“The Necklace”
“The Necklace”
THE LITERARY WORK
A short story set in France in about 1885; published in 1885.
SYNOPSIS
A young woman wastes away her youth working to replace a lost diamond necklace, only to discover that the necklace was a fake.
Events in History at the Time of the Short Story
Guy de Maupassant was the child of an unhappy marriage. His mother has been described as neurotic and his father as a man who sought relief from his wife in the arms of other women. Perhaps the collapse of his parents’ marriage engendered de Maupassant’s pessimism, reflected particularly in his stories about infidelity and failed relationships. It certainly influenced his own attitude toward women, which, in turn, affected his creation of characters in stories such as “The Necklace.”
Events in History at the Time of the Short Story
The purpose of women
De Maupassant’s attitude toward women was ambivalent. He was one of few nineteenth-century authors to recognize and celebrate women’s sensuality rather than regard it as a sign of corruption. He was also, however, devastatingly cruel to women, whether in his own life or in his fiction. He recommended that the French Academy commission a treatise on how to “break decently, properly, politely, without noise, scene or violence, with a woman who adores you and with whom you are fed up” (de Maupassant in Steegmuller, p. 178). He scoffed at monogamy, insisting that he could not understand how two women could not be better than one, three better than two, and ten better than three. Moreover, he sarcastically dismissed the women’s rights movement as nothing more than an uprising of skirts. With no effort to hide his scorn, the author suggested that men recognize only one right in women: the right to please. He approvingly kissed the rosy fingertips of ladies who aimed, above all, to be beautiful and seductive.
These glib opinions, which were published in French journals, reflect a type of scrutiny applied to women that put the less wealthy, such as Madame Loisel in “The Necklace,” at a disadvantage. Women with limited financial resources found it much more difficult to attain the level of appearance expected in French society. It is not surprising, then, that the main character in “The Necklace” hesitates to be seen in plain clothing. Anything other than vain and shallow pretensions would meet with disapproval. In de Maupassant’s opinion, the female should strive to be a charming and an eye-pleasing ornament for the pleasure of male existence.
De Maupassant’s lifestyle reflected his dismissive view of women. He became famous for his casual sexual relationships, and eventually died of syphilis, a common sexually transmitted disease in the nineteenth century.
French feminism
When a German historian said the women’s rights movement was “the child of the revolution of 1789” (Schirmacher, p. 175), she certainly spoke of ideology, not practice. The National Assembly, eager to limit the powers of the Crown, had proclaimed the Rights of Man, but dismissed the rights of women, denying a petition for universal suffrage. This was in fact a step backward for women, some of whom had actually been able to vote in local elections under the monarchy. The Napoleonic Code (1804)—a national code of law that spelled out civil, marriage, and other rights—demanded a wife’s total obedience to her husband, denying her property rights and authority over her children. The penal code even allowed the acquittal of men who killed their wives for committing adultery. Conditions improved little for women after Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, when the male-dominated monarchy was restored. It was not until the reestablishment of a republican form of government (the Third Republic in 1870) that feminists gained some favor in government.
During the first tumultuous decade of the Third Republic (1870-1880), some feminists opposed universal suffrage. Their paramount concern was to insure the survival of the republic, and some were afraid that if they gained the vote, conservative provincial women would add enough support to the monarchists to bring them back to power. Although feminists managed to help achieve the legalization of divorce and the passage of reforms in female education, women were practically excluded from political life.
Women’s education
Many of the French believed in women’s natural domesticity. They therefore favored an education for girls that was centered on providing them instruction in the areas of family values and morality. France based the achievement of this goal largely on religious instruction. Catholic schools, which stressed character development at the expense of intellectual learning, provided the only secondary education available to girls.
If the republican government made progress in broadening women’s schooling, it was partially because the desire for general reforms in education harmonized with feminists’ wishes to expand their opportunities. In 1880 nonreligious state schools for girls were founded. Although these state schools offered a more liberal education than the Catholic schools, girls learned neither Latin nor mathematics, and so were practically excluded from the hard sciences. Moreover, the high value placed on handicraft classes often Over powered or reduced the importance of courses in history or composition. Vocational training was regarded as beneficial for lower-class women, who could make use of these practical skills. This emphasis met with approval from the bourgeois or middle class as well, which judged that domestic training produced better housewives and mothers. In any case, the introduction of state education in 1880 came too late to impact the short story’s main character, a grown woman at the time such tentative reforms were implemented.
