The Necklace

Andy Lehrer:
From the very first, she played her part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid off. She would pay it.
The servant was dismissed. They changed their flat. They took a garret under the roof. She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen. She washed the plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse pottery and the bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dishcloths, and hung them out to dry on a string. Every morning she took the dust bin down into the street and carried up the water, stopping on each landing to get her breath and clad like a poor woman, she went to the [French 00:00:41[, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on each arm, haggling, insulted, fighting for every wretched ha'penny of her money.

Joeita Gupta:
I'm Joeita Gupta, and this is The Pulse.
Holidays are defined by traditions. Families often turn to traditions, those things that have brought them comfort and joy in years gone by, to make the holidays special and really it could be anything. It could be baking or putting up a Christmas tree or having a snowball fight on Christmas Day. Whatever floats your boat. My Christmas traditions are a little bit peculiar, but I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to share them with you.
I love being read to, I mean, absolutely love it, and I always have. Because the fact of the matter is no matter how advanced or human-like text-to-speech software gets over the years, it's no replacement for the truly magical human voice. And really, when it comes to being read to, I have a special weakness for the short story.
Around the holidays there are many short stories that become quite popular. Short stories associated with Christmas in particular deal with many themes such as materialism or raising moral questions. And we have a bit of a tradition here on The Pulse. So today, we read The Necklace. It's time to put your finger on The Pulse.
Hey, hello and welcome to The Pulse on AMI-audio. I'm Joeita Gupta and I'm delighted to welcome you to what is without fail... I shouldn't be saying this, but what is without fail my favourite episode of the year, and that is our holiday episode and I'm recording it, as I always do, from the Accessible Media studios in downtown Toronto. We are located on Treaty 13 land subject to the Dish with One Spoon Treaty, and I am clad in a, I'd like to say, very festive red cable-knit sweater. My hair is pulled back in a bun.
The reason this show is amongst one of my favourites that I do every year is that we have something akin to a tradition right here on the program where we pick up a short story, often one of my choosing, and we talk and we have somebody very special come on to read it and the person who comes on to read it is drum roll please, my husband. And so it's with great pleasure that I welcome Andy Lehrer to the program. Hi, Andy.

Andy Lehrer:
Hi.

Joeita Gupta:
Welcome back.

Andy Lehrer:
Oh, it's good to be back.

Joeita Gupta:
I'm glad you came back. It's good to have you back.
Last Christmas around this time we read the Happy Prince, and of course, we'll put a link in the description down below so people can go and check that one out. But it is good to have you back and tell us a little bit about what you're going to read for us today.

Andy Lehrer:
Oh, well, it's The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, which was written in 1885. It actually came out in September. It wasn't actually intended as a Christmas story, but I think it's become a Christmas story because of some of its themes and perhaps as a contrast to, I guess, the materialism of Christmas. It's kind of an antidote to that.

Joeita Gupta:
That makes a lot of sense. Now look, it's a short story, so I won't ask you to summarize it. I know it's about a necklace, or the necklace. Why don't you go ahead and give us a read?

