a position he both detested and depicted in his stories. At this time he was happy to take intensive boat excursions on the river Seine with carefree companions, rowing and swimming and indulging in physical excesses.
Maupassant spent a rigid apprenticeship under Gustave Flaubert for seven years. He was neither his nephew nor godson as is sometimes reported, but he was almost completely under his master’s thumb. In spite of being forbidden to seek publication of his work until it was perfected, Maupassant employed a pseudonym to see some of his verse published and plays performed.
With a transfer to the Ministry of Education, Maupassant’s work as a clerk became more congenial, and a little later in 1880, he left behind the pseudonyms under which he had contributed a few poems, tales, and studies to various periodicals. His story “Boule de suif” (title means “Ball of Fat”) appeared in a collection with stories by four other obscure writers and perhaps the most controversial name in French letters, Emile Zola.
The columns of the most popular newspapers were immediately opened to Maupassant, and overnight he became, with Zola, the highest paid writer of the day. He left behind 10 years of poverty and a seven-year apprenticeship that had made him at best an indifferent poet. Stories and prose flowed from his pen. Maupassant was grateful above all else that his success gave him independence, material as well as literary. This was encouraged in him by Flaubert, whose death a few weeks after the release of “Boule de suif” set Maupassant free from any lingering artistic dominance.
With the royalties from his first short story collection, La Maison Tellier (published in English as The Tellier House), he built a villa in his hometown of Etretat on the coast of Normandy. Part of the proceeds from his novel Bel ami (title means “Good Friend”) were used to buy a yacht with which he explored the Mediterranean coast. With each new bestseller, Maupassant improved his living quarters, eventually arriving at the fashionable Avenue Victor Hugo. He also contributed substantially to the support of his mother and younger brother, Herve, and came to the aid of several indigent writers.
For the next decade, Maupassant dedicated himself to producing a steady flow of writing: nearly 300 short stories, a half-dozen novels, several other books, and over two hundred miscellaneous articles which were not collected in book form. Frequent excursions for rest or escape from society did not interrupt his work.
His writing was introduced to America by the translator Lafcadio Hearn and by Henry James, and he was compared to Walt Whitman and other American literary luminaries. He became a classic author, taught in schools, almost instantly in both French and English.
Unfortunately, Maupassant had contracted syphilis when he was a young man, and the disease was further aggravated by his incessant literary work. His eyes hurt intensely, and splitting migraines sent him to every specialist in France in search of a possible remedy. He undertook journeys to Africa, Italy, Sicily, and Corsica in efforts to overcome his terror of blindness and other disabilities. From these journeys came his travel books and many stories with striking images of foreign lands. Medical treatment at that time was not highly effective, and the robust young man dwindled to a shadow of his former self. He read and wrote less because of eyestrain. The acute pessimism he had shared with Flaubert became even stronger, intensifying in 1889 when Maupassant’s younger brother, Herve, had to be interned in an insane asylum.
Maupassant could see that insanity was to be his own future and was determined to avoid it at any cost. Maupassant tried to commit suicide twice before being committed to a mental institution in Passy. There he was watched by vigilant keepers, and there Maupassant died 18 months later on July 6, 1893 at the age of 43.
A young, pretty woman from a family of clerks marries a petty clerk in the office of the Board of Education in Paris. She feels keenly the lack of luxuries and adornments, and is disappointed by their plain apartment. Her husband’s tastes are simple, but she envies the fine trappings of the rich and their elegant attentions. Consequently, she does not like to visit her school friend, who is wealthy.
Her husband manages to secure an invitation for both of the Loisels to spend an evening at the home of the Minister and his wife, but this news does not make her happy. She desires a suitable dress; and her husband gives her all the money that he has saved for a hunting gun so that she can have a dress made.
As the day of the ball approaches, Madame Loisel is still unhappy to be without a jewel; “nothing to adorn myself with.” Her husband’s suggestion that natural flowers are chic does not convince her; but then he suggests that she ask her wealthy friend Madame Forestier to lend her jewels. Upon request, Madame Forestier willingly loans to Madame Loisel a superb necklace of diamonds.
