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The Necklace

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The Necklace
The Irony of “The Necklace” “The Necklace” has a few different examples of irony in it. Of course it is ironic how the necklace ended up being fake, but it is also ironic that Mme. Forestier lied about the necklace being real. Many people think the theme to be to not tells lies and to just be honest, and then this would not have happened to Mathilde, but Mathilde was not the only one who lied. There is great irony in the fact that the necklace ended up being fake, and also that both women lied about the necklace to each other. Mathilde is a very self-conscious woman because of the fact that her and her husband do not have a lot of money. She is very ungrateful for what she does have and for what her husband does for her. She should have been excited and grateful that she even got invited to the ball, but instead she just told her husband to “give [the] card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than [she is]” (Maupassant). Her husband even gave her the money he was planning on using to “buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer” (Maupassant) to Mathilde for a new dress for the ball, and of course she is not pleased. She then complains that it “annoys [her] not to have a single jewel” (Maupassant) and because of this she should not even go. Mathilde is so determined to be something she is not, which is rich, that she ends up becoming poor. She not only should have told the truth about losing the necklace, but she should have just been happy with herself and not tried to appear something she is not. But “instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation on the table with disdain” (Maupassant) and acted mad at her husband for giving it to her. When Mme. Forestier leads Mathilde on letting her think that the necklace is real, she creates another form of irony in the story. Mathilde has this image that she needs to be rich in order to be happy and fit in, which of course is not true but she feels that there is


Cited: Maupassant, Guy de. The Necklace. Pearson Education, 2011. 68-73. Print.
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