Honesty and Maupassant's "The Necklace"

One is always told that honesty is the best policy. While some people do not heed this advice, it does seem that dishonesty gets one into more trouble than honesty. In Guy de Maupassant's short story called "The Necklace," a woman borrows a piece of jewelry from another woman so that she can live above her means and "keep up with the Joneses." She loses this necklace, but instead of telling her friend, she changes her life in order to replace the necklace someday. While Madame Loisel's intention might be noble in Maupassant's "The Necklace, lack of honesty causes the complete downfall of the Loisels.

First of all, Madame Loisel is dishonest with herself. She tries to deny her own financial situation and therefore, her own life. "She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury" (Maupassant). Rather than admitting that her husband was a public servant, she spends her time endlessly wishing for what she does not have. She is unhappy when her husband presents her with a party invitation because she will have nothing to wear. When he solves this for her, she decides that she needs jewelry as well. After borrowing the biggest and the best necklace from her friend, she attends the party. She gets caught up in the dishonesty and begins to believe that she is some other woman. On the way home, she gets caught up "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).

Her next incident of dishonesty occurs when she gets home and discovers that the necklace is gone. They search for it to no avail. They then set about mortgaging and borrowing from everyone in order to replace the necklace. Madame Loisel is too dishonest and ashamed to admit that she has lost the necklace. From this moment on, her whole life changes. For ten years, her husband works overtime. She, in turn, finds out what it is really like to live in poverty. She does everything she can to save money. "She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dish-cloths, and hung them out to dry on a string; every morning she took the dustbin down into the street and carried up the water, stopping on each landing to get her breath. And, clad like a poor woman, she went to the fruiterer, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on her arm, haggling, insulted, fighting for every wretched halfpenny of her money" (Maupassant). All of these things and more she does because she will not tell her friend the truth about the lost necklace.

However, she finally reveals her honesty at last. She runs into her friend on the street and her friend doesn't even recognize her because she has aged so much. Madame Loisel finally reveals the truth about the necklace and ironically learns a terrible truth. "Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs! . . . " (Maupassant). That means that if she would have only told the truth from the beginning, she could have gone on living her original life. While it wasn't exactly perfect, it was much easier than the one she and her husband have lived for the past ten years.

This story definitely reiterates the idea that honesty is indeed the best policy. Madame Loisel and her husband completely change their lives unnecessarily when all they had to do was tell the truth. Maupassant tells the reader it is always best to "fess up" for the mistakes we have made rather than trying to cover them up or hide them. Madame Loisel ruins her own life with her lies.

Works Cited

Maupassant, Guy de, "The Necklace."