Madame Loisel is a great success at the ball: “the prettiest of all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and full of joy.” All the men notice her, and she dances with enthusiasm until four o’clock in the morning, while her husband dozes “in one of the little salons with three other gentlemen whose wives were enjoying themselves very much.”
When they leave, Madame insists on rushing away on foot; eventually they find a cheap, shabby cab and return to their apartment. There she realizes that the necklace is missing. It is not to be found anywhere.
Loisel uses all of his inheritance (18,000 francs) and borrows an equal amount to buy a replacement necklace. To pay back the frightful debt and interest, the Loisels take cheaper lodgings and Madame does all their housework without the help of a maid. She dresses simply and haggles to stretch their pennies. Loisel keeps his job, works evenings, and does copying at night.
After ten years they have paid all that they owe. When Madame Loisel sees her friend Madame Forestier one day, still young, still pretty, she speaks to her and tells her story, being decently content that it is finished.
But Madame Forestier takes her hands and explains that her diamonds are fakes, worth only five hundred francs.
Maupassant wrote this story set in a present that he knew and had lately lived: Paris in 1880. There, a Breton could find honest labor as a government clerk, and people of modest means or desperate straits could see the jeweled rich living in luxury just out of reach.
By Maupassant’s descriptions of Madame Loisel’s envies and daydreams and one glorious ball at the house of the Minister, readers get a picture of what Paris looked like for the wealthy, and how elegant and comfortable their lives must have been. By his descriptions of the Loisels’ modest and economical apartment, their visits to the theater, and Monsieur Loisel’s wish to go shooting with some friends, readers know what Paris looked like for working people, and that their lives were not luxurious but comfortable and far from desperate.
However, working people crippled by debt shared the lifestyle of the uneducated, the unskilled, and the unlucky: the poor. Living in cheap rooms under a mansard roof, the Loisels would have roasted in summer and shivered in winter. With no running water, the simple task of hauling up four or five flights of stairs every bucket of water for cooking and cleaning and bathing was enough to exhaust a person. Buying the most economical foodstuffs, cooking meals and cleaning afterwards, and doing laundry by hand was for one person more than a modern full-time job.
The office work done by Loisel would have been tedious, repetitive, and unsatisfying for a literate man who enjoyed occasional visits to the theater. Neither modern nor classical working conditions were common in 1880; Loisel would have worked in a poorly-lit room with bad ventilation among people who bathed infrequently, and he could have been fired without cause or notice or recourse.
It is a fallacy to assume that a story must contain only action, particularly if it is written by Maupassant. In this, as in many of his stories, there is little or no “action” and very little actually “happens” from the viewpoint of many readers. Yet in “The Necklace,” mood and atmosphere are brilliantly created; in this and in many other stories by Maupassant, the sense of life is not diminished when no earth-shattering events happen.
When this story was written, the French Revolution loomed much closer in memory than it does now, and egalitarianism was still a fashionable idea. Though many aristocrats had been executed during the Revolution, a de facto aristocracy of wealth had sprung up. It should not escape the reader’s notice that the wealthy Madame Forestier’s name translates as “Mrs. Forest-Worker,” a name that invokes images of men earning money by the sweat of their brow, not inheriting it.
One of Maupassant’s themes in this story is that wealth is admired beyond reason. Matilda deserved the luxuries and leisure and pleasure of wealth no more and no less than anyone does. But when such trappings are hoarded by some and witheld from others, people invest far too much significance in them, as Matilda does. Her envy blinded her to the pleasure her husband took in a simple, but well-prepared meal.
Loisel is shown simply but clearly to be a man of modest talents and appetites, whom any reader should not only understand but would be well advised to attempt to emulate. An insensitive man would not take his wife to the theater, nor would he scheme to get an invitation to an event that would please her. A greedy man would not give his own recreational savings for her dress instead of a gun for hunting with his friends. An ineffectual husband would not search for the necklace or the cab in which it might have fallen, nor would he be able to handle the usurers. A lout would have left his wife to face the consequences alone, without help. A weakling could not have sustained ten year’s work at three jobs and monthly renewal of his loans. Loisel is not to be faulted therefore, for being mild and quiet in his habits, without grand ambitions.
