UNIVERSITY OF ZAMBIA

DISTANCE LEARNING

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QUESTION

Discuss the relationship between setting and character in the necklace by Guy De

Maupassant.
The “Necklace” is set in the late 1800s in Paris. It follows the misadventure of Mathilde Loisel, a

middle-class wife who is discontent with her economic standings and her husband, a Clerk.

Mathilde begs her husband to buy her an expensive dress and borrows a diamond necklace from

her friend Madame Forestier. Mathilde losses the necklace, the Loisels go into extreme debt

purchasing a replacement so that Madame Frostier won’t know. At the end of the story, Mathilde

recounts this story to Forestier, who is aghast because the necklace was a worthless fake, not

made of real diamond, as Mathilde assumed.

In “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant uses setting to reflect the character and development of

the main character, Mathilde Loisel. As a result, his setting is not particularly vivid or detailed.

He does not even describe the ill-fated necklace—the central object in the story—but states only

that it is superb. In fact, he includes descriptions of setting only if they illuminate qualities about

Mathilde. Her changing character can be connected to the first apartment, the dream-life mansion

rooms, the attic flat, and a fashionable public street. [This is a well-defined thesis statement.]

Details about the modest apartment of the Loisels on the Street of Martyrs indicate Mathilde’s

peevish lack of adjustment to life.

With such impossible dreams, her despair is complete. Ironically, this despair, together with her

inability to live with reality, brings about her undoing. It makes her agree to borrow the necklace

(which is just as unreal as her daydreams of wealth), and losing the necklace drives her into the

reality of giving up her apartment and moving into the attic flat. Also, ironically, the attic flat is

related to the coarsening of her character while at the same time it brings out her best qualities of

hard work and honesty. Maupassant emphasizes the drudgery of the work Mathilde endures to

maintain the flat, such as walking up many stairs, washing floors with large buckets of water,

cleaning greasy and encrusted pots and pans, taking out the garbage, washing clothes by hand,
and haggling loudly with local shopkeepers. All this reflects her coarsening and loss of

sensibility, also shown by her giving up hair and hand care and by wearing cheap dresses. The

work she performs, however, makes her heroic.

There are essentially only three characters in Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace."

Of the three, only Mathilde Loisel is a dynamic character. The others, Matilde's husband and

Madame Forestier, remain static characters during the story. Matilde is the middle-class wife of a

French ministerial clerk. She is apparently beautiful and also has a lively imagination, which

tends to make her sad that she doesn't have all of the accoutrements of an upper-class existence.

The omniscient narrator describes her melancholy:

She grieved incessantly, feeling that she had been born for all the niceties and luxuries of

living...She would dream of silent chambers, draped with Oriental tapestries and lighted by tall

bronze floor lamps, and of two handsome butlers in knee breeches, who, drowsy from the heavy

warmth cast by the central stove, dozed in large overstuffed armchairs.

In reality, Mathilde actually has a quite comfortable life with a loving husband and even a maid.

It is, however, not enough for her, and when her husband brings home an invitation to an elite

party, she complains that she has nothing to wear and is without jewelry. Her husband, an

obviously well-meaning man who loves his wife, gives up part of his savings to buy her a dress.

Mathilde also secures a diamond necklace from her rich friend Madame Forestier, who is

apparently in a social class above the Loisels. Adorned in a new dress and an expensive

necklace, Mathilde is the belle of the ball and is tremendously popular, dancing into the early

morning hours.
After the party, she loses the necklace in a vain attempt to avoid being seen in her shabby coat.

The necklace is never found and the Loisels are plunged into poverty in order to pay off the debt

caused by having to replace the necklace. Because of the debt, Mathilde changes. She goes from

being petulant and spoiled to hard-working and thrifty. This change makes her a dynamic

character because her fortitude in the face of hardship is quite heroic:

Mme. Loisel experienced the horrible life the needy live. She played her part, however, with

sudden heroism. That frightful debt had to be paid. She would pay it. She dismissed her maid;

they rented a garret under the eaves.

The Characters

Madame Jeanne Forestier

Madame Forestier is a school friend of Mathilde Loisel, and she lends her the necklace that

Madame Loisel wears to the ball. Madame Forestier’s wealth has intimated Madame Loisel,

preventing her from keeping in touch with her old friend. When Madame Loisel does visit,

Madame Forestier is as friendly as ever, generously offering to lend her friend a piece of jewelry

for the ball. When the diamond necklace is returned more than a week late, however, Madame

Forestier is cold and reproachful. She does not know that the borrowed necklace was lost and

that the Loisels have pledged themselves to years of debt to buy a costly replacement. Years

later, the two met on the street. Madame Loisel has aged prematurely by toil and hardship, while

Madame Forestier is still young, beautiful, attractive. She does not recognize her old friend when

they met and was deeply moved when she learnt that the Loisels had spent the last decade in the

debt to replace her necklace.

It is Madame Loisel’s desire to be part of the upper-class which sets the story’s event in motion.

She is a beautiful woman who feels herself born for every delicacy and luxury. Her belief that

she is meant for better things than middle-class drudgery forms the core of her personality. She

believes that superficial things (a ball gown, better furniture, a large house) will make her happy,

and an invitation to a ball makes her miserable because it reminds her of her dowdy wardrobe

and lack of jewelry. After securing these trapping of luxury, she has the time of her life at the

ball for one evening living the lifestyle she believes herself entitled to. After losing a borrowed

necklace, she is not able to admit the error to the friend who lent it. While spending many years

in poverty, toiling to repay the debt of replacing the necklace, Madame Loisel prematurely loses

her physical beauty.

Monsieur Loisel

Monsieur Loisel’s complacency and contentment with his social situation contracts markedly

with his wife’s desire to experience life among the social eltic. Whereas Madame Loisel dreams

of magnificent mufti-course meals, her husband is satisfied with simple fare. He is attentive to

his wife’s desire, however, procuring tickets to a ball so that she can see all the really big people.

He gives his wife the four hundred francs that he had set aside for a gun so that she can buy a

dres, and sends several early morning hours searching the streets for the lost necklace even

though he must go to work that day. Seeking to protect his wife’s honor, he suggests that they

tell Madame Forestier that the necklace is being fixed rather that it has been lost.

REFRENCES
 MLS. Maupassant, Guy de, 1850-1893. The Necklace and other tales. New York modern

library, 2003.

 Roberts. Edger (1991) writing themes about literature (7th ed). Englewood Cliff, N.J:

prentice Hall.

 “The Necklace themes – eNotes.com” eNotes retrieved 14 November, 2010

 Dillon, Michael (2010) China: A modern History, London, B. Tauris. P 207. Retrieved 9

July 2012.

 Rodden Liam (15 August 2008) “Mathilde makes it to the stage” Edinburgh Evening new

retrieved 23 July, 2010.

 James, Henry. The Henry James scholar's Guide to Web Sites. Retrieved 27

September 2014. The origin of "Paste" is rather more expressible.

 Von Bernewitz, Fred and Geissman, Grant. Tales of Terror! The E.C. Companion,

Seattle: Gemstone Publishing and Fantagraphics Books, 2000, p. 198