Have you ever gone so far to keep a secret? Have you ever worked so hard, just so someone wouldn’t find out something, even when it meant sacrificing something of your own to do it? Well, in Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace,” this exact situation happens to the main character, Mathilde. The irony of this outcome could have been avoided in many different ways.
One way was if Mathilde had just been honest. In the end of the story, Mathilde and her husband do not tell Madame Forestier that the necklace had been lost until the end of the story, when the replacement had been paid off. In this quote, “She didn’t open the case, an action her friend was afraid of. If she had noticed the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Would she have thought her a thief?” (p.227). Mathilde worries about what Madame Forestier might think. If Mathilde had been honest with her friend, it is quite possible Madame Forestier would have told her the necklace was worth only five hundred francs, and Mathilde could have returned the replacement and would not have had to pay off the loans she and her husband took out for it, thus avoiding the irony of the ending.
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Though the story never says it outright, it is shown through indirect characterization that Mathilde is very materialistic, or even avaricious at times, and desires more than she can have. This is proved throughout the entire story, with quotes like the following: “She grieved incessantly, feeling that she had been born for all the little niceties and luxuries of living” (p.221). If Mathilde could have been happy with what she and her husband could afford, she would not have felt the need to borrow jewelry from Madame Forestier, and would never have had the necklace to lose in the first