the necklace.docx - The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant The...

The Necklace
by Guy de Maupassant
The Necklace (1884) is a famous short story and morality tale that is widely read in classrooms
throughout the world.
The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are
born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no
way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so
she let herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction.
She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was unhappy as if she
had really fallen from a higher station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank,
for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct
for what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of women of
the people the equals of the very greatest ladies.
Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries.
She was distressed at the poverty of her dwelling, at the bareness of the walls, at the
shabby chairs, the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of
her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry. The
sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her
despairing regrets and bewildering dreams. She thought of silent antechambers hung
with Oriental tapestry, illumined by tall bronze candelabra, and of two great footmen in
knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the oppressive heat of
the stove. She thought of long reception halls hung with ancient silk, of the dainty
cabinets containing priceless curiosities and of the little coquettish perfumed reception

rooms made for chatting at five o'clock with intimate friends, with men famous and
sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all desire.
When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a tablecloth in use
three days, opposite her husband, who uncovered the soup tureen and declared with a
delighted air, "Ah, the good soup! I don't know anything better than that," she thought of
dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry that peopled the walls with ancient
personages and with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of
delicious dishes served on marvellous plates and of the whispered gallantries to which
you listen with a sphinxlike smile while you are eating the pink meat of a trout or the
wings of a quail.
She had no gowns, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that. She felt made for
that. She would have liked so much to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be
sought after.
She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and whom she did
not like to go to see any more because she felt so sad when she came home.