The short story, “The Necklace,” unmasks the world of Mathilde Loisel, a middle class woman born with “no marriage portion, expectation, and being married to a rich man.” It is captivating to hear that she longed for luxury and materialistic things all of her life. Throughout the short story I found several examples of irony, and throughout the story Mathilde Loisel learns how materialistic possessions and wealth do not fulfill her wish of being purely happy.
Firstly, when her husband tells Mathilde about an invitation to a ritzy party she responds by saying this, “Only I haven’t a dress and so I can’t go to this party. Give your invitation to some friend of yours whose wife will be turned out better than I shall.” Underneath all this, Mathilde is just using sarcasm because she wants
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I came to the conclusion that this is an example of verbal irony because Mathilde is saying one statement, but she actually means the opposite. Second, Mathilde does not own any jewelry. She asks her dear friend, Madame Forestier to borrow a diamond necklace for the party. At the party she shockingly loses the necklace and feels the necessity to replace the one she lost. The necklace costs a substantial amount of money, and she has to work a decade to pay off the debt. The story states, “Madame Loisel came to knew the ghastly life of abject poverty. From the very first she played her part heroically….She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dishcloths, and hung them out to dry on a string...And clad like a poor woman, she went to the fruiterer, grocer, butcher, a basket on her arm, haggling, insulted, fighting for every wretched halfpenny of her money.” In those ten years