Middle-class women, who were generally confined to the home, often grew frustrated by the narrow boundaries within which they were able to tread. In “The Necklace,” Madame Loisel complains to her friend about the abject poverty she suffered while working to replace the lost necklace, but she never actually held a job herself. Instead, she had to dismiss her domestic help and do her own housework—something her Catholic education would certainly have prepared her to handle. Such chores would have been but a fraction of the responsibilities faced by women of lower economic classes. The confinement to the home, which so frustrated women of the bourgeoisie, must have been envied by lower-class women.
Undereducated and underfed, lower-class women provided cheap labor as domestics or seamstresses. In 1866 working-class women earned an average of 2.41 francs per day, whereas male industrial workers earned an average of 4.51 francs per day. Since they all competed for a few miserable yet precious jobs, women could hardly haggle for better wages. One woman even bribed the proprietor of a store with gifts to secure a job of hemming two meters of fabric for one sou (a five-cent coin).
The Industrial Revolution, the new republic, and conspicuous consumption
Industrialization during the mid-1800s created new opportunities for the French labor force. Peasants abandoned the small towns and villages for larger cities, seeking factory jobs or employment in banks, post offices, commercial offices, government bureaus, and department stores. Here they became a part of an emerging class of so-called petty bourgeoisie, who displayed an interest in education and an ability to buy goods on store credit. This distinguished them from the less financially able and, for the most part, less educationally involved working class.
Curiously, the elimination of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic in 1870
heightened class consciousness in France. In the new state, money tended to blur the differences in position attained as a result of heritage. Wealthy bourgeoisie were thus able to assume all the pretensions of the aristocracy. Displays of wealth affirmed one’s social status, and the bourgeoisie enjoyed lifestyles that before had been accessible almost exclusively to the aristocracy. Displaying evidence of one’s upward mobility became so important that “many got into debt seeking to keep up appearances” (Magraw, p. 14).
The French came to see conspicuous consumption as a means to maintain some sort of individual identity. Many artisans had been forced to leave their trades for mundane clerical work or monotonous jobs in the more productive factories during the Industrial Revolution from the 1850s to the 1870s. No longer able to express themselves through their work, they spent their extra earnings on articles that might reflect their personal tastes.
Fashion as a symbol of status
While many artisans were forced to abandon their trades, craftsmen continued to produce jewelry, felt hats, and other popular frivolities. Inventories of household possessions indicate that jewels were a widespread symbol of bourgeois status and that “in wealthy families this might be accompanied by a diamond necklace” (Walton, p. 100). Jewelry not only reflected the wealth of female consumers, but also mirrored a woman’s tastes, desires, and concern for current fashion trends.
This need to prove social status and create individual identity was strong for bourgeois women, who, often jobless and confined to the home, had few outlets for self-expression. “Through consumption they could express something of their personalities,” notes one authority, “and could satisfy a great deal of their ambition for social status and recognition” (Walton, p. 53). This consumption was less an opportunity for expression than an obligation to prove one’s position, however. Since even the poor could attend some public functions, like the theater, it was necessary to turn to other means to demonstrate one’s social station. Making it clear that one could afford costly frivolities was one way to do so.
As a woman’s status depended largely on her access to money, she was usually dependent on her husband’s income. Young women therefore often sought rich men. Women were expected, however, to provide a dowry—money or property given to the husband by the bride’s family after the marriage—and rich men sought large dowries. As a daughter of a poor artisan, Madame Loisel had no dowry and therefore had to content herself with marrying a clerk.
The Short Story in Focus
The plot
Madame Loisel, an attractive young woman married to a clerk, longs to enjoy the luxuries and romance of aristocratic life. Her husband receives an invitation to a select ball given by the minister of education, and she, eager to impress the ministers and undersecretaries who will be present, borrows a diamond necklace from a rich old school friend. After a delightful evening of merrymaking, she loses the necklace by some unexplained misfortune. Her husband takes out an enormous loan to replace the jewels, and he and she then slave away for ten years to repay the debt. Then she happens to see her old friend, who still appears young and pretty. Her friend hardly recognizes the haggard Madame Loisel, who explains, “I’ve had some hard times since I saw you last; and many sorrows... and all on your account” (de Maupassant, “The Necklace,” p. 163). When her friend asks for further explanation, Madame Loisel admits that she lost the original necklace and worked for ten years to replace it. Her bewildered friend reveals that the original necklace was a convincing but worthless fake.
