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Matilde, a beautiful lady who is not satisfied with her middle class life with her husband, a simple clerk, who manages to get his hands on 2 party invites to a party that every one wants to go to.
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Matilde is not happy which confuses Monsieur Loisel who was expecting her to be thrilled, instead she carries on about how she doesn't have a nice dress or nice jewelry to wear. Her husband gives her 400 francs to buy a nice dress and suggests that she can go to Madame Forestier and borrow a piece of jewelry for the party
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She had time of her life dancing and she could feel everyone's eyes on her and people were all coming to talk to her and wanting to be introduced. Then once she returns home from the ball she realizes she has lost the necklace given to her. They look everywhere for the necklace but do not find it so they try to find a replacement but its expensive which makes the husband all of his inheritance, 35000 francs, and go into debt to get enough money to return it to Madame Forestier.
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Matilde returns the necklace to Madame Forestier who places it back on its shelf without even looking at it. Matilde and Monsieur Loisel then give up many of the luxuries that they had to pay off the debt, including their servants, so Matilde has to do the house work while Monsieur Loisel goes to work. They work for 10 years to pay off the debt and when they finally do Matilde is no longer beautiful. Matilde remises about the ball and about their life before she lost the necklace.
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Matilde sees Madame Forestier and confesses about the necklace and how she lost it and replaced it with a diamond necklace that looked very similar causing Madame Forestier to stop and tell her that the old one that she lost had paste not diamonds in it and it would have only been worth 500 francs.