Sheer joy of reading a classic story! This story tells you why classics are ever green.
This is the first work of fiction I have read from the author. This is story is extraordinary. It reminds you of the simplicity of RK Narayan and the prose style of Hemingway.
The story is about a woman called Mathilde Loisel. This is no ordinary woman. In Maupassant’s words:
She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks.
This extremely beautiful and charming girl happens to marry a clerk in public service. She wanted things way bigger in life according to her station, but none of her dreams ever came true.
but she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank; and beauty, grace, and charm act instead of family and birth.
One fine day her husband receives an invitation from the ministry to a ball. He is urged to bring his family. Mathilde doesn’t want to go to the ball since she does not have appropriate clothes or jewellery. Upon much pondering, her husband gives her the money to buy the clothes but not enough to buy jewellery.
She decides to approach a friend who could lend her a necklace. She wears the same to the ball, dances through the evening and in the process loses the Necklace.
She manages to buy another similar diamond necklace and return it back to her friend and slogs for years to pay back for the necklace. She meets that very same friend a couple of years down the lane and discovers a revelation.
The end is moralistic. One will find oneself wondering if all of it was worth it. And how greed should always be kept at bay.
I absolutely loved the writing. You will too. Give it a read. The Necklace is available on juggernaut. You can download the app and read for free!
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