Convincing fakes
At one point de Maupassant interrupts his tale with the statement that “women have no caste nor class, their beauty, grace, and charm service them for birth or family... [and] are their only mark of rank” (“The Necklace,” p. 153). Madame Loisel’s concerns reflect this awareness of the importance of outward appearances in shaping identity in French society. She knows that her appearance, accented by costly clothes and adornments, will transform her, a clerk’s wife, into a lady of distinction. Disguised as a rich lady, she is “in the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success” (“The Necklace,” p. 158) and wins the attention of undersecretaries and ministers. But her overcoat, which she has to go home in, is a modest garment of ordinary quality, and she longs to flee from the other women who are wrapping themselves in costly furs. Encouraged by social pressure to assume the air and guise of a lady, she pretends to be what she is not. The diamond necklace she wears, a fake, is also not what it appears to be. As a result, Madame Loisel mistakes it for a genuine piece. She, like the undersecretaries and the minister, is unable to distinguish between the real and the false.
Sources
De Maupassant worked, often under assumed names, for two Parisian newspapers, the Gil Bias and the Gaulois. He often borrowed content from his newspaper articles in the creation of his stories and novels. A prolific writer (he published nearly three hundred short stories and six novels), de Maupassant often transposed ideas or plots from one story to another. “The Necklace” is an inversion of another of de Maupassant’s stories, “The False Jewels.” The surprise of the latter story is that the jewels are in fact real. A bereaved clerk discovers that his late wife’s supposedly fake jewels are actually treasures lavished on her by her wealthy lovers. In “The Necklace” de Maupassant merely reversed the revelation to create a different tragedy.
WOMEN’S ENVIRONMENT
Often excluded frcjm public life, bourgeois women not surprisingly became obsessed with their homes. They grew attached to furnishings, which they believed reflected their tastes. In an article from Le Conseiller des dames et demoiselles (The Adviser for Ladies and Maidens), a woman wrote affectionately of her desk, “How many sheets have I blackened on your green baize! How you would laugh, patient piece of furniture, if you could express your thoughts, remembering the compositions... that have seen the light of day since your arrival in mv room” (Walton, p. 52). Another woman, having ordered a new piano, couid hardly wait for the arrival of her “new friend.” In contrast, Madame Loisel “suffered from the shabbiness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs and ugly curtains” (“The Necklace,” p. 154). As a lower middle-class woman unable to spend money freely, she is denied one of the few outlets for self-expression available to women.
Reception
Among the tales in the collection Contes du jour et de is nuit (Stories of Day and Night), “The Necklace” was a favorite. Its surprise ending won the story popularity among nonliterary readers, whose reproach, “it makes you feel too bad” (Steegmuller, p. 204), is a tribute to de Maupassant’s talents. A critic for Harper’s Magazine spoke for many when he praised the heartbreaking pathos and sad tone of the story.
But the story’s popularity eclipsed much of de Maupassant’s other work and earned him an unfair reputation as a specialist in cheap trick endings. In fact, among de Maupassant’s numerous short stories, only a handful have trick endings. The story is now viewed as one featuring a skillful plot that has long served as a model for professional short story writers (Steegmuller, p. 209). Although particularly popular in the United States, “The Necklace” is less well known in France than de Maupassant’s other stories.
A version of the story was televised in America in 1949, but it only hurt de Maupassant’s reputation as a commercial writer. It included a made-for-Hollywood happy ending in which the couple, as a result of their trials, rediscover a wealth of love for each other. The shock of de Maupassant’s brutal irony, the reason for the story’s original distinction, is traded for a maudlin love story and a trite moral: that love is priceless.
For More Information
Hause, Steven, and Anne Kenny. Women’s Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Magraw, Roger. Workers and the Bourgeois Republic. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Maupassant, Guy de. “The Necklace.” In The Portable Maupassant. Edited by Lewis Galantienre. New York: Viking, 1947.
Quartararo, Anne. Women Teachers and Popular Education in Nineteenth Century France. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995.
Schirmacher, Kaethe, and Conrad Eckhardt. The Modern Women’s Rights Movement. New York: Macmillan, 1912.
Steegmuller, Francis. A Lion in the Path. New York: Random House, 1949.
Walton, Whitney. France at the Crystal Palace. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.