How Does Guy De Maupassant Use Irony In The Necklace

Irony in the Necklace

Have you ever made such a big mistake that you would do anything to cover it up? In Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace,” he uses different types of irony to demonstrate how excessive vanity can badly change the lives of those who focus too much on surface appearances. Listing some of these types could include: being greedy and never having enough, falling into debt and spending the next ten years trying to recover their financial status, and finally telling the truth to Madame Forestier.

The story was written in a time when there were very distinct social classes primarily determined by one’s birth. It is about a woman who is uneasy with her family class. Being born in the middle class is incompressible for Matilde, she

At the beginning of the story, Mathilde, “was a mistake of destiny” when find herself born to a poor family, family of clerk, not nobility. The fact that she was born in clerks she had “no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded by a rich and distinguished man.” Because of the lack of gems to drape herself for the party, she visited a friend to borrow some. Once she got to her friend’s house, she explains her distress. Understanding and helping people, her friend Mme. Forestier “ went to a wardrobe with a glass door, took out a large jewelry box, brought it back, opened it, and said to her: Choose , my dear.” She found a beautiful necklace, shining and elegant. At the party, the necklace made her successful, she was seen as having money, of course she felt the same way. She became important, she was known, understood, and loved by all attending. Even the Minister himself remarked her. After getting home, she found out that the necklace was lost. Instead of telling her friend friend Mme Forestier, a new one was purchase for thirty-six thousand francs, and then returned back without any explanation, as it looked identical to the