The Necklace

The Necklace is a short story by the French writer Guy de Maupassant, first published in the French newspaper Le Gaulois on 17 February 1884 under the title La Parure, with an English translation appearing in 1896. The story follows Mathilde Loisel, a woman of modest means dissatisfied with her station in life, who borrows what she believes is a diamond necklace from a wealthy friend to wear to a prestigious ball, only to lose it afterward; the ten years of grinding poverty and labor she and her husband endure to secretly replace it culminate in a final revelation about the necklace's true, far more modest value. Renowned for its tightly constructed twist ending, a hallmark of Maupassant's short fiction more broadly, The Necklace has become one of the most widely anthologized and taught short stories in the French literary canon.