Structure of necklace design and composition

¶ … Necklace: Irony and Structure

The structure of Guy du Maupassant's "The Necklace" is laden with irony. A beautiful woman, born into a tiresome middle-class position, marries a middle-class man. She plots and plans to make a show of herself at a great, upcoming ball, only to find herself cruelly the victim of her own vanity -- the necklace she borrowed to set off her beautiful face and gown is lost. She must sacrifice her beauty to pay back the debt. She works for the next ten years to pay for the cost of the lost jewel. Broken and ravaged, she encounters the woman from whom she obtained the necklace. And then, the final irony:"Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs!" exclaims her friend.

Mathilde's inability to value the real worth of items is one of the consistent themes of the story. At the beginning of the story, she overvalues her own worth. With great irony, the authorial voice casts her in grandiose terms, as she evidently perceives herself: "She was one of those pretty and charming girls born as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans...she let herself be married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her tastes were simple because she had never been able to afford any other, but she was as unhappy as though she had married beneath her; for women have no caste or class, their beauty, grace, and charm serving them for birth or family, their natural delicacy, their instinctive elegance, their nimbleness of wit, are their only mark of rank, and put the slum girl on a level with the highest lady in the land."

Mathilde's tastes are uneducated -- simple -- but she is filled with a deep and pervasive of 'wrongness,' a contrast between her inner refinement and what she sees as her outer, coarsened circumstances. The irony is evident in the author's voice, as clearly her view of herself as on the level of the highest lady of the land even though she has 'simple tastes' is a contradiction. This will prove her undoing, as she is unable to tell what is an imitation and what is the real thing. She truly does have 'no class' but not in the sense she realizes. Almost immediately, the story strikes a contrast between how things appear and how things really are. Mathilde believes that she appears like a great lady, although she is the child of artisans. However, she is only really able to create the appearance of beauty, wealth, and culture: she is a false diamond like the jewel she borrows.

This repetitive contrast of beauty and ugliness, coarseness and refinement continues throughout the tale. When she serves her husband, for whom she expresses contempt, poor Scotch broth, she can only imagine: "delicate food served in marvelous dishes, murmured gallantries, listened to with an inscrutable smile as one trifled with the rosy flesh of trout or wings of asparagus chicken." His acceptance of their fate and his love of her is a mark against him, rather than a mark in favor of his character. She continually contrasts her humble settings, the girl who comes in once a week to help with the housekeeping, with what she really wants, namely, brocade tapestries, and a ladies' maid. Although she cannot see this, the reader understands that these types of "Masterpiece Theater" visions of refinement are parodies of what an aristocratic lifestyle is supposed to resemble.

The degree with which it wounds her to see others living the life she imagines she was destined to lead becomes sharper, as the writer notes when visiting her friend Madame Forestier, "she suffered so keenly when she returned home. She would weep whole days, with grief, regret, despair, and misery." This weeping will reoccur again at the end of the story, when she must confront the loss of the necklace, borrowed from her friend. And as before, rather than expressing openness about her true feelings, in the face of wealth she becomes embarrassed and ashamed, and this also proves her undoing, as if she had only been open about what had transpired with the necklace, then she would not have had to labor her entire life to pay back the debt.

Mathilde bankrupts her husband, by losing the paste necklace, but this selfishness is echoed early on when she insists upon a fine gown, rather than something she can really afford to attend the ball that proves her undoing. Unlike her husband, Mathilde is incapable of perceiving the needs of others, or the real value of money: "she thought for several seconds, reckoning up prices and also wondering for how large a sum she could ask without bringing upon herself an immediate refusal and an exclamation of horror from the careful-minded clerk," and he gives her the money he was saving for a gun, without telling her how much this meant to him, and the real worth of the sum in his life.

However, Mathilde only thanks her friend Madame Forestier effusively, even though Madame can well afford to give her the loan of the necklace. The true gift of her husband is unremarked upon, while Mathilde is overcome with enthusiasm and love for the sight of her own face in the mirror, and throws her arm around the rich woman. "She [Mathilde] fastened it round her neck, upon her high dress, and remained in ecstasy at sight of herself," admiring herself, certain of her ability to spot 'quality' even though the reader will learn the necklace is paste.

Mathilde loses the necklace, and learns that the life she had before was not so bad -- now she must do her own hard housework, and she must sacrifice her beauty, count every penny, and lose the love and companionship of her husband as he toils for ten long years to pay off the debt for the replacement necklace. Again, a contrast between squalor and refinement is struck -- only now the contrast is between the life of the middle-class, which Mathilde once lived, and for which she felt contempt, and the existence of the abject poor -- the life she leads now.