Andy Lehrer:
Okay. All right.
The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant.
She was one of those pretty and charming girls, born as though fate had blundered over her into a family of artisans. She had no marriage portion, no expectations, no means of getting known, understood, loved and wedded by a man of wealth and distinction, and she let herself be married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of Education.
Her tastes were simple, because she had never been able to afford any other, but she was as unhappy as though she had married beneath her. For a woman have no caste or class, their beauty, grace, and charm serving them for birth or family, their natural delicacy, their instinctive elegance, their nimbleness of wit are their only mark of rank, and put the slum girl on a level with the highest lady in the land. She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs and ugly curtains, all these things of which other women of her class would not even have been aware, tormented and insulted her.
The sight of the little Breton girl, who came to do the work in her little house, aroused heart-broken regrets and hopeless dreams in her mind. She imagined silent antechambers heavy with oriental tapestries, lit by torches in lofty bronze sockets with two tall footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in large armchairs, overcome by the heavy warmth of the stove. She imagined vast saloons hung with antique silks, exquisite pieces of furniture, supporting priceless ornaments and small, charming perfumed rooms created just for little parties of intimate friends, men who were famous and sought after, whose homage roused every other woman's envious longings.
When she sat down for dinner at the round table covered with a three-days-old cloth opposite her husband, who took the cover off the soup tureen, exclaiming delightedly, "Aha! Beef stew, what could be better?" she imagined delicate meals, gleaming silver tapestries peopling the walls with folk of a past age and strange birds and fairy forests. She imagined delicate food served in marvellous dishes, murmured gallantries, listened to with an inscrutable smile as one trifled with the rosy flesh of trout or wings of asparagus chicken.
She had no clothes, no jewels, nothing, and these were the only things she loved. She felt that she was made for them. She had longed so eagerly to charm, to be desired, to be wildly attractive and sought after. She had a rich friend, an old school friend whom she refused to visit because she suffered so keenly when she returned home. She would weave whole days with grief, regret, despair, and misery.
One evening, her husband came home with an exultant air, holding a large envelope in his hand.
"Here's something for you," he said.
Swiftly, she tore the paper and drew out a printed card on which were these words:
"The Minister of Education and Madame Rampouneau request the pleasure of the company of Monsieur and Madame Loisel at the Ministry on the evening of Monday, January 18."
Instead of being delighted as her husband hoped, she flung the invitation petulantly across the table murmuring, "What you want me to do with this?"
"Why darling, I thought you'd be pleased. You never go out, and this is a great occasion. I had tremendous trouble to get it. Everyone wants it. It's very select, and very few go to the clerks. You'll see all the really big people there."
She looked at him out of furious eyes and said, impatiently, "And what do you suppose I am to wear at such an affair?"
He had not thought about it. He stammered, "Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It looks very nice to me."
He stopped, stupefied and utterly at a loss, when he saw that his wife was beginning to cry. Two large tears ran slowly down from the corners of her eyes towards a corner of her mouth.
"What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you?" he faltered, but with a violent effort, she overcame her grief and replied in a calm voice, wiping her wet cheeks, "Nothing. Only I haven't a dress and so I can't go to this party. Give your invitation to some friend of yours whose wife will be turned out better than I shall."
He was heartbroken. "Look here, Mathilde," he persisted. "What would be the cost of a suitable dress, which you could use on other occasions as well? Something very simple."
She thought for several seconds, reckoning up prices and also wondering for how large sum she could ask without bringing upon herself, an immediate refusal and an exclamation of horror from the careful-minded clerk.
At last, she replied with some hesitation. "I don't know exactly, but I think I could do it on 400 francs."
He grew slightly pale, for this was exactly the amount he had been saving for a gun, intending to get a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre with some friends who went lark shooting there on Sundays.
Nevertheless, he said, "Very well, I'll give you 400 francs, but try and get a really nice dress with the money."
The day of the party grew near and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, and anxious. Her dress was ready, however.
One evening her husband said to her, "What's the matter with you? You've been very odd for the last three days."
"I'm utterly miserable at not having any jewels, not a single stone to wear," she replied. "I will look cheap. I would almost rather not go to the party."
"Wear flowers," he said, "They're very smart at this time of year. For 10 francs, you'd get two or three gorgeous roses."
She was not convinced. "No, there's nothing so humiliating as looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women."
"How stupid you are!" exclaimed to her husband. Go and see Madame Forestier and ask her to lend you some jewels. You know her quite well enough for that."
She uttered a cry of delight. "That's true! I never thought of it."
Next day, she went to see her friend and told her her trouble. Madame Forestier went to her dressing table, took up a large box, brought her to Madame Loisel, opened it and said, "Choose, my dear."
First, she saw some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian cross in gold and gems of exquisite workmanship. She tried the effect of the jewels before the mirror, hesitating, unable to make up her mind to leave them, to give them up.
She kept on asking, "Haven't you anything else?"
"Yes, look for yourself. I don't know what you would like the best."
Suddenly, she discovered in a black satin case, a superb diamond necklace. Her heart began to beat covetously. Her hands trembled as she lifted it. She fastened it around her neck, upon her high dress and remained in ecstasy at the sight of herself.
Then with hesitations, she asked in anguish, "Could you lend me this, just this alone?"
"Yes, of course."
She flung herself on her friend, embraced her frenziedly and went away with her treasure.
The day of the party arrived. Madame Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling, and quite above herself with happiness. All the men stared at her, inquired her name and asked to be introduced to her. All the undersecretaries of state were eager to waltz with her. The minister noticed her.
She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything. In the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in the cloud of happiness made up of this universal homage and admiration, of the desire she had aroused, of the completeness of a victory so dear to her feminine heart.
She left about 4:00 in the morning. Since midnight, her husband had been dozing in a deserted little room in company with three other men whose wives were having a good time. He threw over her shoulders the garments he had brought for them to go home in, modest everyday clothes whose poverty clashed with the beauty of the ball dress.
