The Necklace

…“Ball of Tallow”) and “The Necklace” (1881) the plot is too contrived, the reversing irony too neat, and the artifice too apparent. In other stories, like “The House of Madame Tellier” (1881), Maupassant’s easy and fluid prose captures the innocence and the corruption of human behaviour.

…de Maupassant’s popular story “The Necklace” heralds the introduction of a character who is to be treated like a specimen under a microscope. The early works of Joris-Karl Huysmans, of the German dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, and of the Portuguese novelist José Maria Eça de Queirós were based on the precepts…