Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace" addresses many issues throughout the story, one of them being deception; pride and greed ultimately lead to deception in the story. Mathilde Loisel and Monsieur Loisel learn about how pride and greed can lead to deceptiveness through their worthless sacrifice.

Mathilde Loisel and Monsieur Loisel lead a simple lifestyle together, but Mathilde Loisel constantly wants more. Maupassant chooses to refer to her as "she" throughout the story to show that her name has no importance, and she just strives to be viewed as higher in society: 

She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the walls, from the worn out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never ever have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry (Maupassant 33).

By constantly wanting more, Mathilde is allowing greed to take over. "She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was rich, and whom she did not like to go and see anymore, because she suffered so much when she came back" (34); she is filled with greed, causing her to be extremely unhappy.  Madame Loisel wants nothing more than to be extremely wealthy and buy expensive items just to show off her wealth. She constantly envies those with money in the city around her; her envy is to the point that she distances herself from the upper class because she knows she can never have their wealth: " there's nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich" (35).  Mathilde says this to her husband who works very hard to provide for her and attempt to bring her happiness.  

Because Mathilde thinks she deserves a better life than the simple one she lives, she is very prideful. She is beautiful, and her husband loves her deeply, so he puts her first in his life. He is only a clerk; therefore, he cannot buy expensive items for her to show off, but he does what he can to try and keep her happy. One day, he came home with invitations to a party at the palace of the Ministry, expecting her to be thrilled. "Instead of being delighted she threw the invitation on the table with disdain" (34); out of Mathilde's prideful ways, she immediately is upset with the fact that she has nothing to wear and cannot go to the ball because she does not want to be embarrassed and re-wear an old dress. Monsieur Loisel ensures her that she will look beautiful, and he even gives her the four hundred francs that he has been saving to purchase a gun because he cannot bare to see her unhappy. He truly understands his wife's pride, and he does not wish to let her down; he is the one who gives her the idea to borrow jewelry from her wealthy friend so that she will fit in with the upper class men and women.

Pride, greed, and appearances all lead to the main motif in the story, deceptiveness. Deceptiveness is common throughout the story, Madame Loisel pretends to be wealthy; the diamond necklace she assumes to be real, is fake. This also shows that the people in the upper class all do not strictly own valuable items. This is something that Mathilde cannot understand; she assumes that wealthy people only have very expensive things. When she finds the diamond necklace in the black satin box, "her heart began to beat with an immoderate desire" (35); this further shows how caught up she is in wealth because no necklace should make someone feel this emotional. She is hoping that if she wears the beautiful necklace the women in the wealthy class will further accept her because she will appear to have more money like them. The way Mathilde is obsessed with wealth is just driving her to despair because she cannot keep up the act of pretending to have money if she does not have money. She lives a completely different lifestyle from the upper class women. Although it may not appear this way, but they, too, are trying to uphold the image of having money. The diamonds in the necklace Mathilde borrows and later loses turn out to be paste diamonds; they are aesthetic. When she realizes the necklace has been misplaced, "she removed the wraps  before the glass, so as once more to see herself in all her glory" (36); Mathilde is so obsessed with herself looking wealthy for the night and does not even want to take the necklace off yet. Little does she know, it has since then been lost. She is too prideful to admit to Madame Forestier that she lost the necklace so, she buys a new necklace with real diamonds and costs both Mathilde and her husband the next 10 years to pay back. This is another moment when deceptiveness is apparent because if she did not attempt to deceive her friend and just admitted to losing the original necklace, she would have found that it had not been made from real diamonds. 

Perception is essential in life and in this story. Mathilde wants everyone to perceive her as wealthy, but in the end, she loses her beauty and money, causing her to be vulnerable so she tells Madame Forestier the truth of the necklace. At this point in Madame Loisel's life, there is nothing that she can do to deceive those around her to make them believe that she is wealthy at all; the thing she has strived for her entire life has been taken away. At this time, Madame Forestier tells Mathilde about the aesthetic diamonds. Both Mathilde and her husband wasted ten years of their lives working to pay back the money of the replacement necklace. 

Not only did Mathilde attempt to deceive the wealthier class in her town, but the people in the elite class are also deceiving one another. The buchasse society they are living in is toxic; the people are attempting to appear richer than they actually are. This is proven by the fact that the diamond necklace Mathilde borrows is not actually real diamonds, but because Madame Forestier desires to appear very wealthy, she does not tell Mathilde of the false diamond necklace. Mathilde ends up more miserable than she began, and both she and her husband have aged greatly. He is also partially to blame for this instance of deception because he allows it to occur, and he helps fund his wife to ruin their lives. The entire situation teaches the Loisels a lesson of being truthful and staying true to which they are due to their worthless sacrifice. 