The most astonishing technique used by Maupassant in “The Necklace” is that he does not introduce his characters by name as they are brought into the story. They are only named at significant moments in the narrative. The Loisels are not named until their invitation to the Minister’s ball is read. The wife’s given name, Matilda, is not used until her husband asks her how much a suitable dress would cost. Her given name is not used again until the last page of the story. Her wealthy friend from school is not named until Monsieur Loisel suggests asking Madame Forestier for the loan of a jewel, and Mme. Forestier’s given name, Jeanne, is used only once by Matilda in the final scene, where they recognize each other after ten years.
Monsieur Loisel’s given name is never used at all. Perhaps this could be seen as depersonalizing this character, and some readers may think that Maupassant is leaving this character unfinished, unreal, or unimportant. This is not true, however. In France in 1880 (and to some extent even to this day) a man’s family name is used by almost everyone whom he contacts, far more often than his given name, which is used only by his most intimate friends and family. A boy in a story or in real life would be addressed by his given name, and almost everyone would address a grown man of any social standing at all by his family name.
When the author refers to the little Breton clerk only by his surname, the intention is to represent this character as a grown man with a respectable occupation, rather than as an unskilled laborer or a simpleton. The author may also have intended to show by omission that the wife is not deeply affectionate or emotionally linked with her husband, as she never addresses him by his given name.
Far from Loisel being diminished by being referred to only by his surname, it is Madame Loisel who is depersonalized by being referred to almost always as “Mrs. Loisel” rather than Matilda and never by her maiden name. She is a de facto Loisel property, rather than an independent being. It is only at the end of the story, when she has learned “a proud and simple joy” at the completion of their desperate labors, that she is truly a helpmate and complement for her spouse; then they truly share a name. For the first time, she identifies herself as Matilda Loisel.
Their marriage was a reasonable and suitable match: he had an honest though modest profession, and she had no dowry or prospects for an inheritance when she married him. There was no reason for Matilda to hope for marriage to or attentions from a wealthy suitor of high social status. Her “sad regrets and desperate dreams” for luxuries are justified only by her personal charms and graces, not by any status of birth or achievement.
Matilda’s envy is not a positive element in her life. Far from inspiring her to achieve goals worthy of admiration, her desires of status and wealth merely make her dissatisfied with the virtues of the modest, but sufficient, life that she and her husband actually have. As the story begins she does not, for example, make drawings or embroideries of the finery she imagines. She does not sing songs or write poetry. She does no generous kind deeds for children or the church or the less fortunate. She makes no effort to be any kind of a great lady, because there is only one kind of status she wants: material wealth. Her envy leads her to beg for the loan of an adornment which she does not own, has not earned, and which she covets immoderately.
Ultimately, Matilda’s envy leads her to pride, when neither she nor her husband even consider confessing the loss of the borrowed necklace. If she had the courage to come to her friend with her husband’s inheritance of 18,000 francs in hand and a written promise to pay the other half she owed, admitting the loss of the necklace, her life would have gone very differently. If Madame Forestier was a loving friend, she would have instantly admitted that the necklace’s true value was not double that of Loisel’s inheritance, but only five hundred francs. There is no reason in the text to assume that Madame Forestier would cheat her friend out of more than the necklace’s actual value.
Even if the necklace had contained real diamonds, a loving and generous friend might have recognized the effort necessary for the Loisels to pay another 18,000 francs, and allowed payments to be made directly to her, rather than insisting upon a lump sum. It was the interest charged by usurers that kept the Loisels in debt for so many years. A truly loving and generous friend may have declared her diamond necklace to have been of inferior quality, worth only 18,000 or 20,000 francs, and silently accepted the loss of half her diamonds’ value for the sake of a friendship.
Thus it is clear that Matilda has done her friend a great wrong: she has assumed that her friend would not be loving and generous. She has deprived Madame Forestier of the opportunity to be kind to her. Madame Forestier is clearly able to be kind, as she willingly lent the necklace when asked. When the two women meet after ten years apart, she is willing to talk with Matilda immediately, though Matilda is careworn and roughened by years of work and deprivation. She even takes Matilda’s hands and immediately confesses without vanity that her diamonds had been false.