She was conscious of this and was anxious to hurry away so that she should not be noticed by the other women putting on their costly furs. Loisel restrained her.
"Wait a little, you'll catch cold in the open. I'm going to fetch a cab."
But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the staircase. When they were out in the street, they could not find a cab. They began to look for one, shouting at the drivers whom they saw passing in the distance. They walked down towards the Seine, desperate and shivering. At last, they found on the quay one of those old night-prowling carriages, which are only to be seen in Paris after dark, as though they were ashamed of their shabbiness in the daytime. It brought them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly, they walked up to their own apartment. It was the end for her.
As for him, he was thinking that he must be at the office by 10:00. She took off the garments in which she had wrapped her shoulders, so as to see herself in all her glory before the mirror. But suddenly she uttered a cry. The necklace was no longer around her neck.
"What's the matter with you?" asked her husband, already half undressed.
She turned toward him in the utmost distress. "I've no longer got Madame Forestier's necklace."
He stared with astonishment. "What? [French 00:14:27]."
They searched in the folds of her dress, in the folds of the coat, in the pockets, everywhere. They could not find it.
"Are you sure that you still had it on when you came away from the ball?" he asked.
"Yes, I touched it in the hall at the ministry."
"But if you lost it in the street, we should have heard it fall."
"Yes, probably we should. Did you take the number of the cab?"
"No. You didn't notice, did you?"
"No."
They stared at one another, dumbfounded. At last, Loisel put on his clothes again.
"I'll go over all the ground we walked," he said, "and see if I can find it." Then he went out.
She remained in her evening clothes, lacking strength to get into bed, huddled on a chair, without volition or power of thought.
Her husband returned about 7:00. He had found nothing. He went to the police station, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to the cab companies, everywhere that a ray of hope impelled him.
She waited all day long in the same state of bewilderment at this fearful catastrophe. Loisel came home at night, his face lined and pale. He had discovered nothing.
"You must write to your friend," he said, "and tell her that you've broken the clasp of her necklace and are getting it mended. That will give us time to look about us." She wrote at his dictation.
By the end of a week, they had lost all hope. Loisel, who had aged five years, declared, "We must see about replacing the diamonds."
Next day they took the box which had held the necklace and went to the jeweller's whose name was inside. He consulted his books.
"It was not I who sold his necklace, Madame. I must have merely supplied the clasp."
They then went from jeweller to jeweller, searching for another necklace like the first, consulting their memories, both ill with remorse and anguish of mind.
In a shop at the Palais Royal, they found a string of diamonds, which seemed to them exactly like the one they were looking for. It was worth 40,000 francs. They were allowed to have it for 36,000. They begged a jeweller not to sell it for three days, and they arranged matters on the understanding that they would be taken back with 34,000 francs if the first one was found before the end of February.
Loisel possessed 18,000 francs left to him by his father. He intended to borrow the rest. He did borrow it, getting a thousand from one man, 500 from another five Louis here, three Louis there. He gave notes of hand, entered into ruinous agreements, did business with usurers and every type of moneylender. He mortgaged the whole remaining years of his existence, risked his signature without even knowing if he could honour it, and appalled at the agonizing face of the future, at the black misery about to fall upon him, at the prospect of every possible physical privation and moral torture, he went to get the new necklace and put down upon the jeweller's counter 36,000 francs.
When Madame Loisel took back the necklace to Madame Forestier, the latter said to her, in a chilly voice, "You ought to have brought it back sooner. I might have needed it."
She did not, as her friend had feared, open the case. If she had noticed the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Would she have taken her friend for a thief?
Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of abject poverty. From the very first she played her part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid off. She would pay it.
The servant was dismissed. They changed their flat. They took a garret under the roof. She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen. She washed the plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse pottery and the bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dishcloths and hung them out to dry on a string. Every morning she took the dustbin down into the street and carried up the water, stopping on each landing to get her breath, and clad like a poor woman, she went to the [French 00:18:43], to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on each arm, haggling, insulted, fighting for every wretched ha'penny of her money.
Every month, notes had to be paid off, others renewed, time gained. Her husband worked in the evenings at putting straight a merchant's accounts, and often at night he did copying at two pence ha'penny a page. And this life lasted 10 years. At the end of 10 years, everything was paid off. Everything. The usurer's charges and the accumulation of superimposed interest.
Madame Loisel looked old, now. She had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry. Her hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice and the water slopped all over the floor when she scrubbed it. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and thought of that evening long ago, the ball at which she had been so beautiful and so much admired.
What would've happened if she had never lost those jewels? Who knows? Who knows how strange life is, how fickle, how little is needed to ruin or to save.
One Sunday, as she had gone for a walk along the Champs Elysees, to freshen herself after the labours of the week, she caught sight suddenly of a woman who was taking a child out for a walk. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still attractive. Madame Loisel was conscious of some emotion.
Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly.
And now she had paid, she would tell her all, why not?
She went up to her. "Good morning, Jeanne."
The other did not recognize her and was surprised at being thus familiarly addressed by a poor woman.
"But madame," she stammered. "I don't know. You must be making a mistake."
"No, I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry. "Oh, my poor Mathilde, how you have changed."
"Yes, I've had some hard times since I saw you last. And many sorrows, and all on your account."
"On my account? How was that?"
"You remember the diamond necklace you lent me for the ball at the ministry?"
"Yes."
"Well, I lost it."
"How could you? Well, you brought it back."
"I brought you another one just like it. And for the last 10 years we have been paying for it. You realize it wasn't easy for us. We had no money. Well, it's paid for it last, and I'm glad indeed."
Madame Forestier had halted. "You say you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?"
"Yes. You hadn't noticed it. They were very much alike," and she smiled in proud and innocent happiness.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two hands. "Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine was imitation. It was worth, at the very most, 500 francs."
And that was The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant.

