The Necklace (Edexcel IGCSE English Language A)

• Maupassant offers a critique of characters who value wealth and material possessions over everything else: 

  • Mathilde cares only for material goods and symbols of wealth and prestige, believing she will be “popular, envied, attractive, and in demand”

  • Her happiness is completely dependent on what she possesses, believing that a lack of possessions is the cause of her unhappiness

• It is Mathilde’s greed, vanity and social ambition that are the ultimate cause of her ruin:

  • She fears the higher classes will reject her due to her lack of wealth

  • She is happy at the ball because she was a “success” and “all the men looked at her”

  • She floated metaphorically on “a cloud of happiness composed of the homage, admiration, and desire she evoked”

  • She rushes to leave the ball, fearing social contempt for not wearing “rich furs”, causing her to lose the necklace

  • Maupassant suggests that material possessions cannot guarantee long-lasting happiness

• Maupassant employs irony as despite Mathilde’s obsession with valuable items, she fails to recognise the necklace is fake:

  • She attributes value to things based on superficial ideas about monetary cost

  • The debt that she and her husband take on to replace it is the natural consequence of her greed

• Through Mathilde, Maupassant is criticising the standards of the society in which he lived and their value system:

  • In France at the time, wealth was synonymous with social status

• Mathilde attempts to appear richer than she is:

  • She achieves success (having the appearance of wealth at the ball) by borrowing a fake necklace 

  • Instead of admitting the reality, that she has lost the necklace, Mathilde keeps up appearances, ruining herself and her husband in order to buy a replacement

  • None of the characters recognise the difference between real and fake 

• Throughout the story, Mathilde believes that her appearance and current circumstances do not match her expectations of reality:

  • This makes her constantly unhappy, as she feels trapped in a social class she does not wish to belong to 

• The twist at the end of the story suggests that, even for the rich, illusion is just as important in maintaining their social status 

Technique

Analysis

Third-person omniscient narrator

• The story is an example of French naturalism:

  • The narrator relates the main details of the story in concise prose, without detailed insight into the characters’ thoughts and feelings

  • The efficiency of style makes the plot twist at the end even more abrupt and surprising

Symbolism

• The necklace is symbolic of the life Mathilde believes she should have had:

  • However, the necklace is symbolic, a form of pretense, just like Mathilde’s dress and behaviour at the ball

  • Maupassant may be suggesting that materialism is both shallow and worthless

Dramatic irony

• At the ball, the reader is aware that Mathilde is pretending to be something she isn’t, but the other characters in the scene are unaware:

  • This emphasises the theme of appearances versus reality, as both Mathilde and her necklace are frauds 

Foreshadowing and irony

• When the Loisels take the necklace case to the jeweller, the writer foreshadows the story’s twist ending when it is revealed that the jeweller supplied only the case, not the necklace

• The irony of the whole story is revealed when Mathilde discovers that the necklace was a fake:

  • The ending shatters the illusion — Mathilde’s ten years of poverty were penance for carelessly losing the borrowing necklace

  • Her misery is the result of her duplicity and lies 

• Mathilde’s much prized beauty is ironically destroyed by ten years’ hard labour:

  • Her new life also ironically makes her old one seem luxurious

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