The False Gems - Guy de Maupassant

The false gems is a simple and straightforward story albeit with a couple of convoluted morals. Before I begin with the interpretation, I’ll provide the summary.

The story is about a man whose yearly income is just about average. Though they lead a happy married life, he abhors her habit of wearing fake jewellery. One day she gets a cold and dies. Sad and pennyless, the man finds himself broke and homeless. Desperate for a meal, he gets the idea to sell his dead wife’s fake jewellery. The jeweller however, tells him that the necklace is real and is worth 4 years of his salary. Overjoyed, the man ecstatically sells all of the jewellery and becomes rich again. The story ends on an ironic note. The last lines are as follows:

Six months after, he married again. His second wife was a very virtuous woman;

but had a terrible temper. She made his life very miserable.

The moral of the story is that honesty is not always that important.  He was happier with a woman who was unfaithful and dishonest, although he didn't know it, just as he didn't know that her false gemstones were actually the real thing. Finding what he thought would make him happy, he actually had a worse life.