A Rose for Emily

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A Rose for Emily

• William Faulkner

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About the author
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William Faulkner life

• William Faulkner(1897-1962)was born in New
  Albany,Mississippi. He attended the University of
  Mississippi in Oxford before and after his
  service in the Royal Canadian Air Force in World
  I. His literary career began in New Orleans where
  he met Sherwood Anderson, who helped him get his
  first novel Soldiers Pay published in 1926. The
  work which won Faulkner a Nobel Prize in 1950 is
  often a depiction of life in his fictional
  Yoknapatawpha County, an imaginative
  reconstruction of the area adjacent to Oxford.

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A Picture of Yoknapatawpha County( a little
postage stamp of native soil)
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His Main Writings

• His major novels
• The Sound and the Fury(1929)
• As I Lay Dying(1930)
• Sanctuary(1931)
• Light in August(1932)
• Absalom , Absalom !(1936)
• The Hamlet(1940)
• His books of short stories
• These Thirteen (1931)
• Go down, Moses(1942)
• The Collected Stories of William Fanlkner(1950)

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Faulkner A country folk writer

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William Faulkner American Writer1897-1962

• The Nobel Prize in Literature 1949
• "for his powerful and artistically unique
  contribution to the modern American novel"

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About the text

• A Rose for Emily is one of Faulkners most
  widely read in the American classroom.
• Chinese students may find it difficult to
  understand and appreciate. Some of them may think
  it is a bizarre story about an old eccentric lady
  in an American Southern town. It is true that the
  setting of the story is the American South. Yet,
  the theme of the story is universal, transcending
  the boundaries of time and space. Like many other
  works of great literature, this short story tells
  about love, death, honor, pride, change, and loss.

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• The story is set in the southern town of
  Jefferson in Yoknapatawpha Country which is also
  the setting for a dozen of his novels.
• Emily Grierson, the protagonist, has been twisted
  in personality by forces beyond her control.
  Dominated by her aristocratic father, she has
  been prevented from marrying and after his death
  she is left alone and penniless. She kills her
  lover Homer Barron in order to keep him with her.
  She does not accept change of the time and
  alienates herself from the community. She is
  insane and her actions grotesque, but she is a
  victim, a tragic woman who invites sympathy. One
  of the themes of this story is the relation of
  the individual and his actions to the past,
  present and future. Apart from the exploration of
  psychological reality, the displaced chronology
  in narration is also characteristic of Faulkners
  style.

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The Meaning of the Title

• The meaning of the title is ambiguous, capable
  of various interpretations. A rose is a cliché,
  symbolizing love and a pledge of faithfulness.
  From the story we can see Miss Emily was denied
  love. So, in this sense, the title has an ironic
  meaning. A rose for somebody can also mean a kind
  of memorial, an offering, in memory of somebody.
  Then, who offered a rose for Emily?

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Writing style

• Flashback and foreshadowing are two often used
  literary devices that utilize time in order to
  produce a desired effect. Flashbacks are used to
  present action that occurs before the beginning
  of a story foreshadowing creates expectation for
  action that has not yet happened. Faulkner uses
  both devices in A Rose for Emily.

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Detailed Study of the Text

• Part I
• The street used to house only the best families.
  Then great changes took place garages and cotton
  gins were established on the street and their
  existence wiped out the aristocratic traces in
  that neighborhood. While the whole street was
  becoming modern and commercial, only Miss Emilys
  house remained the same. Although her house was
  decaying, it still assumed an air of a stubborn
  and frivolous girl. The cotton wagons and
  gasoline pumps were ugly enough, but this house,
  which was old, in decay, pretentious, and
  completely out of place, was more unpleasant to
  look at. This detail shows that the house and its
  owner share the same character.
• Miss Emily had lived long and had become a
  tradition because she represented the aristocracy
  of the Old South that had lost out in the Civil
  War. She was a care because she was old,
  unmarried, and without family, and the people in
  the town felt they must take care of her. They
  felt that taking care of her was their duty and
  obligation. This obligation passed from
  generation to generation as long as she lived.

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• 3. Miss Emily would not have accepted charity.
  Not that is used to say what follows is not
  true. Charity would be humiliating to Miss Emily.
  When her father died, Miss Emily was quite poor,
  but being a proud woman from an august family,
  she would not accept charity. Colonel Sartoris,
  born into another aristocratic family in
  Jefferson, had elaborate ideas about how white
  upper class women should be treated. With the
  decline of the South after the war, these rich
  white families also declined. He knew that the
  wives and daughters of the declining plantation
  owners enjoyed very high but also outdated
  status. They should be looked up to, respected
  and taken care of. He knew exactly what Miss
  Emily needed and how she felt now, and thus
  invented a tale to justify the edict so that he
  could give her some financial aid without
  appearing charitable.
• 4. fat, obese, plump, overweight, large, heavy,
  chubby, stout, tubby
• If you want to be polite, dont say that
  people are fat. Overweight or just large, in
  American English heavy, would be more polite.
  Plump is most often used of women and children
  and means slightly or pleasantly fat. Chubby is
  most often used of babies and children and also
  means pleasantly fat and healthy looking. Stout
  means slightly fat and tubby means short and fat.
  If someone is extremely fat and unhealthy, he/she
  is obese. Obese is also the word used by doctors.

