What is the symbolism in "The Jewelry" by Guy de Maupassant?

On the one hand, the symbolism of jewelry seems to be the opposite of the symbolism of the woman with whom Monsieur Lantin falls in love. When he first sees her at a party, she

seemed the perfect example of the virtuous woman to whom every sensible young man dreams of entrusting his life. Her simple beauty had a modest, angelic charm and the imperceptible smile which always hovered about her lips seemed to be a reflection of her heart.

She seems like everything good and wonderful that one could ever hope for in a wife. When she dies, he cannot seem to figure out how it is that she kept their household running on his income. He runs short of money and tries to sell one of her necklaces; this is when he learns that her jewels are, in fact, real rather than paste. In short, the jewels are deceptively real while the wife was deceptively false.

However, I think there's another way to view the symbolism. She seemed "poor and decent, quiet and gentle" when Monsieur Lantin met her, just as her jewels seemed poor but decent to him during her lifetime. Later, he learns that the jewels are real and that his wife had, evidently, been getting money and expensive gifts from someone else but had been using that money to keep their home nice and to make him happy. It is possible to view what she did as an act of love—she must have loved her husband, though he could not provide for her materially in the way that she would have liked. So, she took it upon herself to find other financial support which she then used to make their life together so much nicer than it would otherwise have been. In this sense, then, the symbolism of the jewels matches the symbolism of the woman.

The symbolism of this story ultimately revolves around the jewelry owned by Lantin's wife (jewelry he believes to be fake, only to learn otherwise later on in the story).

Ultimately, the symbolism of the jewelry is symbolic of the relationship between Lantin and his wife, shaped as it is by deceptions Lantin himself is unaware of. From a certain perspective, one might say that there is an inverse relationship between the two: Lantin assumes that the jewelry is false while his wife is faithful, but in reality, the jewelry itself is entirely real, and it is his wife who has been deceptive. In discovering the truth about his wife's jewelry after her death, Latin also discovers the truth of her infidelities (and with it, the truth of his own ignorance concerning the reality of their marriage). The two are very closely linked. The one stands for the other.

At the same time, I think there might be a larger social criticism at play (much in keeping with Maupassant's more famous short story "The Necklace"). In both stories, falsehood and high society are juxtaposed with one another. One sees two major symbols through which this juxtaposition plays out: first with the jewelry (worth a fortune, as we will later learn) but also with the theater. However, again and again, the theme of falsehood repeats: with the jewelry, with his wife's unfaithfulness, and finally, with Lantin himself, who will falsely claim to have gained his fortune through inheritance. From this perspective, all of these various falsehoods add up to symbolize those still larger falsehoods ingrained within society itself.

It’s easy to see the jewels in the story as symbolic of a betrayal of trust. The wife, who had been the mistress of a wealthy man for some time, clearly had been too subtle for her husband; her “fake” jewels, which he only realizes after her death are worth thousands, are evidence of both her duplicity and his gullibility. No wonder it is such a shock for him!

Maupassant might be trying to get at something else, though, because it is also true that the man was happiest when he was ignorant of his wife’s affair. Considered this way, the jewels might represent the ambivalent nature of truth. For example, it is ironic that the “fake” jewels – jewels that pretend to be real – are in fact real jewels pretending to be fakes. Arguably he would have been better off not knowing the “truth” of the jewels or of his wife.

It’s also worth mentioning that there is not much evidence in the story that his wife was unhappy with her husband, either, adding a further ambiguity. It’s entirely possible that she was happiest when she was able to pretend with her husband that the jewels were fake, and that she had been faithful. In this way, the ambiguous nature of the jewels might represent the wife’s own divided feelings.

This move also goes double for Maupassant’s narrative strategy. Maupassant’s narrator is not exactly reliable, since he too is participating in a deception – he does not reveal the truth about the jewelry until the end of the story, so in effect the reader experiences the same twist and disappointment as the man. Considered this way, the jewels might represent unreliable nature of narration itself.

What are the plot, setting, characters, conflicts, symbols, and themes in "The Jewelry"?

Let's go through your list item by item:

Plot: Lantin, the protagonist, is a government clerk who is married to to a "nice" girl from the country. He lives a happy life with his wife, who develops two passions living in Paris: one for the theatre, and a second for costume jewelry. When his wife suddenly dies of pneumonia, Lantin is devastated and surprised to find that it is difficult to make ends meet on his salary—something his wife found easy to do. Finally, in need of money, Lantin decides to sell some of his wife's costume jewelry, but when he takes it to a jeweler, he finds that all the jewelry is real and worth a fortune! Clearly, his wife had been the mistress of a wealthy man. This unexpected windfall allows him to quit his job and remarry, and although his second wife is very upright, his life with her is miserable.

