Happiness Theme Analysis

In “The Necklace,” Guy de Maupassant demonstrates the importance of knowing how to achieve happiness in a meaningful and lasting way. At the beginning of the story, Mathilde and her husband live a modest life, but with enough money to live comfortably. However, Mathilde is perpetually discontented, unable to be happy without the clothes and jewels of a wealthy woman. Although Mathilde achieves a fleeting moment of happiness during the party, the next ten years of her life are filled with true suffering, in sharp contrast with her earlier self-pity which seemed out of sync with the comfortable life she lived. By experiencing true poverty, Mathilde gains a new perspective on life and learns to be satisfied with what she has.

Mathilde’s initial unhappiness seems like a choice: she lives a perfectly pleasant life and could easily be contented with it, but instead of focusing on the good things she has, Mathilde obsesses over what she doesn’t have, driving her to discontent. Maupassant points out that the things that make Mathilde so unhappy “wouldn’t have even been noticed by any other woman of her station,” which suggests that Mathilde’s temperament is not a result of privation, but rather it is a character flaw. Furthermore, unlike Mathilde, her husband is able to be happy with their lot: he says, “Ah! A good stew! I don’t know of anything better.” This demonstrates that happiness is, at least in part, a matter of perception or of choice.

Even when Mathilde experiences a rare moment of happiness at the party, Maupassant depicts this happiness as fleeting: the party only lasts a night, and her happiness is entirely dependent on her possession of the dress and the necklace. During the party Mathilde is in a “cloud of happiness,” giving the scene a dreamlike quality, almost as if it were too good to be true. However, once the necklace is gone her happiness vanishes. As soon as the Loisels leave the party, they are “desperate and shivering,” and at the end of the night, Mathilde remarks “it is over.”

After Mathilde has been forced to spend ten years suffering to pay off the debt she incurred after losing the necklace, she seems paradoxically more content. The fact that Mathilde is able to play her part “with sudden heroism” shows that she is no longer prey to the self-pity and dissatisfaction that characterized her in the first part of the story. She also develops a new sense of perspective with regard to happiness and suffering. At the end of the story, she remarks: “What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who can say? How little there is between happiness and misery!” The idea that things could have turned out differently shows that Mathilde has learned that happiness is not simply a matter of owning more money or more things, and the fact that her idle thoughts are contemplations of happiness and misery rather than the self-pitying daydreams of wealth she had before shows that she has become more grounded through her experience of suffering.

Mathilde’s new ideas on life and on happiness illustrate the idea that it is better to accept one’s lot in life than to fight against it. Moreover, by experiencing a truly difficult existence, Mathilde develops a new perspective on the privileges and small comforts of her earlier life. Although Mathilde is not happy in her new life, she is more grounded in reality and she is newly willing to accept things for the way they are.