The irony in "The Necklace" is based on the fact that Madame Loisel and her husband spend ten years of toil and privation paying for a necklace which turns out to be a cheap imitation. The critical point in the story is reached when Madame Forestier tells Madame Loisel: "Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs! . . . " It is not only Mathilde Loisel who is shocked, but the reader as...
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