The Necklace Summary Essay Example

uneasy, anxious. ” Suspense building, Mathilde and her husband attend the ball. “Madame Loisel was a great success. She was prettier than any other woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling and wild with joy. Unfortunately, from the end of the masquerade onward, everything of the couple’s luck disintegrates. The climax and crisis simultaneously rear their heads when Madame Loisel, to her surprise, finds that the “superb diamond necklace” her friend, Madame Forestier lent her, is no longer around her neck. Unable to find the ornament or confess her mistake to Madame Forestier, for the sake of her pride, Mathilde buys a new, similar necklace for thirty-six thousand francs.

Consequently, Madame and Monsieur Loisel are forced to live in debt for an entire decade, where Mathilde comes “to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen. ” Searching for the necklace and struggling through debt composes the falling action of the narrative. Finally, when Mathilde’s debts are paid, the denouement is introduced and the plot unknots. “Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her hands. ‘Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste! It was worth at most only five hundred francs! ”