Joeita Gupta:
Wow. I mean, I don't know about you, but every time I read that story and the end, I feel a wrench in my heart. It's quite an ending. What do you make of it?

Andy Lehrer:
Well, I guess part of it's about class, and pretension, but it's about the need not to be materialistic. The need not to be trying to keep up appearances and also the need to be honest.
If she had been honest with herself, she wouldn't have had the need to put on airs and try to make herself come off as richer than she was. But also she'd been honest with her friend and said, "Well, I'm sorry I lost the necklace," she would've found out that it was an imitation, that she wouldn't have lost 10 years of her life. And this is a whole ironic twist there of her not having appreciated what she had, which was, I guess, a middle-class, fairly comfortable existence. And because of that, she ended up in a much more dire and impoverished situation. So I guess that's part of the lesson as well.

Joeita Gupta:
I suppose. Don't you feel even a little bit sorry for her? I felt very bad for her. If you think about women in those days, I mean, she wasn't the one working and she had to negotiate and beg and borrow for a dress that her husband had set the money aside for his gun and she doesn't really have access to a job. And really the only capital that women had was their looks and their appearances. That's how women got ahead. I actually, well, the first time I read the story, I felt a lot like you did. But over the years, being a woman and having worked and having asked myself these questions so many times, am I appropriately dressed for the theatre or for a certain occasion? Do I have enough jewelry? I do have a lot more sympathy for her than I did as maybe a younger person.

Andy Lehrer:
Well, yeah, I mean obviously there's also quite a degree of sexism in the story because it's her who is being silly or stupid in not being in trying to make herself off as something else. But it does also say that she's not like the other women who are perfectly happy with being in the same situation as she's in. So I think they are individualizing it a bit. But there is a bit, of course, some sexism. Of course, men also do the same sort of thing and spend beyond their means and try to make themselves off as something they aren't.

Joeita Gupta:
Well, thank you very much. I love The Necklace. It is a depressing story, but I have to say it's probably one of my favourites. So Andy, thank you so much for reading that one out. Go drink a tall glass of cold water and I'm sure we'll have you back next year. We'll have to pick the next year's story and hopefully revisit this particular tradition with you next year when the holiday season rolls around. Thank you so much, and enjoy your holidays.

Andy Lehrer:
Oh sure, my pleasure. Thanks.

Joeita Gupta:
That was my husband, Andrew Lehrer, who read The Necklace, and I don't know if you can tell, but I have a couple of tears in my eyes. This story really gets me right here in the feels. Just the very first time I heard it, I think it was my mom who told me the story when I was a kid and it's been with me for many years. I have a great deal of sentimental attachment to it, even though it is a very depressing story. But I hope you've enjoyed it as well as some of the other programming we brought to you these last few months.
I'd love to hear your feedback. You can write to us at feedback@ami.ca. You can find us on Twitter @AMIaudio. Use the hashtag #pulseAMI. You can give us a call at 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545. Don't forget to leave your permission to play the audio on the program.
That's all the time we have for today. I am sad to bid you adieu, but I would like to wish you a very happy holiday, however, you choose to celebrate them.
Of course, on behalf of myself and everybody here who makes The Pulse possible, I'd like to extend a warm thanks again to Andy Lehrer for reading The Necklace for us today.
Our technical producer is Marc Aflalo. Our videographer is Matthew McGirk and Andy Frank is the manager of AMI-audio. I've been your host, Joeita Gupta. Thanks for listening. Happy holidays, and we'll see you in the new year.