It is of no doubt that Roland Barthes was utterly wrong in his essay, "The Death of an Author", when he claimed that knowing about the author's past has no influence on the literature itself. Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace" proves this point. His family background shows vividly throughout the piece with heavy ties to his mother, with whom he was very close. Maupassant was born into a prosperous family who lost their fortune while he was still young. He witnessed the yearning for glamor and beauty through his mother, which is a large theme of "The Necklace". These events that happened while he was young strongly influenced his writing in this piece and it shows through the character of Mathilde Loisel. Mathilde and her husband Monsieur Loisel represent Maupassant's parents growing up as they both came from a wealthy family but soon lost their fortune. Maupassant grew up seeing his mother with a desire for prestige without being able to have it. By looking at "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant, we can see that Maupassant is influenced by his mother's life, and that poverty is exactly what Mathilde needed and that the husband will do anything for her, which readers don't see; this is important because it proves Roland Barthes wrong, changes Mathilde, and shows us that the husband gives up being himself in order to please her.

The story begins with a description on Mathilde. "The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known, understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man"(Maupassant 33).

 The author describes her as an unfortunate soul that has the bad luck of being born into a poor family of clerks. She is seen, by herself and the narrator, as a pretty woman who deserves better than what she was given. She knows this and expects more than what she has as a result. She feels the need to own better, be better, and be treated better than what she has. The end of the passage describes how she will never be loved by an important rich man because of her socioeconomic status. She has no dowry, which is money and property given to the husband by the wife during marriage, and no hope to be noticed by any man of status. The story goes on to say, "Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry"(Maupassant 33). This explains how she felt about not having all the money and prestige she believed she deserved. She knew the woman she dreamt of being would never have accepted the condition of her house, or the clothes she has to wear. She suffered everyday thinking about how a woman like her should not have to go through what she does. At the beginning of the story the only thing she was worried about was material possessions and not the meaning behind them.

Mathilde's husband is the opposite of what she is and gives up his own material pleasures that make him, him in order to make Mathilde happier. His compassion is shown when they get invited to a ball. Her husband inquires how much a suitable yet simple gown would cost and she takes a moment to think about how much she could say without it sounding like too much. She finally answered him with a price of 400 francs and he grew pale because he was saving up just that much to buy himself a gun for next summer to go shooting with his friends. (Maupassant 35). Mathilde obsesses over the judgements of others if she attends this ball without suitable wear. She has no concern for his pleasures but merely wants pleasure of her own. He sacrificed his pleasure of buying a gun with money he had saved up and going shooting with his friends, for his wife to buy a dress for the ball. A gun in our society today is seen as a very phallic item. The gun is used as a symbol of his manhood in this instance. Then, when Mathilde loses the necklace at the ball, after more than a day of searching endlessly from police headquarters to cab companies, he saves her once again. He bought a replacement necklace from a jeweler even though it was way over his budget, so was forced to, "borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there He compromised all the rest of his life" (Maupassant 37). Her husband lost his independence and became a servant to her. He made promises he was not sure that he could keep in order to pay for her mistake. He cared about his wife more than his own life. Her obsession with material possessions caused them to go into severe poverty for 10 years in order to pay back their debts.  He gave himself away in order to make her happy. He lost his livelihood in order to make hers complete.

Being in poverty, however, was the best thing to ever happen to Mathilde. Her character developed during this time period and she was transformed from an empty shell, which needed to be surrounded by nice things in order to feel whole, into a whole person that was battered and broken from heavy work. She was wiser, more intelligent, and worthy of something at this point. 

"Thereafter Madame Loisel knew the horrible existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with sudden heroism At the end of ten years they had paid everything, everything, with the rates of usury and the accumulations of the compound interest.

Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impoverished households--strong and hard and rough."(Maupassant 38). 

Through this experience she transformed into a hardworking woman. She now knew what it was like to be a poor woman in her time. In the story, Mathilde represents the necklace itself. In the beginning she was fake and only wanted to show how pretty she was, and she had little to no value as a person. After the poverty and the struggle however she became a different person. She was 'strong and hard and rough' exactly like a diamond from the necklace. She was worth more by the end of the transformation and poverty made her a better person. She no longer obsessed over materials.

In Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace," the main character Mathilde suddenly becomes poor and has to quickly adapt to her situation. This is roughly based off the way in which his mom went through a similar situation. She is forced into a life of poverty where she must work for what she has and learns to appreciate what she earns. It transformed her mindset from a material-driven dream world to reality. The author also showed how the actions and needs of Mathilde affected her husband and herself when they lost everything they owned and how her husband lost his self-worth in order to create Mathilde's. She underwent a transformation from an immature self-loathing young woman to a hardworking and tough individual through her husband's loss of self.

