e Necklace" that is also characteristics of so many of Maupassant's other short stories is that it deals with the genteel poor. He excels in the description of low-ranking civil servants, having been one himself for eight years. No writer has known better than he did how such men struggle to keep up appearances while living on the breadline has. It is a prospect that seems to have no end until death. In his emphasis upon shabby gentility and dreary routine, no writer has known better how to describe such lives. Into this static situation, a terrible crisis suddenly erupts: the necklace vanishes. The rest of "The Necklace" is concerned with the inexorable working-out of the crisis. This is the second characteristic feature of Maupassant’s approach to the short- story form. Crises, in Maupassant's short stories, are either single or two fold. "The Necklace' relates a twofold crisis: the loss of the necklace is but the prelude to the discovery, much later on, that the necklace was a fake.” (Adamson 87) A third feature of "The Necklace", characteristic not only of Maupassant but also perhaps of his "naturals', is that the narrator does not overtly look into the minds of his characters. The characters in "The Necklace', and there are only three, are viewed extendedly, being as it were characters in a drama rather than a prose fiction. The Critic is Francis Steegmuller. In the following excerpt, Steegmuller maintains that the shock ending of "The Necklace" is the highlight of the story, condemning Maupassant's portrayal of relationships as "vague and unconvincing" and his plot as improbable. Steegmuller also asserts that while Maupassant has a reputation as a specialist in surprise endings, only a few of his stories actually conclude in this manner. (Steegmuller 99) In "La Parure" a poor young woman, under "social" stress, the need of making anappearance on an important occasion, borrows from an old school friend, now much richer ...
