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...
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.
Mathilde's beauty is gone, destroyed by chance circumstance, as once she believed that her refinement and rising in society was threatened by being born by chance the daughter of an artisan. But the reader knows that it is not just ironic that she sacrificed her life and her husband's life, health, and moderate wealth for a bauble of paste. It is ironic that she could never see the true value of the fake necklace. It was a thing that looked beautiful, but meant nothing, and had no value, only the surface appearance of value. Her husband also overvalued its worth, mistaking his wife's value as high, just as he believed the necklace in the jeweler's shop, because it was real, was an adequate replacement.
Although her original beauty and later coarseness end the store, on the other hand the transposition of these two scenes in the structure of the tale suggest that Mathilde's true nature and inability to appreciate real worth is revealed. Mathilde dwells only on the surfaces of things, and can appreciate only surface worth. A true lady of refinement, like her friend, would have been able to understand that it was paste, but she did not. A truly good woman would have understood her husband's gift of a 400 Franc dress was a great one, but she did not. The poverty to which she is eventually is reduced becomes her just desserts, and causes her inner ugliness and ungratefulness to be mirrored in her outer life.
Works Cited
Maupassant, Guy. "The Necklace." Short Stores. February 13, 2009. http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Neck.shtml
