The Necklace

The Necklace

In "The Necklace" by Guy De Maupassant, Mrs. Loisel believes that the idea of beauty is shown by wealth and power in society. She believes that she was supposed to be born into the life of luxury, but instead is having to live a poverty lifestyle. Mrs. Loisel borrows the "perfect" necklace and wears it to a high society event that she desires to belong in. She ends up wasting ten years of her life trying to keep a friend that lives a high society life. Maupassant describes Mrs.Loisel as a woman who believes beauty is determined by expensive things, but in reality beauty is determined by what is inside. At the beginning of the story Maupassant interprets Mrs. Loisel as a woman who believes that she was destined to live the life full of extravagance and wealth. She believed that she lives a lower class life. When Maupassant writes, “She was a simple person, without the money to dress well, but she was as unhappy as if she had really gone down in the world.” (187) he is making the reader picture that she is the modern day homeless person. Mrs. Loisel constantly daydreams about the luxurious life she feels that she was destined to live. To her, the epitome of beauty is represented by all materialistic things, and has nothing to do with what’s inside. Maupassant writes, “She imagined large drawing rooms draped in the most expensive silks, with fine end tables on which were placed knickknacks of inestimable value.” (187) Which proves to the reader she is nothing but a materialistic woman that only cares about herself. When Mrs. Loisel looses the necklace that she borrowed from her wealthy friend, Mrs. Forrestier, she was devastated and feared that she not only may have lost her one connection to living a life of luxury. Mrs. Loisel and her husband found a necklace that matched the lost one, but it was forty thousand francs but they were able to talk the jeweler down to thirty-six thousand francs. There was no way the couple could afford it with her husbands’ income. Mr. Loisel had eighteen thousand saved that he received from his father, and borrowed the rest of the money from a number of people. Mrs. Loisel and her husband spent the next ten years of their life working more to pay off the debt. By the end of the ten years their debt was finally paid off. Unfortunately by then Mrs. Lionel’s image looked like the image she saw herself when she wasn’t actually poor. Readers can contemplate whether all the hard labor and misery that she went through made her realize that not only can beauty be seen on the outside, but on the inside too. At the end of the story Mrs. Loisel sees Mrs. Forrestier at a park and decides to approach her and tell her the whole story since her debt was finally paid off. In the end, Mrs. Forrestier tells her that the necklace that she wasted ten years trying to replace was actually nothing but cheap costume jewelry. The fact that the one item that Mrs.Loisel believed to make her beautiful and feel apart of society was actually a fake. This shows that anything can make you feel beautiful and luxurious, but it also does not have to cost an arm and a leg. As long as you feel beautiful that is all that matters. Charles E. May states that he believes an example of irony in The Necklace is shown at the end when “Madame Loisel, who has looked poor on the outside, turns out to be genuine inside.” I can only agree that Mrs. Loisel looks poor at the end of the story. Towards the end Maupassant describes her looks after the ten years, "Her hair unkempt, with uneven skirts and rough, red hands…" (191). The imagery he used makes you believe she looks like a homeless women without a home. I disagree with May when he says that at the end she shows that she is "genuine" inside. To me, she has not changed because even at the end Maupassant writes, "she dreamed of that evening so long ago, of that party, where she had been so beautiful and so admired." (191) If she was pure on the inside in the end then I believe she would realize that beauty is not only seen on the inside, but on the outside too. She would still not cherish the night where she felt beautiful, luxurious, and felt as if she was apart of high society. In the end, I believe that Mrs. Loisel has not changed her point of view of what beauty is. To me she is a hardheaded woman who still believes luxurious things make you beautiful, and is the only way to be successful in life. Even after spending ten years living the life of a poor woman, doing hard labor, and turning into an old woman whom her old friends can’t even recognize she still does not see beauty on the inside. She just does not feel beautiful anymore. If she grasped the fact she helped out others by taking on doing chores for others then I believe she would see she is still beautiful. She may have not felt beautiful on the outside, but by thinking of others and working hard to pay off a debt she would of seen the beauty that was on the inside.