It is commonly said that money is the root of all evil, but in reality, greed is the root of all evil. It is the greed for money that drives people to do bad things and overlook what they already have, just as the main character, Mathilde, does in "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant. Mathilde's greed causes her to overlook the good things in her life, lie, and waste her life.

Mathilde is "as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station" (Maupassant 22) because she believes that she deserves better in terms of the what she has. This state of mind causes her to overlook all of the great things she has, such as her husband that sacrifices everything for her to get a dress and replace the jewelry she has lost. When her husband brings her home an invitation to a palace, "instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation on the table with disdain" (23). She complains for a dress and her husband is willing to sacrifice the money he was saving for a gun to get his wife the dress. Mathilde is still unhappy even after this, so she visits a friend that her husband reminds her of, Mme. Forestier, to get a necklace. "She sprang upon the neck of her friend, kissed her passionately, then fled with her treasure" (24), but she shows nearly no excitement when her husband is willing to make sacrifices for her. Her greed to look nice and have nice things causes her to overlook all of the sacrifices that her husband makes for her and the nice things she does have. She fails to notice that her husband gave away his savings for her dress and that he was the one that reminded her to go to Mme. Forestier. She also fails to be thankful for the roof over her head, the warm soup that she has, her husband sacrificing his savings for her and at the end he sacrifices his whole life for her when she loses the necklace she borrowed.

Mathilde loses the necklace she borrowed from Mme. Forestier and after her husband does everything he can to try and find it, they come to the conclusion that they should borrow money to replace it. She lies to Mme. Forestier about the necklace and struggles to find a way to replace the necklace. She turns to her husband who plays the martyr that Mathilde believes she is. Mathilde's husband yet again makes a sacrifice asking for thirty-six thousand francs from various lenders. She returns the necklace to Mme. Forestier and hopes that she doesn't notice. She leaves and is more worried about Mme. Forestier's opinion of her than the position she has just put her and her husband in. She yet again overlooks all the hardships she has put on herself and her husband because she is too worried about the lie she has told. Her husband "risked his signature without even knowing if he could meet it" (26) and sacrifices his whole life for his wife. It is the greed for a material objects that lead her to lie and overlook the good things she has. When she tells this lie, she changes the lives of both her and her husband, when if she just told the truth, everything most likely would have been fine and she wouldn't have wasted ten years working so hard for the new necklace. Mathilde's lie would lead her to have to work for the next ten years of her life and waste the beauty that she once had for one night of meeting her greed. 

"She came to know what heavy housework meant" (27) and all she had left of the past was her one night at the ball, still failing to realize the sacrifices that her husband made for her then. Mathilde runs into Mme. Forestier and blames her for her hard look and loss of beauty. She felt herself born for something greater and her jealousy and greed of the people that had more drove her to be greedy. For one night she gave up ten years and everything that she had once cherished about herself. She lost her beauty and had to work herself and her husband to the breaking point. Mme. Forestier continues to tell her that necklace she borrowed and lost long ago was paste and was worth, at most, 500 francs. She did not see that the people that could afford these material objects did not treat them which much respect because they had them and realized that they did not mean much compared to the other things in the world. Mathilde failed to just tell the truth and let go of her one night of pride and it led to ten years of misery and her husband to make unnecessary sacrifices. She was "made drunk by pleasure, forgetting all, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success" (24). In this forgetfulness for her one night of fortune, Mathilde managed to not only fool all of the people around her, but also fool herself into thinking that luxuries were happiness and that "with women there is neither caste nor rank; and beauty, grace, and charm act instead of family and birth" (22). It is greed that causes Mathilde to overlook all of the luxuries that she had once taken for granted and threw away for one night of what she called happiness. She could no longer sit around at home once she had to work. She was no longer able to retain her beauty and dress even half as nice as she once wanted to. Mathilde lost everything she had on that one night and even more than that for one drunken night in which she forgot everything. If she had told the truth, she still may have had to replace the necklace for the same price, or she would have found out that the necklace was worth a fraction of her ten years of payments.

Greed is the root of all evil and it drives people to overlook the best things in their lives. It causes Mathilde to lie and overlook the great things she had in her life because she wanted something more. Her greed led her to waste her life away and she gained nothing from it but ten years of misery and hardship.
