The Necklace

"The Necklace"
Short story by Guy de Maupassant
La Parure, illustration of the title page of the Gil Blas, 9 September
Original title	La Parure
Country	France
Genre(s)	Short story
Publication
Publication date	1884
Published in English	1896

"The Necklace" (French: La Parure) is a short story by French writer Guy de Maupassant. It is known for its twist ending (ironic ending), which was a hallmark of de Maupassant's style. The story was first published on 17 February 1884 in the French newspaper Le Gaulois.^[1]

Plot

Madame Mathilde Loisel has always imagined herself an aristocrat, yearning for wealth and admiration despite having been born into a family of clerks. Her husband, Monsieur Loisel, is a low-paid clerk at the Ministry of Education, and who tries his best to make her happy but has little to give. After much effort, he secures for them an invitation to a ball to be hosted by the Minister of Education, Georges Ramponneau, and his wife.

Mathilde refuses to go because she has nothing to wear and wishes not to be embarrassed. Upset at her displeasure, Loisel gives her 400 francs (approx. 2,531.20 USD in 2022)^[2] - all the money he had been saving to go hunting with his friends - so she can buy a dress. Even after Mathilde does so, she is still unhappy because she has no jewels to wear with it. She spurns Loisel's idea of wearing fresh flowers but takes his suggestion of borrowing some jewellery from her wealthy friend, Madame Jeanne Forestier. Mathilde then visits Jeanne, who shows her assorted jewellery for Mathilde to choose from. The only item Mathilde borrows is a diamond necklace.

On the day of the ball, Mathilde enjoys herself, dancing with influential men and reveling in their admiration. Once she and Loisel return home, though, she discovers that she has lost Jeanne's necklace. Loisel retraces their steps but unable to find the missing necklace, he has Mathilde write to Jeanne, lying to her that the clasp has broken off and that the necklace is being repaired. When a week passes with no word as to the whereabouts of the necklace nor who might know about it, the Loisels resign themselves to replace it. At the Palais-Royal shops they find a similar diamond necklace priced at 40,000 francs (approx. $253,141.59 USD in 2022)^[2] and bargain for it, eventually settling at 36,000 ($227,827.40 USD).^[2] Loisel uses an inheritance from his father to cover half the cost and borrows the rest at high interest. Mathilde gives the new necklace to Jeanne without mentioning the loss of the original and Jeanne does not notice the difference.

To pay off their debt, Loisel and Mathilde fire their maid, sell their house, move into a low rent apartment, and work tirelessly. For ten years the Loisels live in poverty, he working the night shift as a copyist to earn extra income and she sacrificing her beauty to work as a cleaning woman. After all the loans are paid off, Mathilde encounters Jeanne by chance on the Champs-Élysées; however, Jeanne barely recognizes her owing to her shabby clothing and unkempt appearance. Mathilde tells Jeanne about the loss and replacement of the necklace and of the hard times she has endured on Jeanne's account, blaming her for the misery of the past decade. A horrified Jeanne reveals that the necklace she had lent to Mathilde was made of paste and worth no more than 500 francs ($3,164.26 USD).^[2]

Themes

One of the themes in The Necklace is the dichotomy between reality and appearance. Madame Loisel is beautiful on the outside but inside she is discontented with her less-than-wealthy lifestyle. Mathilde is gripped by a greed that contrasts with her husband's kind generosity. She believes that material wealth will bring her joy, and her pride prevents her from admitting to Madame Forestier that she is not rich and that she has lost the necklace she borrowed.

Because of her pride and obsession with wealth, Mathilde loses ten years of her life and spends all of her savings on replacing the necklace only to find out that the original necklace was a fake. While it is true the Madame Forestier is at fault, we also find that Mathilde's sin of vanity scarcely surpasses the trouble she had to go through to pay for the 'false' necklace.^[3]

The story demonstrates the value of honesty; had Mathilde told Madame Forestier the truth, she would likely have been able to replace the necklace easily. This story represents a world in which people search for happiness in material wealth.

