What is the theme of Maupassant's short story "The Necklace"?

I like the coments of the previous poster, but those answers sound as much like morals as they do themes. As I understand the terms, a moral is a lesson that you're supposed to learn from reading a story (e.g. the fable about the tortoise and the hare might be told to teach a young reader that "slow and steady wins the race," i.e. that hard work and persistence will bring you success in the end). Themes, on the other hand, are more generally abstract ideas and are often framed in terms of opposiitions or pairs, such as "Self and others" or "Individual versus society."

I would say, then, that Guy de Maupassant's story "The Necklace" might have the theme of "honesty and deceit" or the theme of "appearance versus reality." These are abstract terms, of course, and need to be explained further by identifying specific elements in the story that reflect or reinforce these abstract terms.

Personally, I prefer the open-endedness of themes over the restricted wording of morals. Morals often sound to me like plattitudes; we've heard some of these items so often that they really don't seem to have much meaning left in them.