The short story "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant is a tale about a young wife who lets her shallowness and insecurity get the best of her.  Mme. Loisel had aspirations to be rich which she felt matched her beautiful exterior, but felt she was born in to the wrong class as a child. After borrowing jewels from a rich friend and losing them she truly learned the struggle of the lower class as she went from middle class to poverty stricken.  In the end the jewels she thought were worth so much money and struggled to pay off had been fake all along, leaving Mme. Loisel old and worn all for nothing. By looking at the dialogue and imagery in the narration I am going to prove that in this short story Maupassant expresses that the "necklace" is symbolic of how Mme. Loisel wants herself to be perceived, fake but having the appearance of wealth, but only after the loss of these jewels she learns true value. This shows that it is pointless to climb the social ladder, because Mme. Loisel lost all of her possessions and youth and still could not achieve her goal.  This helps Maupassant easily convey his idea that the pursuit of vanity and wealth will hinder or destroy someone's personal goals.

 Maupassant makes it clear in his narration and use of dialogue of how Mme. Loisel feels negatively about her middle class situation.  "She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing.  And she loved nothing but that" (Maupassant, Pg 34).  Throughout the prologue Mme. Loisel does nothing but think badly about how she was born into an average life. She feels badly about her house, her husband, and her servant, while at the same time constantly longing to be like the wealthier women who outclass her.  She feels that her appearance being described as "pretty and charming"(Maupassant 34)  should dictate her rank in wealth among her peers that she finds around her.  She even loses touch with some of her childhood friends over petty thinks like jealousy of their wealth and class.  "She had a friend, a former classmate from the convent, who was rich, and whom she did not see anymore, because she suffered so much when she came back."  Mme. Loisel is so vain at this point in her life she fails even to connect to her friends who are only looking to have a good relationship with her, but her mindset is so destructive she cannot see past  oney.  All the while through these insecurities Mme. Loisel has visions of the life she has always wanted and the wealth she has always craved.  This ties in with symbolizing the necklace because although Mme. Loisel is beautiful on the outside she has no wealth or value in herself to back her appearance just like the fake jeweled necklace in the story.  Her appearance on the outside does not match her rotten attitude or how poor she is in reality.  Mme. Loisel in her mind can only be happy by climbing the social and class ladder until she feels that her wealth and class match her outside appearance. But as we all know, her goal is almost unachievable, and because her lust for wealth and vanity are so great she cannot see how her life really effects the others around her.  This lack of understanding is one of the main reasons she cannot ever achieve her goal.

Mme. Loisels true feelings become clearer after M Loisel brings home an invitation to the most prestigious ball in town.  To his dismay Mme. Loisel is upset instead of happy about her opportunity to feel like the other half. Her shallowness and insecurity about her wealth makes her not want to attend the ball.  "And what do you want me to put on my back?" and "It annoys me not to have a single jewel" (Maupassant 34) are the responses M. Loisel is met with just after her presents his wife with the invitation.   This shows that she refuses to see the good in any situation and allows her vanity to male herself feel embarrassed about going out but not being one of the richest people in her community.   M. Loisel gives up all of his savings in order to let his wife feel presentable for the rich company that she will be keeping at the ball.  She buys a dress and borrows a necklace she believes is worth a lot of money from one of her wealthy childhood friends.  This is symbolic of the fake jeweled necklace she borrows from her friend because although Mme. Loisel and her husband have very little money she uses what little money she has to make herself appear wealthy so she can fit in at the ball.  She wants to deceive all of the people at the ball with her rich looking appearance and leave them with no idea of how wealthy she actually is.  Just like the fake jewels that give the appearance of having worth had deceived Mme. Loisel and her husband until the end of the short story.  

Mme. Loisel enjoyed the party and how her false illusion of wealth made everyone she came across treat her as if she was one of the wealthiest and most important women there, but just as she leaves she realizes she has lost the necklace her friend had given to her.  "They went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace like the other, consulting their memories, sick both them with chagrin and anguish."  Not being wealthy the Loisel's spent their entire life savings and took loans from friends and officials in order to repurchase a necklace that they thought was the same as the one Mme. Loisel had lost.  This is when Maupassant changes the imagery from the internal shallowness of Mme. Loisel to symbolizing the dark but valuable turn in lifestyle she and her husband have.  Mme. Loisel with her only mistake being that she lost a necklace experiences the worst things in life as a punishment for her lust and desire to look and be wealthy.  "Mme. Loisel now knew the horrible existence of the needy."(Maupassant 34)  Mme. Loisel and her husband, in order to pay all of the money they owed, had to give up their house and servant, along with all the luxuries they had.  She had to do all of the hard work she took for granted as her husband worked all day and night to repay his depts and clear his name among the people he took money from.  "She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen."(Maupassant 34)  This caused Mme. Loisel to begin to age quickly and lose her appearance that she valued so much.  "Mme. Loisel looked old now."  This change in Mme. Loisel's appearance had turned her into a "woman of the people" she had learned the true value of hard work and had become "strong and rough" (Maupassant 34).  This value that she had learned paying for the necklace she used to replace the one she lost characterizes the value of the necklace that her and her husband paid for with their youth.  Although it looked the same as the fake necklace it was worth 100 times more.  She in the end could not climb the social ladder and made herself worse off for trying, this proves that Maupassant felt it was redundant to try and jump out of social class

Mme. Loisel's life and values change drastically after the point in the story when she loses the necklace.  This is symbolic of the changes in the values of the necklaces that also change in this point in the story.  Both looking the same but one being false, like the way Mme. Loisel wants to be seen in the prologue and rising action of the story, to being worth a great deal of work and hardship that Mme. Loisel and her husband feel in the end after the lives have changed and their debts have been paid.  This shows that attempting to climb the social ladder is pointless because through all the hardships that the married couple faced in order to look rich only made their situation much worse in the end. 

