their lodgings for "a garret under the roof." Mathilde herself had to go to work as well; "she came to know what heavy housework meant." She became a servant for others, washing dishes, doing the laundry, carrying the slops down to the street every morning, and doing the shopping "dressed like a woman of the people." For ten years Mathilde and her husband slaved to pay off the debt, and at the end of that time, Mathilde "looked old...a woman of impoverished households." Had she only been satisfied with the life she had in the beginning, she might have lived in comfort all those years, and retained at least a vestige of her youth.

Before the fateful night of the fancy party, Mathilde Loisel's life is actually pretty good, though she doesn't know it and is not exactly grateful for what she has. She is "pretty and charming," and married to a good man with a good job, but she is not satisfied. She "suffer[s] ceaselessly" because she feels that she was "born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries" that she cannot afford. Another woman, the narrator tells us, would not even have been conscious of the deficiencies Mathilde sees in her home, her possessions, and so on. She actually has a "little Breton peasant who did her humble housework," though the sight of the girl also makes Mathilde feel badly because she cannot afford better. Her husband is happy with her, happy with their food and their lives, but "she loved nothing" but dresses and jewels which she could not buy.

Mathilde loses her beauty and looks old after she pays back the price of the real necklace.

Before borrowing the necklace, Mathilde was not wealthy, but she had beauty.  However, she wanted to be rich.  After she borrowed and lost the necklace and had to pay back the loan, she lost what little wealth she had and her beauty.

Madame Loisel was a beautiful woman.  On the night of the ball, with her dress and the borrowed necklace (even though it was fake), she was the hit of the evening.

Madame Loisel was a great success. She was prettier than any other woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling and wild with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her name, sought to be introduced.

After she loses the necklace, everything changes.  First of all, they do not know that it is fake.  They borrowed it from her rich friend, and they think it is a real necklace.  They borrow money to buy a real diamond and return a real diamond in its place, and then they have to work that off for years. 

The time and hard work are not friendly to Madame Loisel.  Before the incident they were comfortable.  Her husband was a clerk, so they were basically middle class.  Madame Loisel is sent into the downward spiral of the “horrible existence of the needy” for ten whole years.

Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impoverished households--strong and hard and rough. With frowsy hair, skirts askew and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water.

The stress and hard work make her look like this.  She dismisses her servant, has to do housework, and has to stress about paying off the debt for a decade.  That can do a lot to a person.  Then she learns that the necklace was a "paste."  How ironic.

The lesson here is that you should always tell the truth, I suppose.  Of course, the true lesson is that you should not want more than you have.  Mathilde should have appreciated what she did have, which was her beauty and the love of her husband, instead of coveting a position in society.

Mathilde Loisel is presented as a spoiled, selfish woman up until she loses the necklace and she and her husband are forced into poverty. From the beginning, she makes it clear she has married below her status, even though her parents were poor artists. She complains constantly of being poor, even though she has a nice home, goes out often, and even has a servant.

The best example of her selfish attitude is when her husband brings home the invitation to the party, which he has worked hard to get. He is so excited to give it to her, and instead of being excited, she is upset because she has no fancy clothing to wear to it. Then, the reader sees into her thoughts to learn that when he asks how much she needs for a dress, she debates the maximum she can ask for before he will flat out say no. She is not happy with anything he does for her.

In Guy de Maupassant's story "The Necklace," Mathilde Loisel is presented to the reader as a woman in a constant state of unhappiness.  She focuses on the "poverty of her rooms," and the lack of the type of wardrobe she felt she should have, for "those were the only things she loved."  Never does she reflect with gratitude on the fact that she has the means to employ a cleaning woman while she herself does not work, or that she has a husband who is hard-working and thinks of her happiness.  Her dissatisfaction and envy even keep her from maintaining a friendship because the stark difference that she perceives between their financial situations cause her such misery.  She is presented as such an unsympathetic character that the reader doesn't even feel sorry for her when the necklace is lost and she must begin a ten-year struggle to pay back the money she and her husband were forced to borrow to replace it.    Guy de Maupassant presents Mathilde Loisel as a proud, vain, ungrateful woman who suffers not because of some strange twist of fate, but as a direct result of her character flaws.