Setting: Maupassant's story is set in Paris. For such a short story, there is a lot of local detail mentioned. The fancy restaurants where Lantin dines—Café Anglais and Voisin's—are real places, as are all the many streets mentioned in the story and even Lantin's address, 16 Rue des Martyrs. It is fun to look these places up in Google streetview.

Character: Lantin is the major character of the story. He is a minor government official and a bit clueless. He is taken with his own self importance, which blinds him to his wife's infidelity. His wife is a secondary character. She appears in the first part of the story, but her true nature is difficult to discern.

Conflict: The conflict in the story is best understood as an internal conflict, perhaps, or an implied one. In a sense, the true conflict—that Lantin's wife is misleading Lantin and leading a kind of double life—is only hinted at, since Lantin only begins to suspect the truth after her death. In another sense, the story is about conflicts that are deferred or missing. Lantin never confronts his wife, and once he learns the truth about her, he is unable to examine his own motives for marrying her or think about how he could have been so deceived.

Symbol: The jewelry, obviously, is the main symbol in the story. One way to think about symbolic nature of the jewelry is to understand it as a token of love: first, as presents to Lantin's wife from her lover, and second, as a legacy the wife leaves to her husband. Ironically, as long as Lantin thinks the jewels are fake, he can believe in the genuineness of his wife's love. It is when their true nature is revealed that their relationship is proved to be a sham.

Theme: The themes of the story are the nature of love, self deception, and the degree to which one is able to truly know another person. Another theme could be that greed is stronger than love, or that whatever we might believe about love, self interest is always more important.

When reading stories like this, I like to think about what parts of the story might be missing. Here, the whole story of the wife's affair and her lover is missing. It's clear that his wife, for all her country naïveté, was much more savvy than her husband. It may even be that her affair was a way for her to provide for him, since his salary was not enough to support his lifestyle. How interesting it would be to tell the story from the wife's point of view!

What is symbolic in "The Jewelry" by Guy de Maupassant?

The narrator describes Monsieur Lantin's first interest in the woman who would become his wife:

The young girl was a perfect type of the virtuous woman in whose hands every sensible young man dreams of one day entrusting his happiness. Her simple beauty had the charm of angelic modesty, and the imperceptible smile which constantly hovered about the lips seemed to be the reflection of a pure and lovely soul. Her praises resounded on every side.

This young woman's apparent virtue, her "angelic modesty," and one's sense that she has a "pure and lovely soul" are false or misleading. Her beauty and appearance of innocence are, in fact, symbolic of her deceitfulness. She is not virtuous—she later, we assume, has an extramarital affair with someone who sends her very expensive gifts and perhaps even money. Madame Lantin is not what she seems, either before or after her wedding. She is so charming and wonderful that her husband never assumes for a moment that she might be unfaithful to him. She is, in a sense, like her jewels: her apparent virtue is not real, and their apparent worthlessness is not, either. Both have symbolic and deceptive appearances.

In the short story "The Jewelry," also translated as "The False Gems," the symbolism can be found in the jewels that Madame Lantin owns, the importance she gives them, and the fact that they are evidence of her secret, double life. The jewels prove Madame Lantin is cheating. The fact that the gems are real is the big irony of it all because the jewelry symbolizes the fake nature of the Lantins' relationship.

Mrs. Lantin's jewels are, in the opinion of Monsieur Lantin, her husband, "just garbage." He foolishly thinks his wife's fascination with what he thinks are just glass and paste jewels is a mere caprice brought by the fact that they cannot afford real jewels. Still, Madame Lantin outdoes herself in wearing her diamonds and pearls to the theater, although each time she wears one of her typical, plainer dresses. Nevertheless, Monsieur Lantin loves his wife too much to care what her penchants may be.

After his wife's sudden death, Monsieur Lantin enters a period of grief that takes over most of his being. Not only is he extremely saddened, but his personal expenses, for some reason, seem impossible to cover. Since his wife managed the expenses, Lantin basically falls through the cracks and becomes impoverished.

To the last days of her life she had continued to make purchases, bringing home new gems almost every evening, and he turned them over some time before finally deciding to sell the heavy necklace, which she seemed to prefer, and which, he thought, ought to be worth about six or seven francs; for it was of very fine workmanship, though only imitation.

Once feeling the pain of hunger, Lantin resorts to selling one of the pieces of jewelry, assuming he would get very little money for it. He then finds out the jewels are real, and that a benefactor of his wife's sent gifts of this kind to her for a long time. Assuming that he is impoverished without his wife also leads to the realization that the benefactor may have also been giving Mrs. Lantin extra money.

Hence, the marriage that Monsieur Lantin missed so much was the real lie in his life, while those so-called fake jewels were real after all.