Why does the setting fail to complement Mme. Loisel in "The Necklace"?

The setting of Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Necklace” is the apartment of Monsieur and Madame Loisel at the Rue des Martyrs (which, in English, translates into “the street of martyrs”) in Paris. The tenement is a small one, furnished with the bare necessities that enable a life in genteel poverty. The reader really does not get a chance to form a full conjecture about the state of the apartment because Mathilde, Madame Loisel, has already formed a very strong opinion of it.

 “She grieved over the shabbiness of her apartment, the dinginess of the walls, the worn-out appearance of the chairs, the ugliness of the draperies.”

Since the home is not directly described in this manner, we assume that the “shabbiness” and “dinginess” of the apartment is a product of Mathilde’s mind. This is in part because all she does is complain about her life and about how little she has.

The primary reason why the setting does not complement Mathilde is precisely because of its simplicity. Although the reader cannot quite discern the reality behind the “dinginess” and the “shabbiness” that Mathilde’s opinion portrays, it is clear that the world inside of Mathilde’s head is quite disproportionate to the world in which she really lives. In her mind, Mathilde only dreams of opulence and extravagance. She wants things that she does not have any means to acquire, such as servants, expensive furniture, flamboyant people, and exquisite things to eat and drink. 

In her reality, her lifestyle is the exact opposite. She can barely afford a helping girl to keep in her household as a servant; she can only manage to offer soup to her husband, a dish which he gratefully accepts, and she is in a constant state of unhappiness and despair caused by the overall dissatisfaction that she feels with life.

The key problem with Mathilde is her false sense of entitlement. She honestly believes that she really deserves much better than what she has. She feels that she was meant for bigger and better things. In turn, she rejects the good things that she may already have, and takes them for granted. She is even mean to her husband, snobby to her servant girl, and somewhat resentful toward Madame Forestier. She is, in many ways, like the necklace that she ends up borrowing from her: fake, and not that valuable as a friend, or as a wife. Her surroundings, even though poor, are still more genuine and real than Mathilde’s personality will ever be.

If Mathilde showed even a small degree of gratitude and humility, her surroundings would perhaps bring some value out of her as a person, and she may, in turn, even cheer the place up with a more complaisant nature. It comes to no surprise that Mathilde and her surroundings are a total mismatch of dissonance and irony.