The Necklace

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1884

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Story Analysis

Character Analysis

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Character Analysis

Mathilde Loisel

Mathilde Loisel, the story’s protagonist, is a young and beautiful woman living in a small Parisian apartment with her husband. Despite her charm and beauty, she is poor and resents her birth into the working class. She often dreams of living in splendor. She loves material things and social status and feels that she deserves the best in life. Despite her desire for these things, she has no hope for significant wealth, recognition, or success, leaving her a rather hollow person, incapable of true happiness.

Vanity is another significant element in her character, as Mathilde often focuses on how people see her. She wants to be envied and given attention, as these things help her feel successful and happy. This vanity will offer her no lasting happiness, of course, especially since her desire to be noticed leads her to borrow the necklace that results in financial ruin. Mathilde’s focus on things that are superficial and shallow does not lead to the life she dreams of; in fact, it leads to the opposite.

Mathilde is a dynamic character in the sense that her fall into poverty forces her to change. From the vain woman she was at the beginning of the story, she becomes a woman who works to support herself and maintain her household. By the end of the story, she even finds pride in her ability to adapt to and overcome the debt. She also loses her sense of shame. She ran out of the ball for fear of being seen in a wrap instead of furs, yet at the end of the story, she approaches Madame Forestier on the Champs-Elysees despite being dirty, shabby, and common.

Monsieur Loisel

Monsieur Loisel is Mathilde’s husband and a clerk at the ministry of education. He enjoys hunting larks in the summer with his friends, yet he is an economical man and knows the importance of saving money and working to reach his goals. No physical qualities are attributed to Loisel, making him a rather flat character, but the details provided suggest a man of integrity and contentment.

In stark contrast to Mathilde, Loisel is a simple person easily pleased with everyday life. When sitting down to dinner with Mathilde, he says, “Ah, a good homemade beef stew! There’s nothing better” (Paragraph 4). He delights in what he has and does not seek anything above his station. However, he is sensitive to his wife’s focus on luxury, as illustrated in his effort to obtain an invitation to the exclusive government ball. Once they discover that the necklace is missing, he goes into immediate action to find it. He spends several hours searching for the necklace while also making inquiries to help them get it back. He is then forced into borrowing money and working multiple jobs, yet he never utters a word of reproach to his wife.

Madame Forestier

While the story gives little information about Madame Forestier, she plays a pivotal role as it is her necklace that causes the Loisels to fall into poverty. She is a close friend of Mathilde’s; the two women met as girls at a convent where they attended school. Mathilde did not like to visit Madame Forestier because she was far wealthier, leaving Mathilde miserable and weeping once she returned to her working-class home.

Madame Forestier is also generous, illustrated by how she allows Mathilde to borrow her jewelry without hesitation. She also casts no judgment on Mathilde as she searches through her jewelry, looking for the perfect piece. At the end of the story, when Mathilde has become a coarse, hard-working woman, Madame Forestier is “still young, still beautiful, still charming” (Paragraph 108), all the qualities Mathilde once possessed and prized so much.