Many little girls dream of being a princess and living in a castle with all of their needs being attended to on a whim. Girls especially like to do this when they are not of the social status as royalty. In the short story "The Necklace," Guy de Maupassant uses class and social status to portray the themes of materialism and perception versus reality throughout the story. His use of social status and what it meant to be part of the elite during this time period, the elaborate costumes of the ball, and the necklace itself, allow the reader to see the themes materialism and perception versus reality.

The story opens with the line, "she was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks" thus the girl that he is talking about is not part of the elite, but if looks were the deciding factor she would be (Maupassant, 33).  There are many references to how she does not feel like she belongs in the class that she was born into. She "settled" for her husband since she had no dowry to marry up (33). In this this time the only quality a person needed to have to be considered part of the elite was money. It is not like today where you can be considered part of the elite for only being pretty. For the first half of the story, Maupassant does not even give the woman a name he only refers to her as she. It is not until we get to the part where she is starting to break into the upper class that she is referred to as Mathilde. 

The use of the ball in this story may remind the reader of the classic children's fairy tale "Cinderella". "The Necklace" does not follow the exact format of the fairytale, but it does contain some of the same components. For example, when leaving the ball, they rush out of the building and they run down a long set of steps trying to find a carriage to take them home. When she gets home from the ball, instead of having a glass slipper missing she is missing the necklace that was lent to her, just like how the fairy godmother lends the outfit to Cinderella for the night. Her husband proceeds to look all over the town for the necklace, "he went to the police headquarters, to the newspapers offices, to offer a reward; he went to the cab companies- everywhere, in fact," just like Prince Charming looks all over for the woman whose foot fits into the shoe (Maupassant 37) . There are other similarities as well such as how both Cinderella and Mathilde are of lower classes which they do not feel that they belong in. This correlation also ties into the perception versus reality theme. Like Cinderella, Mathilde was only perceived to be wealthy for the duration of the ball. After the ball things went back to how they used to be, she went back to being in the lower class. 

The necklace is the main point in the story and it represents many things throughout the story. The necklace represents materialism. In society, it is always the things that a person has that defines them. Not only does it define them, but it also puts them into a social class that determines who they will associate with for the rest of their lives. It is very hard to change your social class especially during the time period that this story is written because women could not do anything to improve their social status without the help of a man. Mathilde did not have a dowry that was significant enough to get her into a higher social class. This means that once you were in a social class, you were pretty much stuck there. Mathilde thought that she did not belong in the middle class and when she heard that she was invited to a ball, she was hesitant at first until she found out that she could buy a new dress. However, once she was finished making the dress, she realized she did not have any jewels and said to her husband, "'It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single stone, nothing to put on'" (Maupassant 35). Since her and her husband already splurged on the dress, he told her that she could only borrow jewelry. After hearing that news, she was elated and could not wait to go to the ball. She was so happy when she found the perfect dress and necklace, she finally felt like she belonged. This all came to a screeching halt when she realized that she had lost the necklace and would need to replace the necklace with a new one that was well above her means. Instead of the necklace being a sign of wealth, it put Mathilde and her husband into extreme debt and an even lower social class then they started out in.

The story points out the never ending problem of perception versus reality. Everybody wants to be something different than they are but they do not realize that every social class has their own set of burdens and that there is no place that all of your problems will just magically go away. Mathilde thinks that she will be so much happier if she can just have what all of the other women in the upper class have. For example, after all the trouble Mathilde went to just to borrow the jewelry she ended up losing it and having to pay an exorbitant amount of money to replace the necklace. Because of her decision she now "dressed like the women of the people [and had] become the woman of impoverished households"(Maupassant 38).  After ten years of all this hard work to pay of all of her debts, she ran into the woman who lent her the necklace and finds out that the necklace was barely worth anything. The woman said, "' Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why my necklace was paste. It was worth at most five hundred francs!'" (39). What she thought and the rest of the world thought to be these precious jewels turned out to be cheap pearls.  This is teaching you that what you see is not always what you get. A person might look put together on the outside but on the inside be falling apart. 

Throughout the story "The Necklace", Guy de Maupassant uses social status, the ball, and a necklace to convey themes like materialism and perception versus reality. They are problems that have existed throughout history and are just getting worse as time goes on. Like a fairytale somebody can look at your life from afar and think that everything is fine but once they open it up and start to read deeper into the story they find out that not everything is what it seems and that they should value what they have weather they like it or not. 

