The ending part of The Necklace sounds tragic to many readers who grieve over Mathilde's lost youth and beauty. Nonetheless, it is more a blessing than a tragedy for her to pay for the necklace at the price of losing what used to capture all her soul.
The ten years Mr. and Mrs. Loisel spent paying back their debts is definitely a huge burden and hardship for the lower-class couple. However, it is the very debt that brings Mathilde back to reality to taste the survival bitterness, which in turn taught her a lesson on the price of vanity exhausting both herself and her innocent husband. What really shocks me is Mathilde's reaction when she happened to meet Mme. Forestier, a friend whose social and economic status is much higher than the old, poor Mathilde ,who was no longer the Mme. Loisel ten years ago that would never expose her relatively lower-level identity to a Bourgoies. Instead, she was willing to tell someone higher in social status about her current situations. From that point of view, the deal is indeed a blessing in disguise, which gives Mathilde bravery to face the reality.
Guy de Maupassant left enough space for us to imagine what would happen to the “brand-new” Mathilde when news reached to her that the necklace she spent ten years paying back is actually paste. Mad or rageful may Mathild be, it will not disaprove the fact that Mathilde has become mature spiritually.