In ‘The Necklace’, French author Guy de Maupassant introduces the protagonist Mathilde as a fair and young lady born into a poor family due to “an error of fate.” She spends hours on imagining a more extravagant life filled with expensive gowns, fine jewellery and fancy china. And this brings her great sadness.
One night, her husband returns home with an invitation to a formal party and instead of being happy, she gets angry and starts to cry. Amidst her crying, she states that she has nothing to wear. Upset by her reaction, her husband gives her money to buy a suitable dress which is more than he can afford.
Even though she is wearing a beautiful gown, her behaviour is odd and she confesses to her husband that it is due to lack of jewels. He implores her to borrow from her wealthy friend, Madame Forestier, who agrees to lend her a diamond necklace.
Amidst intoxicated by attention and enjoying the party, Mathilde loses the necklace which the couple only realise after they have come back home. They search in vain and they start to panic. And to buy a new necklace, they borrow money from other people which leads them to be in crippling poverty. After years of working off the debt, Mathilde’s beauty is lost- she looks like any other poor woman.
Upon bumping into Madame Forestier, who doesn’t recognise Mathilde anymore, Mathilde confesses to her about what had happened all those years ago to which Madame responds saying that the necklace was just a piece of costume jewellery and cost nothing significant.
Maupassant was a believer that fiction should convey reality as accurately as possible, thus rejecting the use of psychological and romantic lenses and structured his stories through plot lines and details which were specific and defined. ‘The Necklace’ is simply a report of an incident; he has neither given an explanation to Mathilde’s yearning nor has he provided the reaction following the revelation at the end.
Although he was an advocate of presenting facts and true perspective, he also understood that the inherent connotation of fiction is a contradiction to reality- a work of fiction is set in a world created by the writer hence, is not reality.
Employing the literary device of irony in a straightforward story, Maupassant’s ‘The Necklace’ is a must-read for anyone who loves realistic writing- it is pellucid, engrossing and implores the readers to perceive it however they wish to sans judgment.
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