The short story "The Necklace," by Guy de Maupassant, is about a woman named Mathilde who daydreams of luxuries and expensive living. Her husband, Mr. Loisel, received an invitation inviting the Loisels to come to a dinner banquet. Mathilde, living in her daydreams, thought that she needed to be just glamorous and bought a new dress and barrowed a fancy diamond necklace from a friend, Jeanne. Mathilde loss the necklace and she and her husband spent ten years paying off the debt in which they had fallen into by replacing the necklace. In the end, Mathilde saw Jeanne and told her about her hard work and Jeanne told Mathilde that the necklace was never real to begin with. Guy de Maupassant has several accounts of irony in the short story "The Necklace." The irony includes Mathilde's daydreaming, the name of the street that Mathilde and her husband live on, and the necklace's not being real.
In the beginning, Mathilde is "daydreaming of large, silent anterooms decorated with oriental tapestries and lighted by high bronze floor lamps, with two elegant valets in short culottes dozing in large armchairs under the effects of forced air heaters" (5). Mathilde also dreamed of "expensive silks" and perfumes. Maupassant described in depth the extravagant daydreams Mathilde experienced. Mathilde lived in a standard apartment and had a basic living style in the beginning of "The Necklace." Mathilde dreamed of so much but her pride betrayed her by leading her to lie about the necklace. Thus, ten years later, she lived in an attic and had a lifestyle of poverty and debt. Mathilde let her pride and honor come before making wise decisions and her daydreams became farther away from reality than ever before. .
I think a sign that Mathilde's dreams were going to slip farther away from reality was that Mathilde and her husband lived on the Street of Martyrs. Living on the Street of Martyrs was ironic because a martyr is one who suffers for a cause.