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Part II

• 1. The ladies didnt believe that a man, any
  man, could keep a kitchen properly. When the
  terrible smell developed, they thought it was
  because the manservant didnt keep the kitchen
  clean.
• 2. The Griersons regarded themselves as very
  important and the outside world as vulgar full of
  people inferior to them. They belonged to tow
  entirely different worlds. After her father died,
  Miss Emily shut herself up in the house,
  retreating to her world of the past. However, the
  complaints about the smell served as a link
  between the two different worlds and compelled
  her to deal with the other world.
• 3. The next day the mayor received two more
  complaints. One of them was from a man who came
  and pleaded to the mayor in a shy and timid way.

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• 4.Miss Emily sat in the
• window with the light behind
• her. What people Could see
• was her silhouette, a dark
• figure seen against a light
• Background. In this image
• She didnt look like a living
• person but an idol, or a
• Goddess. Such a image suited
• her rigid and stubborn personality,
• her arrogant character.

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• 4. People in the town felt that the Grierson
  family regarded themselves more important than
  they really deserved to be. The fact that Miss
  Emilys great-aunt. Old lady Wyatt, had gone
  crazy had to do with this blind, excessive
  self-importance.
• 5.????,????????????????????????????????????,?????
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• This sentence depicts a central image that
  tells several things about the relationship
  between father and daughter in Grierson family.
  First, the positions of the father and daughter
  are meaningful. The father was standing in the
  foreground while Miss Emily was standing in the
  background. This shows the fathers dominant
  position and the daughters subordinate role. The
  fathers spraddling adds to his image as a stern
  patriarchal figure. Second, the father turned his
  back to her, showing that he refused to listen to
  her, denying her wishes. Then Mr. Grierson was
  clutching a horsewhip, which was clearly a symbol
  of power, authority, and strict control. Miss
  Emilys slender figure suggests vulnerability,
  and her white dress symbolizes purity, the most
  valued quality of the Southern white women. The
  fact that the two of them were framed by the
  back-flung front door may be interpreted in
  different ways. One interpretation is that the
  father was blocking the door, suggesting Miss
  Emily was unable to walk out of the house and
  choosing her suitor freely. Another
  interpretation is that the door was open for
  suitors but the suitors were driven away by the
  father holding a horsewhip.

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• 6. When she got to be thirty and was still
  single, people in the town were not happy about
  such a outcome, but it did confirm their
  predictionsMiss Emily was still single because
  the Griersons held themselves too high for what
  they really were, and all the young men who had
  come to court Miss Emily had been driven away by
  the father. They knew that even though there was
  insanity in the family, Miss Emily wouldnt have
  turned down all of her chances if they had really
  existed.
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• 7. Without her fathers over-protection and
  without much money, she had become a common
  person like the other townspeople. Ordinary
  people often become excited or worried when they
  get a penny more or a penny less. Being poor, now
  Miss Emily would learn to appreciate the value of
  money like other people in the town.
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Part III

• It is obvious that there is something else
  beneath the change of appearances. What is it? It
  is quite ambiguous. The images in this passage
  may be interpreted as a woman stripped of her
  sexuality. In this portrait, Emily assumes the
  semblance of a girl instead of a sexually mature
  woman of thirty. Her cut hair is especially
  important. Since ancient times, a womans hair
  has symbolized her sexuality. Emilys hair, along
  with her sexuality, has been cut short through
  her fathers pride. The cut hair also introduces
  religious imagery, for an initiate into nunnery
  shears her hair as a symbol of her chastity. In
  addition, the adjectives tragic and serene
  envisage a Madonna, a holy virgin, as an
  addendum to the primary image of angels who,
  although often depicted as women, are asexual.
  The images can also indicate that with her hair
  cut short, Emily was now a liberated woman. She
  was determined to change her role as an
  upper-class genteel woman. A short hair usually
  makes a woman look stronger and more independent
  in character. This quality of hers can be seen in
  her courting with Homer Barron, a Yankee foreman,
  despite traditional social prejudice.
• Yankee Homer Barron was one of those from the
  victorious North who, after the Civil War, came
  to South in the hope of making money. They were
  often called carpetbaggers, and were objects of
  scorn or suspicion for most Southerners.

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• 3. But there were still others, older people, who
  said that no matter how sad Miss Emily was over
  her fathers death, she should not forget she had
  certain obligations as a member of the nobility,
  though a real lady would not describe her
  self-restraint by the expression noblesse oblige.
  The implied meaning is that it should be
  unthinkable for Emily as part of the local
  nobility to consider marrying a man so far
  beneath her.

