
In the short story of Mathilde Loisel and her lust for status in life, the reader is introduced into the world of a family in conflict.  Mathilde Loisel is a woman who yearns for more in life, more than what she is given.  The constant struggle between her and her husband of money and luxury causes tension, leading Mathilde to look for other routes to happiness.  These routes include false satisfaction and greed.  This false image only leads to Mathilde Loisel and her husband's demise.  Guy de Maupassant portrays several mediums of symbolism, none more important than that of her necklace as a means of her desire to ascend to the upper class.  A necklace may be flashy, beautiful, and seemingly valuable, but in the end may be only as valuable as the person who wears it.  In this regard the necklace serves as nothing more than a false representation of the self.  It symbolizes wealth, social status as well as the consequences of greed and deception, which of course are all things that she wants in her life.  From this perspective, readers can gather that having materialistic things does not necessarily translate into class.  Mathilde Loisel is a woman who idolized materials, the necklace represents the broken image between appearance and reality and shows the true worth of her life and dreams, which turn out to be as shallow as the ocean at low tide.

The necklace is a symbol of wealth and power for Madame Loisel, which represents a world she longs to be a part of but will never be able to reach.   In the real world a necklace represents beauty, but the necklace in this story represents what many would consider to be false beauty.  Madame Loisel looked stunning in the new dress she begged her husband to buy, but she still refused to go to the party without some type of jewelry that would only heighten her sense of belonging.  She feels the need to have such a necklace because she does not want to be singled out and humiliated by appearing in a lower tax bracket.  In the few hours at the party Madame Loisel finally felt the joy she had been wanting, although she had known deep down that the appearance was more a scheme than it was truth.  Her wealth and class were simply a hoax, and she had many people (including herself) fooled.  Based off this information, readers can garner that Madame Loisel believes that creating a facade of herself as a member of the upper class can translate into reality, but this does not end up being the case.  In fact, this facade does not help her, but actually takes away from her character. 

I chose the passage describing Mathilde at the party because it reveals her actual desires and true character:  

"She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything, in the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a cloud of happiness made up of this universal homage and admiration, of the desires she had aroused, of the completeness of a victory so dear to her feminine heart." (Maupassant)

This excerpt is near the middle of the story, when Mathilde is more content with her life than she has ever been.  She had tried so hard to get to this point, even asking her hard working husband to give her more money for her dress.  This text expresses to readers that all of her motivations are a fraud when it reads "in a cloud of happiness made."  This quote demonstrates the greed and false persona that is Madame Loisel in this text.  She may be having the time of her life and look the same as the people who she is mingling with, but that does not make her one of them.  People can outwardly express a certain idea of themselves, but it does not mean that this is who they really are.  This greed brought her a short taste of the life she yearned for, but she would never predict the consequences that one necklace would bring to her and her husband.  What follows these events is a period in her life in which she is force to learn the ethics of being a lower-class housewife.  This life is far from the result she expected and includes heavy duties in the kitchen, cleaning dirty linens and clothing, and fetching water was the result of dismissing the servant they could no longer afford.  Ironically, she not only lost her grasp on the luxurious life that she dreamt of, but was forced to adapt to the life of a poor housewife; herh beat red hands, awry clothing, and miserable circumstances can serve as a testament to this.  Mathilde's real beauty and spark has been tarnished and dulled, and serves readers with a reminder to accept that greed will never truly get you everything that you want.  The only real love in her life was lost as a result of greed and lust.  

We find her to only be as genuine as the faux necklace she admired so greatly.  Her necklace represents the broken image between appearance and reality and shows the true worth of her life and dreams, which turn out to be as shallow as the ocean at low tide.  The human behaviors in de Maupassant's"The Necklace" are all too common in the world today.  From this story there is a clear and concise message: The things in life that are truly valuable are things not purchased.  Materialistic objects such as jewelry and clothes are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes down to it.  Returning to the passage chosen it is seen that only temporary feelings are brought on by such objects.  Out of all the possible types of symbolism in the short story "The Necklace", the most influential is the idea of appearances being deceptive.  All of the others  --  including wealth, social class, ambition leading to doom, are all crucial to create the main point.  De Maupassant waits till the complete end of the story to reveal that the necklace is indeed a facade, while all the time the reader is presumed to believe that both Mathilde and her husband are honest when attempting to repay their debts to Madame Forestier.  Instead it leads them to a dead end, where the reader must feel Mathildes' guilt and pain.  In the end we are reminded those who do not appreciate their own fortune, no matter how small it is, do not deserve the wealth and glamour they seek.  

