at Madame Loisel had and what she
wanted, between what she was and what she thought she could be, between
her brief moment of triumph and the long years of her undoing, between
the trivialness of what she did and the heaviness of her punishment.
These contrasts are developed not by reasoning but by action, each
action plunging Madame Loisel deeper and deeper into misery. The
author's attitude toward his work forms also a part of the real
background. Maupassant shows neither sympathy nor indignation. He writes
as if he were the stenographer of impersonal and pitiless fate.

_Plot_. Madame Loisel, a poor but beautiful and ambitious woman, borrows
and loses a diamond necklace valued at $7200. That, at least, is what
Madame Loisel thought for ten terrible years, and that is what the
reader thinks till he comes to the last words of the story. The plot
belongs, therefore, to that large group known as hoax plots. In most of
these stories one person plays a joke on another. In this story a grim
fate is made to play the joke. In fact, the current phrase, "the irony
of fate," finds here perfect illustration. We use the expression not so
much of a great misfortune as of a misfortune that seems brought about
by a peculiarly malignant train of circumstances. The injury in this
case not only was irremediable but turned on an accident. Notice also
how Maupassant has sharpened the poignancy and bitterness of Madame
Loisel's misfortune by making it depend not only on an accident that
might so easily not have happened but on a misunderstanding that might
so easily have been explained. When Madame Loisel, just on the threshold
of her life of drudgery, took the necklace bought on credit to Madame
Forestier, the latter "did not open the case, to the relief of her
friend." The irony of fate could hardly go further; but it does go
further a little later, when Madame Forestier, still young and
beautiful, fails to recognize Madame Loisel because the latter had lost
youth, beauty, daintiness, her very self, in toiling to pay to Madame
Forestier a debt that was not a debt. Just before the final revelation
Madame Loisel is made to say, "I am very glad." There is a unique pathos
in her use of this word: it lifted her a little from the ground that her
fall might be all the harder.

There is no denying the art of this story, but it is art without heart.
The author is a craftsman rather than a creator, a master of the loom
rather than of the forge. M