The Necklace

Concept Vocabulary
You will encounter the following words as you read “The Necklace.” Before
reading, note how familiar you are with each word. Then, rank the words in
order from most familiar (1) to least familiar (6).

After completing the first read, come back to the concept vocabulary and
review your rankings. Mark changes to your original rankings as needed.

1. dowry (DOW ree) n. wealth or property given by a woman’s family to her

husband upon their marriage
2. Georges (zhawrzh) Ramponneau (ram puh NOH)
3. Loisel (lwah ZEHL
4. dowdy adj. shabby.
5. chic (sheek) adj. fashionable.
BACKGROUND
In the late nineteenth century, a type of literature known as Realism emerged as
a reaction to the idealism and optimism of Romantic literature. Realism sought
to describe life as it is, without ornament or glorification. “The Necklace,” an
example of Realist fiction, tells the story of an average woman who pays a
significant price to experience a glamorous evening. As in all Realist fiction,
there is no fairy-tale ending. S he was one of those pretty, charming young
women who are born, as if by an error of Fate, into a petty official’s family. She
had no dowry,1 no hopes, not the slightest chance of being appreciated,
understood, loved, and married by a rich and distinguished man; so she slipped
into marriage with a minor civil servant at the Ministry of Education. Unable to
afford jewelry, she dressed simply: but she was as wretched as a déclassée, for
women have neither caste nor breeding—in them beauty, grace, and charm
replace pride of birth. Innate refinement, instinctive elegance, and suppleness
of wit give them their place on the only scale that counts, and these qualities
make humble girls the peers of the grandest ladies. She suffered constantly,
feeling that all the attributes of a gracious life, every luxury, should rightly have
been hers. The poverty of her rooms—the shabby walls, the worn furniture, the
ugly upholstery—caused her pain. All these things that another woman of her
class would not even have noticed, tormented her and made her angry. The
very sight of the little Breton girl who cleaned for her awoke rueful thoughts and
the wildest dreams in her mind. She dreamed of thick-carpeted reception rooms
with Oriental hangings, lighted by tall, bronze torches, and with two huge
footmen in knee breeches, made drowsy by the heat from the stove, asleep in
the wide armchairs. She dreamed of great drawing rooms upholstered in old
silks, with fragile little tables holding priceless knick-knacks, and of enchanting
little sitting rooms redolent of perfume, designed for teatime chats with intimate
friends—famous, sought-after men whose attentions all women longed for.
When she sat down to dinner at her round table with its three-day old cloth, and
watched her husband opposite her lift the lid of the soup tureen and exclaim,
delighted: “Ah, a good homemade beef stew! There’s nothing better . . .” she
would visualize elegant dinners with gleaming silver amid tapestried walls
peopled by knights and ladies and exotic birds in a fairy forest; she would think
of exquisite dishes served on gorgeous china, and of gallantries whispered and
received with sphinx-like smiles while eating the pink flesh of trout or wings of
grouse. She had no proper wardrobe, no jewels, nothing. And those were the
only things that she loved—she felt she was made for them. She would have so
loved to charm, to be envied, to be admired and sought after. She had a rich
friend, a schoolmate from the convent she had attended, but she didn’t like to
visit her because it always made her so miserable when she got home again.
She would weep for whole days at a time from sorrow, regret, despair, and
distress. Then one evening her husband arrived home looking triumphant and
waving a large envelope. “There,” he said, “there’s something for you.” She tore
it open eagerly and took out a printed card which said: “The Minister of
Education and Madame Georges Ramponneau2 request the pleasure of the
company of M. and Mme. Loisel3 at an evening reception at the Ministry on
Monday, January 18th.” Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped,
she tossed the invitation on the table and muttered, annoyed: “What do you
expect me to do with that?” “Why, I thought you’d be pleased, dear. You never
go out and this would be an occasion for you, a great one! I had a lot of trouble
getting it. Everyone wants an invitation: they’re in great demand and there are
only a few reserved for the employees. All the officials will be there.” She looked
at him, irritated, and said impatiently
“I haven’t a thing to wear. How could I go?” It had never even occurred to him.
He stammered: “But what about the dress you wear to the theater? I think it’s
lovely. . . .” He fell silent, amazed and bewildered to see that his wife was crying.
Two big tears escaped from the corners of her eyes and rolled slowly toward the
corners of her mouth. He mumbled: “What is it? What is it?” But, with great effort,
she had overcome her misery; and now she answered him calmly, wiping her
tear-damp cheeks: “It’s nothing. It’s just that I have no evening dress and so I
can’t go to the party. Give the invitation to one of your colleagues whose wife
will be better dressed than I would be.” He was overcome. He said: “Listen,
Mathilde, how much would an evening dress cost—a suitable one that you
could wear again on other occasions, something very simple?” She thought for
several seconds, making her calculations and at the same time estimating how
much she could ask for without eliciting an immediate refusal and an
exclamation of horror from this economical government clerk. At last, not too
sure of herself, she said: “It’s hard to say exactly but I think I could manage with
