The Necklace Summary and Character analysis

In “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, the story revolves on the ideas of greed. A woman thinks that she deserves the best of everything, but she marries beneath her. Her husband received an invitation to go to a fancy party. She refuses to go because of lack of suitable formal attire. Her husband gives her his savings and she borrows jewelry from a friend. The couple goes to the party and she is the most beautiful woman there. After arriving home, she finds the necklace missing, so the couple spend the next ten years paying off the debt it cost to replace it. After the debt had been payed off, the woman decides to tell her friend that she lost the necklace. She finds out that the original necklace had been a fake. The central idea of the story is that materialism can lead to a person’s destruction. Mathilde Loisel is the main character. She is beautiful and in her early twenties. She has a stable life with a roof over her head, food, and a loving husband. However, she yearns for much more. Mathilde states, “I’m utterly miserable because I have no jewels to wear, not a single stone.” After her husband had already given her all of his savings, she still complained because she did not have everything she wanted. She was oblivious to the sacrifice he was making. The passage states, “She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury.” The statement emphasizes that she thinks that she deserves to have everything her heart desires. Mathilde can be called a material girl because she values fancy material things more than anything else. She wants to feel glamorous and beautiful, unlike her shabby life. She treats her husband like a butler, and expects him to provide her with things that he simply cannot afford. She thinks that anyone below her should supply her every whim. The story states, “He was heart broken.” Her husband had tried so hard to receive an invitation to the party for her, but when he did, all she did was complain. He thought she would be happy, so he was very disappointed. Her husband serves as a symbol to her as the poverty she cannot escape.