Material Girl

The short story, “The Necklace”, by Guy De Maupassant, is about the life of a woman and her husband living in France in the early 1880’s. Mathilde is a very materialistic person who is never content with anything in her life. She is married to a humble clerk in the Ministry of Education who is not rich but brings home enough to survive. He enjoys the simpler things in life, yet his wife, cannot. Nothing is ever good enough for her. Her selfish ways are unmistakable in her outlook toward the material things in her home environment and in the way she treats her husband. Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Necklace” includes three literary elements: irony, character, and conflict.

The one element that is most important in this story is irony. The author uses numerous examples of irony in his short story. His first use of irony was in the first paragraph, “With no dowry, no prospects, no way of any kind of being met, understood, loved, and married by a man both prosperous and famous, she was finally married to a minor clerk in the Ministry of Education.” This quote is very much ironic because when the author says prosperous and famous, the reader would imagine her husband to be much more than just a minor clerk. The biggest use of irony was used in the last sentence of the story, “Mme. Forestier, quite overcome, clasped her by the hands. �Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine was a fake. Why, at most it was worth only five hundred francs!’” The author surprises the reader by having the twist at the end of the story. The reader would expect Mme. Foreister to be upset with Mathilde for not telling her the truth earlier, but on the contrary she is surprised to hear that they had spent ten years repaying their debts for buying the real to replace only a fake.

Another core element of the story is character. The author intends Mathilde to be cruel and demanding. When they receive the invitation to the dance, Mathilde wants everything to look perfect even though they do not have the money. She even uses the money her husband has been saving for a long time to go hunting with his friends. “’I’m not sure exactly, but I think with four hundred Francs I could manage it.’ He turned a bit pale, for he had set aside just that amount to buy a rifle so that the following summer, he could join some friends who were getting up a group to shoot larks on the plain near Nanterre. However, he said, �All right. I’ll give you four hundred francs. But try to get a nice dress.’” She always acts innocent and sneaky to lure her husband into getting her what she wants. “It’s embarrassing not to have a jewel or a gem- nothing to wear on my dress. I’ll look like a pauper. I’d almost rather not go