than herself, a pearl necklace, which she has the appalling misfortune to lose by some mischance never afterwards cleared up. "effort by effort, sacrifice by sacrifice, with specious pretexts, excuses, and a rage of desperate explanation of their future to restore the missing object. They finally obliterate-all to find that their whole consciousness and life have been convulsed and deformed in vain, that the pearls were but highly artful "imitation" and that their passionate penance has ruined them for nothing. The particular brilliance with which "La Parure" is written triumphs over a number of improbabilities. (The lack of insurance on the necklace, sometimes mentioned by critics, is not among then: insurance of jewelry in France began to be common only a few years later.) But even a halfway careful reading of the famous tale shows the relationships between the two women and between the heroine and her husband to be vague and unconvincing; and the purchase and successful substitution of the new necklace are of dubious verisimilitude. The Critic Gregory Weston. The story begins with a poor abused girl, who is kinder and prettier, then her stepsisters, but because of poor circumstances, her beauty goes unrecognized. The story's happy end occurs when the prince finds Cinderella's feet fit the glass slipper, realizes that poor Cinderella is the beauty he danced at the bar with, and then takes her away to marry him. In other words: unrecognized virtue is finally rewarded. Maupassant takes this Cinderella story, puts it in a more believable Third Republic setting, and by making Mathilde slightly less perfect then the improbable Cinderella, he makes Mathilde more sympathetic and realistic character. In the story it seems as if this more realistic Cinderella story was just about over, but Maupassant is not satisfied yet. He takes a trivial detail, Mathilde losing her necklace, and uses it to yank her from her new, happier life, to a horrible ...
