The Diamond Necklace is a story written by Guy de Maupassant. It was published in 1884 on the French newspaper "Le Gaulois". In this story Maupassant, as in most of his work, sets a critic about burgess and their excesses and ambition
The main character of the story, Mathilde, dreams of becoming a Dame in the French privileged society. She longs for having a house full of all kinds of luxuries, being admired and respected by everybody, but her reality defers quite a lot from what she desires, she lives in a small town at the French-British country side, and her husband is no more but a low rank government clerk at The Minister of Public Instruction.
The story of the Necklace starts when the couple received an invitation for a fancy dinner from The Minister of Public Instruction. Mathilde got a beautiful dress and she borrowed the Diamond necklace from an aristocratic friend to wear it at the dinner. To make the long story short, she lost the necklace and got into great debt to buy a similar diamond necklace to give back the original necklace to her friend. After ten years of hard work and suffering for paying the amount of money that the necklace had cost, she comes across her friend one day and decided to confess what she had done. With a very surprising turn of events, the friend to Mathilde that her original necklace was not made of real diamonds, and that it was not expensive at all, it only cost around 500 francs, not even 1 percent of what she had paid for the replacement.
I think that this entire situation was caused by a character's flaw, wanting to be something she was not was what caused the initial problem to Mathilde. Second, it could have been prevented by telling the truth to her friend when returning the necklace. Lastly, there is a bit of irony in the story, something which was a symbol of glamour and social status condemns you to a life of poverty and hard work.