Adaptations and other influence

The following are direct adaptations of "The Necklace":

• The Necklace (1909), an American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith, taking place in early 20th century United States and renaming the Loisels the Kendricks. Although the film's plot is mostly the same as the source material's, it had been expanded to show two thieves swiping the eponymous jewellery from the protagonist on the night of the ball and destroying it upon discovering it is fake, and ends with Mr. Kendrick dying from working too much and Mrs. Kendrick's rich friend-touched by her honesty and the sacrifices she had made to pay back her debt-giving her the genuine diamond necklace moments before she dies too. The 1909 short film is available to watch on the Library of Congress's official website^[4] and YouTube channel.^[5]
• The Diamond Necklace (1921), a British silent film directed by Denison Clift and starring Milton Rosmer, Jessie Winter, and Warwik Ward
• The Pearl Necklace (《一串珍珠》) (1926), also known as A String of Pearls, a Chinese film directed by Li Zeyuan^[6][7]
• The Necklace (1949), the first episode of the NBC-TV series Your Show Time (producer Stanley Rubin won the first-ever Emmy Award for this episode)
• The Diamond Pendant in Impact #1, E.C. Comics, March/April 1955; adaptation by Carl Wessler, illustrated by Graham Ingels. A middle-aged American woman named Milly Horton narrates how she had obtained her diamond pendant and why it is worthless to her. In a flashback, Milly is a proud and greedy middle class housewife wishing for her husband, Larry Horton, to succeed financially and envying her friend Julia, a rich woman married to the also well-off John Banfield. For the New Year's Eve party hosted by Larry's boss, Mr. Allerton, Milly buys herself a new dress and borrows Julia's diamond pendant. But after the party, Milly loses Julia's pendant on the way home and Mr. Allerton refuses to interrogate his guests, holding Larry accountable for his wife's carelessness and denying him a promotion at the firm. Instead of telling Julia the truth, Milly makes herself and Larry buy a replica of the lost pendant at $17,000.00, most of which they borrow from her money-lending uncle, Alfred Burwell. After giving Julia the new jewellery, the Hortons begin paying off their debt by selling their house and moving into a cheap apartment. Milly gets employed by a women's dress manufacturer, although Larry gets fired from the firm for committing a costly error. For seventeen years, the Hortons work themselves to the point of looking older than their actual ages as they pay their debt back. When Larry dies of a terminal illness, Milly spends eight more years paying back her Uncle Alfred by taking a second job as a cleaner. After twenty-five years of working, Milly pays her debt in full and confesses to Julia the truth. Saddened by her friend's ordeal, Julia gives her the diamond pendant, revealing that she and John had actually sold the original to avoid going bankrupt and that the one Milly had borrowed was a cheap duplicate. Milly ends the story by telling the reader that her diamond pendant is a tragic reminder of the price she paid for being proud, envious, and greedy.^[8]
• "The Diamond Necklace" (1975), episode #276 of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater radio show series adapted by George Lowther.
• Mathilde (2008), a stage musical by the Irish composer Conor Mitchell^[9]
• "දියමන්ති මාලය" (Diyamanthi Maalaya), a Sinhala  translation by K. G. Karunathilake of Sri Lanka^[10]

The following works were inspired in part by "The Necklace":

• "Paste" (1899), a short story by Henry James in which the twist ending is reversed^[11]
• "Mr. Know-All" (1925) and "A String of Beads" (1943), short stories by Somerset Maugham that both revolve around the price of a necklace^[12]
• Doctor Innocentanu (2012), a Malayalam family drama film is inspired by The Necklace.
• Vennila Veedu (2014), a Tamil family drama uses a similar story as its main theme.
• The subplot of the season 4 episode 13 of Mom ("A Bouncy Castle and an Aneurysm" OAD: 9 Feb, 2017) is a comedic version of the story with Anna Faris' character losing the necklace belonging to her wealthy friend.
• In Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada or Ardor (1969), one of the characters, a writer, claims she has written a short story entitled "La Rivière du diamants", which mimics Maupassant's "The Necklace". The moment in which this occurs is set in the book to be around 1884, the year in which Maupassant actually published his short story.

References

External links

•  French Wikisource has original text related to this article: La Parure
• The full text of The Necklace at Wikisource
• Media related to La Parure at Wikimedia Commons
• An omnibus collection of Maupassant's short fiction at Standard Ebooks
• The Necklace public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• The Necklace – Annotated text aligned to Common Core Standards
• The Pearl Necklace (Li Zeyuan, dir., 1926) - Chinese silent film adaptation, with English subtitles (Chinese Film Classics Project)

This page was last edited on 19 April 2024, at 14:34