The Necklace
Guy de Maupassant
She was one of those pretty and charming girls, born, as if by an accident of fate, into a family of clerks. 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.
She dressed plainly because she could not afford fine clothes, but she was as unhappy as a woman who has come down in the world; for women have no family rank or social class. With them, beauty, grace, and charm take the place of birth and breeding. Their natural poise, their instinctive good taste, and their mental cleverness are the sole guiding principles which make daughters of the common people the equals of ladies in high society.
She grieved incessantly, feeling that she had been born for all the little niceties and luxuries of living. She grieved over the shabbiness of her apartment, the dinginess of the walls, the wornout appearance of the chairs, the ugliness of the draperies. All these things, which another woman of her class would not even have noticed, gnawed at her and made her furious. The sight of the little Breton
girl who did her humble housework roused in her disconsolate regrets and wild daydreams. 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.
She would dream of great reception halls hung with old silks, of fine furniture filled with priceless
curios, and of small, stylish, scented sitting rooms just right for the four o’clock chat with intimate friends, with distinguished and sought-after men whose attention every woman envies and longs to attract.
When dining at the round table, covered for the third day with the same cloth, opposite her husband, who would raise the cover of the soup tureen, declaring delightedly, “Ah! a good stew! There’s nothing I like better . . .,” she would dream of fashionable dinner parties, of gleaming silverware, of tapestries making the walls alive with characters out of history and strange birds in a fairyland forest; she would dream of delicious dishes served on wonderful china, of gallant compliments whispered and listened to with a
sphinxlike smile as one eats the rosy flesh of a trout or nibbles at the wings of a grouse.
She had no evening clothes, no jewels, nothing. But those were the things she wanted; she felt that was the kind of life for her. She so much longed to please, be envied, be fascinating and sought after.
She had a well-to-do friend, a classmate of convent-school days whom she would no longer go to see, simply because she would feel so distressed on returning home. And she would weep for days on end from vexation, regret, despair, and anguish.
Then one evening, her husband came home proudly holding out a large envelope.
“Look,” he said, “I’ve got something for you.”
She excitedly tore open the envelope and pulled out a printed card bearing these words:
“The Minister of Education and Mme. Georges Ramponneau beg M. and Mme. Loisel6 to do them the honor of attending an evening reception at the Ministerial Mansion on Friday, January 18.”
Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped, she scornfully tossed the invitation on the table, murmuring,
“What good is that to me?”
“But, my dear, I thought you’d be thrilled to death. You never get a chance to go out, and this is a real affair, a wonderful one! I had an awful time getting a card. Everybody wants one; it’s much sought after, and not many clerks have a chance at one. You’ll see all the most important people there.”
She gave him an irritated glance and burst out impatiently, “What do you think I have to go in?”
He hadn’t given that a thought. He stammered, “Why, the dress you wear when we go to the theater. That looks quite nice, I think.”
He stopped talking, dazed and distracted to see his wife burst out weeping. Two large tears slowly rolled from the corners of her eyes to the corners of her mouth; he gasped, “Why, what’s the matter? What’s the trouble?”
By sheer willpower she overcame her outburst and answered in a calm voice while wiping the tears from her wet cheeks, “Oh, nothing. Only I don’t have an evening dress and therefore I can’t go to that affair. Give the card to some friend at the office whose wife can dress better than I can.”
He was stunned. He resumed, “Let’s see, Mathilde. How much would a suitable outfit cost—one you could wear for other affairs too—something very simple?”
She thought it over for several seconds, going over her allowance and thinking also of the amount she could ask for without bringing an immediate refusal and an exclamation of dismay from the thrifty clerk.
Finally, she answered hesitatingly, “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.”
As the day of the party approached, Mme. Loisel seemed sad, moody, ill at ease. Her outfit was ready, however. Her husband said to her one evening, “What’s the matter? You’ve been all out of sorts for three days.”
And she answered, “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 to the party.”
He answered, “Why not wear some flowers? They’re very fashionable this season. For ten francs you can get two or three gorgeous roses.”
She wasn’t at all convinced. “No. . . . There’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among a lot of rich women.”
But her husband exclaimed, “My, but you’re silly! Go see your friend Mme. Forestier,8 and ask her to lend you some jewelry. You and she know each other well enough for you to do that.”
She gave a cry of joy. “Why, that’s so! I hadn’t thought of it.”
The next day she paid her friend a visit and told her of her predicament.
Mme. Forestier went toward a large closet with mirrored doors, took out a large jewel box, brought it over, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel, “Pick something out, my dear.”
(page 1)
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