Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” is a short story that showcases how social status is highly influenced by the perception of one’s image and possessions. Madame Loisel is an example of how she defines material objects in high significance to symbolize power, wealth and beauty, and ends up sacrificing her time, effort, and money, thus creating an enemy of herself within herself. Madame Loisel’s desire of high social importance caused her to pine for everything that others have that she does not, thus her lack of appreciation and her discontentment. Madame Loisel is neither proclaimed as the antagonist or protagonist because she is not ideally a wholesome character to begin with. The title of the short story comes to play: “The Necklace” is a story full of symbolism along with vivid descriptions in which the actions of the characters affects the series of events in play.
The first line “She was one of those lovely and charming, young women born, as if by some quirk of fate, into a family of commoners” (de Maupassant, 411) describes how Madame Loisel believes that someone like her does not quite fit the current situation she is in. The descriptions of Madame Loisel’s aura, charisma, and demise of her current situation is emphasized throughout the story, giving the idea of how she completely despises the life that she was brought into. It is also mentioned how she even thinks her husband is not fit for her and her marriage is not what she dreamt of, based on the line “she let herself be married to an insignificant clerk” (de Maupassant, 411). This is an acknowledgement of how Madame Loisel believes she does not belong in the world she is living in, and ends up settling lesser of her expectations. The idea that Madame Loisel is a narcissist is exposed in every sentence which the events are in relation to her, based on how it describes the parts of her life with loathing and negativity and her constant feeling of discontentment.
The story is abundantly descriptive wherein de Maupassant provides plenty of adjectives to conjure an image regarding the characters and the events itself. The narrator actually gives the idea of how of extreme value the necklace is, when at the ending, it is revealed that it was not even expensive. Based on Donald Adamson’s “The Necklace: Overview”, he mentions how “writing of ‘her treasure', `a superb diamond necklace', he misleads the reader into believing that the necklace really is valuable.” (Adamson, par. 6) This is brought by the precise detail of the description of de Maupassant, that even readers will be misled by the authenticity of the necklace, not by how it is visually perceived, but by how the imagination conjures up the images in detail. On Francis Steegmuleer’s “Overview of The Necklace”, he includes how Henry James, an American-British author, shows the repercussions that is brought to attention, “all to find that their whole consciousness and life have been convulsed and deformed in vain, that the pearls were but highly artful ‘imitation’ and that their passionate penance has ruined them for nothing.” (Steegmuler, par. 2). It is an honest mistake for the Loisels to think that the necklace is real, because they could not have known due to their lack of exposure and knowledge of jewelry; but the “passion” from their honesty and their grave efforts to return the necklace is thoughtful and full of sincerity. The short story, ironically, is also lengthy, due to its descriptiveness and attention to detail for emphasis, just like in Donald Adamson’s critical essay, how “the first two pages of the story—introspective, generalizing, even somewhat diffuse—are a meditation yet also a character portrait, in the manner of Flaubert's Madame Bovary, but two pages out of nine are devoted to such effects, and there is no mention in them of any necklace” (Adamson, par.5). Madame Loisel’s image is built up by how de Maupassant describes her personality, lifestyle, and outlook in life.
In the next series of events, Madame Loisel’s misdirected anger and sadness due to the lack of wardrobe and jewelry options for the party the Loisels are invited to is a symbol of how most members of the society strive to keep their image immaculate and high relevance. Monsieur Loisel gives her the money to purchase the dress she wants, and by this, it shows how Monsieur Loisel regards his wife’s contentment with top priority, and how he is willing to make sacrifices for the sake of her happiness, even suggesting her to “go look up your friend Madame Forestier and ask her to loan you some of her jewelry” (de Maupassant, 413). Madame Loisel is ecstatic on how her plan of being the center of attention is working. This happiness, however, is short-lived.
The party is also another symbol of the lifestyles of the rich and how everything in the party is perceived only at its best: Madame Loisel transformed into an “elegant, graceful, smiling, and quite above herself with happiness” from “grief, regret, despair, and misery” of her life, which is what reality actually is for her, before and after the party (de Maupassant, 414) The necklace she borrowed from Madame Forestier is instantly what made her feel the “triumph of her beauty and glory of her success”(de Maupassant, 414). She feels the huge difference between who she was before the party and what she is during the party, yet as mentioned in the last sentence of the previous paragraph, it is short-lived. She goes home, back to her normal, everyday life —and nothing changed at all. It was only the temporary high she felt with being admired, or her so-called fifteen minutes of fame.
The mystery of the story revolves around the necklace getting lost, which is a symbol of how the feeling she had in the party is only temporary. The party ends, Madame Loisel goes back to her miserable state, and realizes that she lost the necklace that she borrowed. From Jason Pierce’s “The Overview of The Necklace”, it is mentioned that “her possession of the necklace, however, is known to be temporary—unlike her dress or her memories of the ball, she cannot hold onto it—and from this arises the story's mystery” (Pierce, par. 4). It is interesting how this event brings the question: how Madame Loisel is going to be after the party? Will she ever be the same as before? Will she finally become the woman she dreams of becoming? Madame Loisel is a permanent character with temporary desires: the dress, which will become outdated in the next few years; the moment she felt at the party, which she did not bring home with her, because it was not her reality; and the necklace, which she lost, and brought her with more problems that she already have. (Pierce, par. 4)
The misery of the Loisels starts when they handed the money over to the jeweler, which describes how their lives are going to be very difficult from then on: “Haunted by the fear of what lay before him, by the black fate that was about to engulf him,, by the prospect of the physical hardship and moral agony, he went to the jeweler’s and picked up the new necklace, leaving behind on the counter thirty-six thousand francs” (de Maupassant, 415) The “black fate” used is a symbol of how The Loisels begin to clearly see and experience living in poverty-stricken conditions and has to work twice as much as before. In the aforementioned quoted line, Monsieur Loisel shows his selflessness and his unconditional love by handing over the money to the merchant without any reluctance, yet foreseeing how it was the beginning of the consequences of his wife’s actions. The search of the Loisels of the missing necklace is actually same as them searching for the elegance and the beauty Madame Loisel exuded while in the party. It was never found, thus showing us how the appearance Madame Loisel has exhibited at the party was inexistent and it does not belong to her at all. The necklace was merely an illusion of her strong desire of wealth and power, and to compensate, she and her husband struggle to work twice as hard to pay off all their debts that they incurred for the replacement of the necklace.
Madame Loisel’s epiphany towards the end of the story is what brings the irony in place, on how the necklace and the party is all just a dream, almost a nightmare. She finally musters up the courage to face Madame Forestier and tell her the background story of how it took a while for the Loisels to return the necklace back to Madame Forestier — and Madame Forestier’s shocking response brings the humorous yet bittersweet moment of the story. Christopher Smith mentioned in his critical essay “The Necklace: Overview” that “Madame Forestier is moved, but, in a last line that leaves us to answer a thousand questions about values, appearances, and bourgeois respectability that must flood through Mathilde's mind, reveals that the diamonds in the necklace were not real ones, just paste and not worth very much at all” (Smith, par. 7) is how Madame Loisel realizes that the woman that she was in the party was not real. She concocted and raised efforts to be perceived with beauty and wealth but behind closed doors, she is Madame Loisel, the wife of the “insignificant clerk in the Ministry of Education” (de Maupassant, 411) and not Madame Loisel, the lady with the diamond necklace.