The true value of the necklace then is not the 500 francs that Madame Forestier’s husband had paid for the false diamonds, nor even the 36,000 which the Loisels paid for the real diamonds. The true value of the necklace, according to Maupassant, is that to buy one, you must pay with every moment of leisure and work, every bucket of water hauled up four or more flights of stairs, every basket of vegetables haggled over in the market for five or ten coins, every chance to be generous enough to hire a part-time maid, every worn pen and cramped writing hand and eyestrain from inadequate candles . . . for ten long years. That is what a diamond necklace is truly worth, the author tells readers. And an appalling portion of that effort goes to pay usurers, not jewelers or diamond-miners.
One would think that an egalitarian citizen of the French Republic would have been embarrassed to wear diamonds while a child starved in the gutters of Paris. Perhaps Maupassant is suggesting this.
It should not be forgotten that Madame Forestier’s necklace was a fake. Readers are never told if Madame Forestier has done any worthy deeds in her life, other than her friendship with Matilda. She coveted the trappings of wealth as much as Matilda did. She settled for the appearance rather than the reality. The reader is left to wonder how many of the trappings of material wealth are also fakes, just pretending to look like diamonds.
In a few words, Maupassant could portray a figure, in a few pages he could describe a fate. Some of his stories in translation fired the imagination of short story authors around the world.
Maupassant’s name has become coupled with the “trick ending” in the short story tradition (his admirer O. Henry took this technique to extreme lengths). It is not fair to associate Maupassant exclusively with the “trick ending,” however, as he rarely employed it. This link is probably due to the frequency with which his story “The Necklace” has been anthologized. It is likely that “The Necklace” has been anthologized so often because it has no overt sexual element, and so publishers may feel safe about including it in books intended for young students.
“It is a grave error, and a greater injustice, to associate Maupassant with the naturalists, that all too easy label of the manuals of literature,” wrote Professor Artine Artinian in his introduction to The Complete Short Stories of Guy Maupassant. “He shared Flaubert’s burning aversion to ‘schools,’ and he deplored Zola’s noisy proclamation of esthetic theories. His was the craftsman’s cult of art in practice rather than in theorizing.”
Maupassant never married, and after reading this story one can guess that at least part of the reason may have been that for ten years he was unwilling to take on the responsibility for supporting a wife and family on the wages of a government clerk. After his writing brought him wealth, Maupassant still did not marry; perhaps because he knew then that he had syphilis or perhaps because he knew that he was unsuited to married life. He wrote like a man obsessed and indulged himself in athletic and carnal excesses. He would not have made a good spouse—a better husband by far would be the little Breton Loisel from this story, who schemed to get an invitation to please his wife, gave his entertainment savings to have her dress made, searched on foot for hours for the missing necklace, spent his inheritance and took on a staggering debt to buy a new piece of jewelry, and worked at three jobs for ten years to pay the interest on the loans.
The author never needs to tell the audience in so many words that Loisel is a good, honest man and a good husband. The reader knows this by what the man does.
Maupassant goes to a great deal of effort to describe Madame Loisel’s experiences, as a discontented young wife of modest means, as a social butterfly for one night, and as a penny-pinching household drudge. He even mentions her proud and simple joy when the debt is paid.
Monsieur Loisel’s labors are summed up in three modest sentences:
{}Every month it was necessary to renew some notes, thus obtaining time, and to pay others.{}
{}The husband worked evenings, putting the books of some merchants in order, and nights he often did copying at five sous a page.{}
{}And this life lasted for ten years.{}
This statement is particularly significant when one remembers that Maupassant spent ten years living in poverty as a government clerk, and only three of those years working at a better job in the Department of Education. The little Breton he makes seem first an object of humor and then an earnest, desperate worker, is himself. Maupassant may not have known “the horrible life of necessity” that the Loisels learned, but he certainly knew their modest circumstances described at the beginning of the story. And while he did not keep books and do copying by night, Maupassant labored at his literary apprenticeship.