four hundred francs.” He went a little pale, for that was exactly the amount he
had put aside to buy a rifle so that he could go hunting the following summer
near Nanterre, with a few friends who went shooting larks around there on
Sundays. However, he said: “Well, all right, then. I’ll give you four hundred francs.
But try to get something really nice.” As the day of the ball drew closer,
Madame Loisel seemed depressed, disturbed, worried—despite the fact that
her dress was ready. One evening her husband said: “What’s the matter?
You’ve really been very strange these last few days.” And she answered: “I hate
not having a single jewel, not one stone, to wear. I shall look so dowdy.4 I’d
almost rather not go to the party.” He suggested: “You can wear some fresh
flowers. It’s considered very chic5 at this time of year. For ten francs you can get
two or three beautiful roses.” That didn’t satisfy her at all. “No . . . there’s nothing
more humiliating than to look poverty stricken among a lot of rich women.”
Then her husband exclaimed:
“Wait—you silly thing! Why don’t you go and see Madame Forestier6 and ask
her to lend you some jewelry. You certainly know her well enough for that, don’t
you think?” She let out a joyful cry. “You’re right. It never occurred to me.” The
next day she went to see her friend and related her tale of woe. Madame
Forestier went to her mirrored wardrobe, took out a big jewel case, brought it to
Madame Loisel opened it, and said: “Take your pick, my dear.” Her eyes
wandered from some bracelets to a pearl necklace, then to a gold Venetian
cross set with stones, of very fine workmanship. She tried on the jewelry before
the mirror, hesitating, unable to bring herself to take them off, to give them
back. And she kept asking: “Do you have anything else, by chance?” “Why yes.
Here, look for yourself. I don’t know which ones you’ll like.” All at once, in a box
lined with black satin, she came upon a superb diamond necklace, and her
heart started beating with overwhelming desire. Her hands trembled as she
picked it up. She fastened it around her neck over her high-necked dress and
stood there gazing at herself ecstatically. Hesitantly, filled with terrible anguish,
she asked: “Could you lend me this one—just this and nothing else?” “Yes, of
course.” She threw her arms around her friend’s neck, kissed her ardently, and
fled with her treasure. The day of the party arrived. Madame Loisel was a great
success. She was the prettiest woman there—resplendent, graceful, beaming,
and deliriously happy. All the men looked at her, asked who she was, tried to
get themselves introduced to her. All the minister’s aides wanted to waltz with
her. The minister himself noticed her. She danced enraptured—carried away,
intoxicated with pleasure, forgetting everything in this triumph of her beauty and
the glory of her success, floating in a cloud of happiness formed by all this
homage, all this admiration, all the desires she had stirred up—by this victory so
complete and so sweet to the heart of a woman. When she left the party, it was
almost four in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight in a
small, deserted sitting room, with three other gentlemen whose wives were
having a wonderful time. He brought her wraps so that they could leave and
put them around her shoulders—the plain wraps from her everyday life whose
shabbiness jarred with the elegance of her evening dress. She felt this and
wanted to escape quickly so that the other women, who were enveloping
themselves in their rich furs, wouldn’t see her
Loisel held her back. “Wait a minute. You’ll catch cold out there. I’m going to
call a cab.” But she wouldn’t listen to him and went hastily downstairs. Outside in
the street, there was no cab to be found; they set out to look for one, calling to
the drivers they saw passing in the distance. They walked toward the Seine,7
shivering and miserable. Finally, on the embankment, they found one of those
ancient nocturnal broughams8 which are only to be seen in Paris at night, as if
they were ashamed to show their shabbiness in daylight. It took them to their
door in the Rue des Martyrs, and they went sadly upstairs to their apartment. For
her, it was all over. And he was thinking that he had to be at the Ministry by ten.
She took off her wraps before the mirror so that she could see herself in all her
glory once more. Then she cried out. The necklace was gone; there was nothing
around her neck. Her husband, already half undressed, asked: “What’s the
matter?” She turned toward him in a frenzy: “The . . . the . . . necklace—it’s
gone.” He got up, thunderstruck. “What did you say? . . . What! . . . Impossible!”
And they searched the folds of her dress, the folds of her wrap, the pockets,
everywhere. They didn’t find it. He asked: “Are you sure you still had it when we
left the ball?” “Yes. I remember touching it in the hallway of the Ministry.” “But if
you had lost it in the street, we would have heard it fall. It must be in the cab.”
“Yes, most likely. Do you remember the number?” “No. What about you—did
you notice it?” “No. “ They looked at each other in utter dejection. Finally Loisel
got dressed again. “I’m going to retrace the whole distance we covered on
foot,” he said, “and see if I can’t find it.” And he left the house. She remained in
her evening dress, too weak to go to bed, sitting crushed on a chair, lifeless and
blank. Her husband returned at about seven o’clock. He had found nothing. He
went to the police station, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to the offices of
the cab companies—in a word, wherever there seemed to be the slightest hope
of tracing it.
She spent the whole day waiting, in a state of utter hopelessness before such an
