The Necklace

Written By: Guy de Maupassant

Plot Summary• Exposition

– Setting: France– Situation/Climate: Mme. Loisel is married to a

clerk and he cannot afford to buy her all the luxuries she wants.

– Characters: Mme. Loisel, M. Loisel, Mme. Forestier• Conflict

– Mme. Loisel doesn’t have much money.• Rising Action

– Her husband gets an invitation to an evening reception at the Ministerial Mansion.

– Mme. Loisel affords a dress using her husbands money he was saving to buy a rifle.

– Mme. Loisel barrows a necklace from Mme. Forestier.

Plot Summary (cont.)

• Climax– Mme. Loisel realizes she lost the necklace.

• Falling Action– They search for the missing necklace, but no luck. They

save up money to buy one to replace the missing one and secretly give it to Mme. Forestier.

• Resolution– After ten years of [paying for the necklace, Mme. Forestier

informs Mme. Loisel the necklace she lost was only paste.• Theme: Be grateful for what you have because your life can

always get worst.

EXPOSITIONSetting: FranceSituation/Climate: Mme. Loisel is married to a clerk and he cannot afford to buy her the luxuries she wants.Characters: Mme. Loisel, M. Loisel, Mme. Forestier

CONFLICTMme. Loisel doesn’t have

much money.

RISING ACTIONMme. Loisel barrows a

necklace from Mme. Forestier

Mme. Loisel affords a dress by using her husbands money

he was saving to buy a rifle.

Her husband gets an invitation to an evening

reception at the Ministerial Mansion.

CLIMAXMme. Loisel realizes she lost the necklace

FALLING ACTIONThey search, but no luck.

They save up money to buy one to replace the missing one and secretly give it to

Mme. Forestier.

RESOLUTIONAfter ten years of paying for the necklace, Mme.

Forestier informs her the necklace she lost was

only paste.

PROTAGONIST vs. ANTAGONIST Mme. Loisel vs. Necklace

THEMEBe grateful for what you have because your life can always get worst.

Main Characters• The main character in “The Necklace” is Madame Loisel. Madame Loisel

is very ungrateful and very insecure with herself. In the beginning of the story she is a very pretty woman, but as the story continues she becomes very old and worn looking because of all of the hard work she is forced to do.

• Another important character in this story is Monsieur Loisel. He is Madame Loisel’s generous husband who will give up anything to ensure his wife’s happiness.

• The final character is Madame Forestier. She is Madame Loisel’s best friend who is generous enough to lend Madame Loisel her necklace. Throughout the entire story Madame Forestier remains looking youthful an beautiful because she lives a life without much worry.

Conflicts

Man vs. Society

Mme. Loisel is jealous of the all beautiful

wealthy women around her. This is because she

does not have much money and cannot

afford luxuries such as jewels and evening

clothes.

Man vs. Self Mme. Loisel brings

herself down because of her and her husband’s lack of money. She is

extremely distressed and

depressed.

Quotes and Theme• The theme of the short story, “The Necklace”, is to never be

ungrateful for what you have because your life could always be worse.

• Three quotes from the story that express this theme are:– “She grieved incessantly, feeling that she had been born for all

the little niceties and luxuries of living.”– “Madame Loisel experienced the horrible life the needy live.

She learned to do the heavy housework, to perform the hateful duties of cooking.”

– “But, sometimes, she would sit near the window and think of that long-ago evening, when, at the dance, she had been so beautiful and admired.”

Setting

• Setting- Most of the story took place in M. and Mme. Loisel’s little apartment in France. Mme. Loisel grieved that she did not have all the luxuries she wanted in life such as fashionable dinner parties, gleaming silverware, and upper class food instead of stew. The setting changes to a ball room when they are invited by the Minister of Education.

Point of View

• The short story, “ The Necklace”, is told in the third person point of view. There is a narrator outside of the story explaining all of the events in the story.

Mood• During “The Necklace”, there are two moods that occur. It starts of with the

mood being gloomy and upsetting, changes to a happier, more upbeat mood in the middle, and then goes back to being gloomy and upsetting for the end. The beginning of the story is gloomy because it tells about Madame Loisel’s life and all of the luxuries that she does not have. She wants Oriental tapestries and tall bronze floor lamps. None of these things she can have because she is just the wife of a clerk. Towards the middle of the story the mood is lightened because Madame Loisel manages to buy a beautiful dress and borrow a gorgeous diamond necklace from her friend so that she can attend an exclusive ball. Throughout the ball Madame Loisel has lots of fun and she is the center of attention. Then after Madame Loisel leaves the ball, she realizes that she has lost the diamond necklace. That is where the mood goes back to being gloomy. From then on out Madame Loisel’s life is twice as hard as it was to begin with, only now she can’t complain about it because it was her fault. To make the mood even more upsetting, at the very end of the story Madame Loisel finds out that it hadn’t been a diamond necklace after all and that she had wasted her whole life paying for an unnecessary piece of very expensive jewelry.

Figurative Language

• Irony: “Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine was only paste. Why, at most it was worth only five hundred francs!” ~page 34

• This is an example of irony because Madame Loisel spent ten years paying off a diamond necklace that she never even had to buy in the first place.

Fake Diamond Necklace

Picture Descriptions

• The necklace on the top left represented the necklace that Mme. Foster lent her to go to the ball.

• The picture below is the a real diamond necklace. This is the one they gave back to Mme. Foster after they lost hers at the ball. They thought the one she originally gave them was real, so they spent 10 years paying off the one they had to return to her. Turns out, they returned her a real diamond necklace when all she originally game them is a fake one made out of paste.

Picture Descriptions• On the bottom left hand corner is a

ball gown they paid four hundred francs for so she would not feel poor when they arrived.

• The two pictures in the center represent all the hard long years of work Mme. Loisel had to do in order to pay the money they owed on the real diamond necklace.

• The very right hand column is the tickets they received to go to the ball, a French flag (Setting of the story), and francs (the payment of money used in France.)

Picture Descriptions

• On the bottom left hand corner is a ball gown they paid four hundred francs for so she would not feel poor when they arrived.

• The two pictures in the center represent all the hard long years of work Mme. Loisel had to do in order to pay the money they owed on the real diamond necklace.

• The very right hand column is the tickets they received to go to the ball, a French flag (Setting of the story), and francs (the payment of money used in France.)

Reflection• The short story “The necklace” really kept

my interest. In the order it was written, you never know what is going to happen next. There are a lot of decisions that have to be made in order for the story to keep going. I was always wondering if she was going to go to the ball, if she had enough francs, and how she was going to get the money to make up for her friends necklace she had lost. In the end when Mme. Forestier told Mme. Loisel that the necklace had been fake diamonds all along, the story left me shocked.