Narrator and point of view

The events described in the short story “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant are told by a third-person narrator. The narrator is outside the story and functions as an observer, mainly focusing on Mathilde’s perspective. For example, her perspective is presented when she thinks about the poverty of her home: 

She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the walls, from the worn-out chairs, from the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry.

The narrator knows what Mathilde thinks and feels. For example, the narrator knows that Mathilde is manipulative when it comes to influencing her husband: “She reflected several seco...