English Language & Literature — CBSE Class 10 board question

Matilda Loisel's excessive pride in her beauty and her craving for admiration led directly to her downfall in Guy de Maupassant's The Necklace.

Matilda was born into a modest family but felt destined for luxury. She suffered constantly over her shabby apartment, simple food, and lack of fine clothes and jewels. When invited to the Minister's ball, she pressured her husband into spending four hundred francs on a dress, then borrowed a diamond necklace from Mme Forestier, refusing to attend without it — she could not bear to look "poverty-stricken" among rich women.

At the ball, she was intoxicated by admiration and the sense of victory her beauty brought her. Rushing away afterwards to hide her modest wrap, she lost the necklace. Too proud to confess the truth to Mme Forestier, she and her husband replaced it with a thirty-six-thousand-franc necklace, plunging into ten years of grinding poverty.

The bitter irony is that the original necklace was fake, worth only five hundred francs. Had Matilda not been ruled by vanity and pride, the entire disaster could have been avoided.

Source: The Necklace, Chapter 7

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• Examiners expect you to trace the chain of cause and effect: pride → demand for dress and jewels → loss at ball → refusal to confess → debt → ten years of hardship → ironic revelation.
• Include the irony (necklace was fake) — it is the thematic heart of the story and always fetches marks.
• Use textual details (four hundred francs, thirty-six thousand francs, ten years) to show close reading.
• Avoid padding; keep every sentence tied to the theme of "pride leading to downfall."