What does the necklace symbolize for Madame Loisel?
Madame Mathilde Loisel's borrowed necklace symbolizes the dream that she has always desired: "to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after." For one night at the ball, Madame Loisel will be that person.
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.
Without the necklace, the dress would not have sufficed. Without the dress, she would not have been attired properly. The necklace was the final piece of the puzzle to make her the belle of the ball--at least for one night.
After the necklace was lost, it came to represent the greatest folly of her life: She traded everything for the one night, and when she lost the necklace, she and her husband spent the next decade repaying the debts it encountered.
What symbolic meaning does the necklace hold for Madame Loisel?
From the very beginning, Loisel feels inadequate. She longs to go to this party, yet she doesn't "have a thing to wear." She and her husband happen to live in the "lower bourgeoisie, a class that stands above tradesmen and laborers." So she has some money, does better than her parents did, but she longs to live the life of luxury. Her main conflict is an inner one. She wants to be a part of the upper class, but she will never attain that life. In fact, her actions end up sending her further down the ladder of social standing.
This necklace, which she thinks is genuine, represents that lifestyle. It symbolizes everything she longs for in her materialistic life. When she loses it, she is so embarrassed that she lies about it, purchases a real necklace in its place, and then suffers the rest of her life making up for its loss. From the beginning, she felt that she deserved it. However, as she worked for the next ten years of her life, she realized her own true worth. The irony is that the necklace itself was just as worthless as her past ten years had been.
What does the necklace symbolize to Mme. Loisel? How does its symbolism change by the end?
Initially, the necklace—which Mme Loisel believes to be an expensive piece of jewelry—symbolizes a more opulent, luxurious world, a world of wealth, sophistication, and high living. Mathilde has always regarded herself as a cut above the rest, as someone born to higher things. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, she believes that aristocratic blood flows through her veins. The necklace and all it symbolizes represents a chance for Mathilde to enjoy what she regards as the lifestyle of her supposedly noble ancestors.
In due course, the necklace, rather like Mathilde's aristocratic pretensions, turns out to be fake. Instead of wearing an expensive necklace to the Education Ministry Ball, Mathilde wore a worthless piece of costume jewelry instead. And yet, because she thought she'd lost such an expensive item, she and her husband have plunged themselves into poverty in order to pay for a replacement.
The necklace now represents something completely different for Mathilde. Now it's a symbol of her pretensions to be something better than she was. It's a symbol of the shallowness and superficiality that led her to choose what turned out to be a fake necklace, which in turn has led to her leading the life of a poverty-stricken drudge.