One day Mathilde’s husband shows her an invitation they have gotten to a dinner at the Ministry of Education! This only upsets her. She claims to have no dresses to wear. Loisel doesn’t understand her. He can’t sympathize with her unhappiness.” He stopped amazed and bewildered as his wife began to cry. “He volunteers to buy her a new dress and she takes advantage to the fullest. The dress costs Loisel his next summer’s vacation, but he is willing to make that sacrifice.
Right away Mathilde starts complaining again. She complains that she has no nice jewelry to wear so she will not go. She is manipulating her husband again. He proposes a solution: borrow jewelry from Mrs. Forrestier, Mathilde’s rich friend. Mathilde loves the idea and goes to her friend who generously offers her anything she wants. Mathilde picks a superb diamond necklace. This is what she wants.
At the party Mathilde is a great success. Everyone wants to dance with her. The other women are jealous of her. She has a wonderful time while her husband sleeps in the back room. This is the night she had always been waiting for.
When it’s time to leave, Mr. Loisel puts Mathilde’s shawl on her shoulders and she is ashamed of it. She rushes away to avoid being seen. Her evening is over. They take a rickety old cab that is so wretched that it doesn’t come out in the day because it is ashamed of the way it looks.
When they get home, Mathilde takes one last look in the mirror to see herself once more in her glory and discovers that the necklace was gone!!
Loisel retraces all their steps trying to find the necklace but to no avail. It is lost and they must buy a new one. They go to many jewelry shops, looking for a necklace identical to the one Mathilde had lost. Finally they find one that costs 36000 francs, a monumental amount!!
Loisel had saved 18000 francs that his father had left him as an inheritance, but he must borrow the other 18000 francs at enormous rates of interest. Mrs. Forrestier complains about how late they are in the returning of her necklace, and how she might have needed it during that delay. She does not notice that it was replaced with a new one.
The Loisels suffer to repay their debts. Mathilde accepts a cheap attic flat, and does all the heavy house work herself to save on domestic help. Now she pinches pennies and haggles with the local trades men. Mr. Loisel moonlights to make extra money. For ten years they struggle, but they endure. She becomes a mess, not caring about the way she looks anymore, and she learns to accept her grim reality. Once in a while, however, she thinks back to that night, that wonderful ball when she was at her finest, and dreams about what it would have been like had she not lost that necklace. Finally, after ten years, the Loisels successfully pay back the loans. Mrs. Loisel is roughened and aged by the work, but she has behaved heroically and shown her mettle.
Now for the first time in ten years Mathilde sees Mrs. Forrestier. Mathilde approaches Mrs.Forrestier, but she does not recognize her after her hardships had changed her. Mathilde tells her everything now that there is no shame since they are no longer in debt. Mrs. Forrestier tells Mathilde that the diamond necklace that she borrowed was not, in fact, made of real diamonds at all: It was costume jewelry and worth only a fraction of the price that the Loisels had paid for its replacement. In fact, it had been worth a mere 500 francs. If only mathilde could have overcome her embarrassment right in the beginning then she wouldn’t have had to put up with those years of torture to begin with