It is especially meaningful that Maupassant does not tell the story from the viewpoint that one would expect, knowing his own life experiences. It would be natural for a writer to tell a story from the viewpoint most like his own. While in his novel A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess told the horrifying incident of a home invasion, assault, and rape, much like that actually endured by Burgess and his wife, from the viewpoint of an attacker, in “The Necklace” Maupassant tells the story from the viewpoint of the wife. That is where Maupassant’s talent shines best in this story.
The wife’s labors are no less significant than her husband’s work, and her viewpoint is no less “valid” or “real.” A writer of lesser talent would have told the story from the husband’s viewpoint, tolerant of his wife’s selfishness. Perhaps a writer with a more prosperous background would have told the tale from the viewpoint of Madame Forestier, forgiving of her friend’s envy. But either alternative would have suggested that this was the true perspective that mattered on the events that happened. Writing from the viewpoint of Madame Loisel as she learns pride and joy in her honest labors is an affirmation to the reader: first, that such people exist in any class, women with profound desires and ambitions; and second, that their lives are worth living and, therefore, worthy of attention in the arts and literature.
This is a profoundly feminist and humanist story, and it is as supportive of the working classes as it is supportive of women.
Maupassant said of himself and his stories, “We have but one objective: Man and Life, which must be interpreted artistically.”
1. What does Matilda covet? How does her desire affect her life?
2. What is ambition? Why is it a good servant but a poor master?
3. What was the slogan of the French Revolution? Which aspects are being explored in this story?
4. What are the goals and ambitions of Loisel as the story begins? What has he accomplished by the story’s end?
5. What sort of school must Matilda Loisel and Jeanne Forestier have attended? How important is it culturally that the one girl grew up to marry a man of means, and the other married a clerk?
6. What can you guess about the economy in Paris and France at the time the story is set?
7. Why, for a story set in the crowded city of Paris in 1880, are there so few characters in this story?
8. How has technology made this story possible? Why could it not have been set in fourteenth-century France?
1. What virtue does Madame Loisel learn in her sustained efforts to run her household with the utmost economy? What has this lesson cost her? Is this price fair or just or necessary? Could she have learned a similar lesson without spending all her youth and prettiness?
2. What does Madame Forestier know of the life experienced by her friend Madame Loisel before and after the loan of the necklace? How truly sophisticated is she to tell her friend that the jewels she worked so hard to replace were paste? What do we know of her from the text, and what can we guess of her personal qualities such as integrity and intelligence? What would a loving friend or a true great lady have done to honor such long, honest labor, rather than make that effort worthless with a single sentence?
3. Why does Maupassant spend so little effort on the character of Monsieur Loisel? Is he unworthy of the reader’s attention? Or is his nature and experience so understandable and customary to the reader that it does not need puffed-up explanations? Is Maupassant describing a virtuous man?
4. What were the goals and ideals of the French Revolution? How does Maupassant explore the ideal of “Equality” in this story? Does Matilda believe in equality? What does she do because of her beliefs?
5. What is jealousy? How is it distinct from envy and desire? Are these entirely negative emotions? What good, if any, can these emotions bring to a person’s life?
6. What kind of people are the wealthy people envied by Madame Loisel? What do we learn of them from the text? What can we infer from the societal and cultural situations which are presented as common in Paris? Are these people truly great ladies and men of wit and intelligence as well as money?
7. Sketch out a rewrite of the story from the viewpoint of Monsieur Loisel. How is our understanding of the story affected by this viewpoint shift?
8. Discuss whether “The Necklace” is an example of what Henry David Thoreau meant when he wrote: “The vast majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
9. Which of these characters are motivated by love? What kind of love? What does this motivation lead them to do? Does this love have a positive effect for this character or anyone else?
Readers who have enjoyed this story would be particularly advised to read Maupassant’s story “Boule de Suif” and any of dozens of his short stories. A teacher would be well advised to assign both this story and “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin in her short story collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters for comparative study, as both stories discuss the relative and absolute values of material wealth as compared to human misery.
Contributed by: Paula Johanson
Source: Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults. Copyright by Gale Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
