Guy de Maupassant doesn’t just tell stories. He crafts unforgettable adventures. His characters may be ordinary, but their lives explode with scandal, passion, betrayal, and war. Over his lifetime, he crafted nearly 300 stories, penned 200 newspaper articles, wrote six novels, and even threw in three travel books for good measure. Love him or hate him, Maupassant always provokes a powerful reaction.
Dive into “The Necklace”
One of his most iconic tales, “The Necklace” (or “La Parure”), introduces us to Mme. Mathilde Loisel, a woman trapped in a life she believes is beneath her. Imagine feeling like destiny played a cruel joke on you, making you born into a family of clerks when you were meant for luxury. Mathilde is beautiful and charming but consumed by envy and frustration. She aches for the finer things in life, believing she deserves them: “She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries.”
This story reads like a moral fable, a cautionary tale against the destructive power of pride. Mathilde’s flaw is her yearning to be someone she’s not. She dreams of a Cinderella transformation, but fate has other plans. When she borrows a dazzling diamond necklace from her wealthy friend, Mme. Forestier, to impress the crowd at a grand ball, feels on top of the world. “She was prettier than them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and crazy with joy.” But pride, as they say, comes before the fall.
The night of splendor quickly spirals into a decade of hardship. Ten years later, we see Mathilde, a shadow of her former self: “She had become the woman of impoverished households—strong, hard, and rough. With frowzy hair, skirts askew, and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water.” Despite her struggles, she can’t help but wonder, “What if…?”
The Twist That Stings
And then comes the twist, the gut-punch ending that makes this story unforgettable. All her sacrifices, all those years of hardship, were for nothing. Mme. Forestier reveals, “Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth at most five hundred francs!” Percy Lubbock captured it perfectly in The Craft of Fiction: “The story seems to tell itself.” Maupassant masterfully disappears behind the narrative, letting the scenes captivate us until the final line shatters our world. Is there anything more tragic than wasting years of your life on a lie?
Ready to dive into Maupassant’s world? His stories await, full of life’s raw, unfiltered truths.