Theme Of Irony In The Necklace

Have you ever felt that if you could have this one thing, then your entire life would turn around? This is the idea Mathilde Loisel in the story “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant chased after for her entire life. She desired to be wealthy because she has the notion that because she was beautiful she should be gifted wealth. She was greedy with everything she had, even though she was not poor. Her husband, Monsieur Loisel, gave her everything he could spare to make her happy including the money he been saving up for himself. Mathilde finally gets the night she desired for so long so she borrows a diamond necklace from her friend and she loses it. This leads her and her husband to live a life of poverty in order to pay for a new necklace instead

For example, “Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth at most five hundred francs” (73). The irony in this is that Madame Loisel borrows the necklace to order to feel beautiful and wealthy, and it turns out the necklace was a fake. The necklace gave her a false perception that if she wears it she will look wealthy even though it had no value. If Mathilde had only swallowed her pride and told Madam Forestier she had lost the necklace, then she wouldn’t be in debt. This would of lead to an entirely different ending. Another example of situational irony is right before this. For example, “Do you remember that diamond necklace…Yes, Well? Well I lost it. What do you mean? You brought it back. I brought you back another one just like it” (73). The tone Forestier uses when speaking seems like she did not open up the case the necklace was in therefore not noticing a difference. This is situational irony because if she had only checked the box then she would have realized the necklace was not the same and everything would have turned out all right. The use of irony was to show that if Madame Loisel have told the truth and given up her pride, then she would not have had to live a life of

The imagery shows how she was once a very beautiful women that grew ragged with hard work. The text is trying to teach us that being greedy can often give you what you fear the most. Mathilde feared being poor and wanted to be wealthy so she took the necklace that symbolized wealth and lost it. She ended up having to spend all of her family’s money in order to replace the missing jewelry and thus had to be poor. The entire story is irony because she desired to be wealthy and she ended up being