The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant - Essay Example

The Necklace by Mathilde’s Mistake Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” depicts the undoing of a young girl who cannot accept her place in the world. Born into the lower class, Mathilde finds herself yearning for a life a grandeur and eternally unsatisfied with her portion. When she receives an invitation to an affluent social gathering, she is driven to despair over her lack of an appropriate dress. And even after her husband pays for a new dress, she refuses to attended without jewelry.

In Mathilde’s mind, “there's nothing so humiliating as looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women” (4). At her husband’s suggestion, Mathilde borrows a diamond necklace from a wealthy acquaintance. At the party, Mathilde has a wonderful time, reveling in how glamorous she is on this special night. However, everything turns sour when Mathilde returns home to find the diamond necklace is gone from her neck. Humiliated at having lost the jewels lent to her in good faith, Mathilde searches local jewelry stores for a similar necklace with which to replace the missing one.

Mathilde and her husband spend not only their entire savings, but enter into insurmountable debt in order to purchase a replacement necklace. As a result, they are plunged into abject poverty for ten years, spending every waking hour trying to work off the debt they had accumulated. Mathilde’s beauty, once the source of all of her pride, has withered to nothing—her entire life has been ruined by a single twist of fate. In the end, Mathilde finds out that her life has been wasted in vain, as the original necklace she had believed to be diamond, had been a nearly worthless imitation.

This powerful story depicts the tragic downfall of a woman whose essential flaw is vanity. It is because of Mathilde’s need to cater to her vanity by pretending to hold a social position she does not, that she borrows the necklace in the first place. Then, her tragic end is sealed by her other fatal flaw: dishonesty. Had Mathilde been honest with Madame Forestier about having lost the necklace, she would have easily been able to pay for the cheap replacement. Instead, as a result of her deceit, both her life and her husband’s life are effectually destroyed.

Ironically, Mathilde’s final fate, abject poverty, is the very thing she fears above all and tries to escape in the first place. This story could have had a very different, although admittedly less moving, conclusion had Mathilde simply admitted the truth to her friend right away. But, as foolish as Mathilde behaves, it is not easy to be certain that in her place I would have acted differently. It is far simpler to say that honesty is the best choice than to actually act on that principle. So, although I believe that in Mathilde’s place I would have told Madame Forestier the truth about the missing necklace, it is impossible to say for certain how I would actually have behaved in such a circumstance.

Although stories like “The Necklace” would make excellent films, I prefer fiction and drama in the written form. When you are reading, your imagination works to fill in the details and flesh out the characters. In this sense, a reader is more actively involved in the work than someone passively watching a film, merely accepting what is put before his eyes. Nevertheless, film is often able to capture certain nuances and add depth that is not as explicit in a written text. Overall, there are advantages and disadvantages to fiction in any form.