The Necklace: Accepting Yourself

Guy de Maupassants short story The Necklace is a 19th century French tale advocates that happiness is accepting yourself for who you are, not wanting what you do not have. It tells the story of a beautiful young woman named Mathilde who is disappointed with her low station in life and believes she deserves much better than her fate of being married to a kind, but middle-class husband. Her attempts to seem wealthier than she is and her refusal to accept her circumstances have tragic consequences, and ultimately lead to her downfall.

Mathilde and her husband devote their entire lives to paying for an ornament that Mathilde lost at a ball, which they think is very valuable but which was really paste. Mathilde was too afraid to tell her wealthy friend about the loss, and instead replaced it with what she thought was an exact replica that was made with genuine jewels. The real conflict in the story is between Mathildes desire for the life of a wealthy woman who can afford jewels, which she does not have.

If...

But had she truly valued her friend, and been honest and open about what had happened, she could have saved herself ten years of grief.

By focusing on the unimportant things like jewels, and not valuing the goodness of her husband and the trust of her friend, Mathilde loses everything. She did have happiness at the beginning of the story in the form of love and kindness, but could not see this. It took the loss of what she valued most in the world to see that she was happy before striving to change things, rather than accepting…