Irony In The Necklace By Color Barrier

It uses irony to contribute to the theme of the story by helping give out the moral that honesty is key. What contributes to this is when Madame Loisel and her husband are invited to the teachers ball and doesn’t want to dress as people in her class are expected to, so she says she’s going to buy a nice dress for about four hundred francs. She feels that the dress isn’t enough, so she goes to Madame Forestier, a close friend of hers, and asks if she can borrow what she believes is a diamond necklace. She goes to the ball, then leaves in a hurry later. When she gets home, she realizes that the necklace is no longer around her neck, and so she and her husband search the streets and call the cabs to see if they could find it, but had no luck. So Loisel go sit and searches for an identical necklace, but when she does find it, it’s worth thirty-six thousand francs including discount.

Loisel gave the identical strand of diamond back to Madame Forestier. Ten years later, after paying off all of their debts, Madame Loisel had worked so hard that she now looked all the other old working woman “Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard, course women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red.” (page 22 para 18) While at the market she sees across the way a familiar looking woman walking with a child she approached the woman but the woman hadn’t recognized Madame Loisel. “She went up to her ‘Good morning, Jeanne.’ The other did not recognize her, and was surprised at being thus familiarly addressed by a poor woman. ‘But… Madame…’ she stammered ‘I don’t know you must be making a mistake.’ ‘No… I am Mathilde Loisel’ Her friend uttered a cry. ‘Oh… my poor Mathilde, how you have changed!...” (page 23 para