appalling catastrophe. Loisel returned in the evening, his face lined and pale;
he had learned nothing. “You must write to your friend,” he said, “and tell her
that you’ve broken the clasp of the necklace and that you’re getting it
mended. That’ll give us time to decide what to do.” She wrote the letter at his
dictation. By the end of the week, they had lost all hope. Loisel, who had aged
five years, declared: “We’ll have to replace the necklace.” The next day they
took the case in which it had been kept and went to the jeweler whose name
appeared inside it. He looked through his ledgers: “I didn’t sell this necklace,
madame. I only supplied the case.” Then they went from one jeweler to the
next, trying to find a necklace like the other, racking their memories, both of
them sick with worry and distress. In a fashionable shop near the Palais Royal,
they found a diamond necklace which they decided was exactly like the other.
It was worth 40,000 francs. They could have it for 36,000 francs. They asked the
jeweler to hold it for them for three days, and they stipulated that he should take
it back for 34,000 francs if the other necklace was found before the end of
February. Loisel possessed 18,000 francs left him by his father. He would borrow
the rest. He borrowed, asking a thousand francs from one man, five hundred
from another, a hundred here, fifty there. He signed promissory notes,9
borrowed at exorbitant rates, dealt with usurers and the entire race of
moneylenders. He compromised his whole career, gave his signature even
when he wasn’t sure he would be able to honor it, and horrified by the anxieties
with which his future would be filled, by the black misery about to descend upon
him, by the prospect of physical privation and moral suffering, went to get the
new necklace, placing on the jeweler’s counter 36,000 francs. When Madame
Loisel went to return the necklace, Madame Forestier said in a faintly waspish
tone: “You could have brought it back a little sooner! I might have needed it.”
She didn’t open the case as her friend had feared she might. If she had noticed
the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said?
Mightn’t she have taken Madame Loisel for a thief?
Madame Loisel came to know the awful life of the poverty stricken. However,
she resigned herself to it with unexpected fortitude. The crushing debt had to be
paid. She would pay it. They dismissed the maid; they moved into an attic under
the roof. She came to know all the heavy household chores, the loathsome work
of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, wearing down her pink nails on greasy
casseroles and the bottoms of saucepans. She did the laundry, washing shirts
and dishcloths which she hung on a line to dry; she took the garbage down to
the street every morning, and carried water upstairs, stopping at every floor to
get her breath. Dressed like a working-class woman, she went to the fruit store,
the grocer, and the butcher with her basket on her arm, bargaining, outraged,
contesting each sou10 of her pitiful funds. Every month some notes had to be
honored and more time requested on others. Her husband worked in the
evenings, putting a shopkeeper’s ledgers in order, and often at night as well,
doing copying at twenty five centimes a page. And it went on like that for ten
years. After ten years, they had made good on everything, including the
usurious rates and the compound interest. Madame Loisel looked old now. She
had become the sort of strong woman, hard and coarse, that one finds in poor
families. Disheveled, her skirts askew, with reddened hands, she spoke in a loud
voice, slopping water over the floors as she washed them. But sometimes, when
her husband was at the office, she would sit down by the window and muse
over that party long ago when she had been so beautiful, the belle of the ball.
How would things have turned out if she hadn’t lost that necklace? Who could
tell? How strange and fickle life is! How little it takes to make or break you! Then
one Sunday when she was strolling along the Champs Élysées11 to forget the
week’s chores for a while, she suddenly caught sight of a woman taking a child
for a walk. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming.
Madame Loisel started to tremble. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly she
should. And now that she had paid everything back, why shouldn’t she tell her
the whole story? She went up to her. “Hello, Jeanne.” The other didn’t recognize
her and was surprised that this plainly dressed woman should speak to her so
familiarly. She murmured: “But . . . madame! . . . I’m sure . . . You must be
mistaken.”
“No, I’m not. I am Mathilde Loisel.” Her friend gave a little cry. “Oh! Oh, my poor
Mathilde, how you’ve changed!” “Yes, I’ve been through some pretty hard
times since I last saw you and I’ve had plenty of trouble—and all because of
you!” “Because of me? What do you mean?” “You remember the diamond
necklace you lent me to wear to the party at the Ministry?” “Yes. What about
it?” “Well, I lost it.” “What are you talking about? You returned it to me.” “What I
gave back to you was another one just like it. And it took us ten years to pay for
it. You can imagine it wasn’t easy for us, since we were quite poor. . . . Anyway,
I’m glad it’s over and done with.” Madame Forestier stopped short. “You say
you bought a diamond necklace to replace that other one?” “Yes. You didn’t
even notice then? They really were exactly alike.” And she smiled, full of a
proud, simple joy. Madame Forestier, profoundly moved, took Mathilde’s hands
in her own. “Oh, my poor, poor Mathilde! Mine was false. It was worth five
hundred francs at the most!”

Reflection:
Share your personal thoughts and feelings about the story. Discuss any emotions
or reactions you experienced while reading.