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Part IV

• 1. He would never disclose what happened
  during his talk with Miss Emily. We can infer
  that Miss Emily must have treated him with
  distain when he came to express the communitys
  disapproval of her public courting activities
  with Homer Barron. This is why he refused to have
  another talk with Miss Emily.
• 2. The townspeople were glad because they had
  been annoyed by the arrogant attitude of Miss
  Emily and now the two cousins were even more
  stubborn and self-important than Miss Emily. They
  believed that the two cousins would succeed in
  persuading Miss Emily and Homer Barron to get
  married quickly so that her public courting with
  Homer Barron would come to an end.
• 3. The people in the town guessed that their
  relationship had turned sour and so Homer Barron
  had left. And they expected to see a quarrel
  between them. When nothing of the kind happened,
  they were a little disappointed. Then they began
  to think that he perhaps had gone to prepare for
  the wedding.
• blowing-off a loud quarrel that signals
  the end of something

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• 4. By that time, the cousins had completed their
  mission and should leave Jefferson. Now the
  townspeople were taking the side of Miss Emily
  and made secret plans to help her deal with her
  cousins in a clear way.
• 5. Her father had driven away her suitors so many
  times, thus preventing her prom getting what she
  wanted as a woman.
• thwart to prevent someone from doing what they
  are trying to do
• 6. What is the symbolic meaning of her vigorous
  iron-grey hair?
• It symbolizes her strong and stubborn
  personality. She refused to make any change to
  adapt her herself to the changing society. Even
  her hair ceased turning its color.

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• 7. Now Miss Emily no longer went out.
• From time to time the townspeople would
• see her in one of the downstairs windows.
• She had evidently shut the top floor of the
• house. Sitting in the window, Miss Emily
• looked like the carved torso of an idol for
• worship placed in a niche. Whether she
• was looking at us or not we could not tell
• and it was not important because she had
• ceased to be a real human being, but
• had completely become a sort of monument,
• symbol of a tradition and hereditary
• obligation.
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niche
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• 8. The author uses five adjectives to describe
  how the townspeople felt about Miss Emily. These
  words reflect the townspeoples ambivalent
  attitude toward Miss Emily. She was dear because
  she represented the Southern heritage to a
  certain extent. She was inescapable because she
  was a sort of hereditary obligation upon the
  town. She was impervious and not affected by any
  changes taking place in the town, and her
  imperviousness was well reflected by her ignoring
  the tax notice and her refusal to pay taxes. She
  was tranquil. Though she was tragic, she remained
  calm and free from disturbance. Her tranquility
  as well as her rigidity was portrayed by her
  motionless silhouette in the window. She was
  certainly perverse, always behaving in an
  unreasonable way and regularly doing the opposite
  of what people expected her to do.
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Part V

• 1. The very old men, who were even older than
  Miss Emily, came to the funeral. Some of them
  were veterans of the Civil War, and they had put
  on their old Confederate uniforms to pay their
  last respect this Southern lady from an
  aristocratic family. Standing on the porch and
  the lawn, they talked of Miss Emily, mistakenly
  thinking of her as someone of their age, born
  around 1840 or so whereas she (born around 1855)
  was much younger than they were. They imagined
  they had danced with her and courted her perhaps.
  As the old people often do, they confused the
  dates and years of past happenings. To the old
  people, all the past should be like a road that
  becomes smaller as it reaches further back. But
  to those old southerners, the recent past of ten
  years or so was like a bottleneck, a narrow
  passage, or a tunnel. Beyond that narrow passage,
  the remote past became a huge level meadow where
  things were pleasantly and fondly mixed up
  together. Like the green grass on the meadow
  never touched by the winter, their memories of
  the remote past remained blurred, sweet,
  romanticized, and unchanged.
• a. mathematical progression sequence or
  succession of happenings in time marked by
  numbers
• b. bottleneck any place, as a narrow road,
  where traffic is slowed up or halted any point
  at which movement or progress is slowed up.

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• 2. Just before his death, the man was lying in a
  position of an embrace. But death that always
  lasts longer than love and conquers even the pain
  and suffering of love had turned him into a man
  whose wife proved unfaithful.
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Why did Miss Emily kill Homer Barron?

• Barron had deserted her.
• Barron refused to marry her.
• She feared that Barron would not remain faithful
  to her after their marriage.
• She was insane.
• He wanted to blackmail her.
• He wanted to take her to the North.

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What kind of a woman is Miss Emily? How is she
portrayed in the story?

• Born into an aristocratic family of the
  South, Miss Emily was proud, self-important and
  obstinate like other Griersons. As a lady from
  such a family, she enjoyed a high but obsolete
  social status. On the one hand she was placed on
  a pedestal for people to admire as if she were
  perfect. She was closely watched by the community
  and was always expected to bring honor to the
  town and set a good example for the young. She
  was viewed as a representative of the Southern
  tradition, an idol in the niche. Nominated by
  her father, she was deprived of all opportunities
  for a happy marriage and thus for a normal
  womans life. After she began to court with Homer
  Barron, a Northern laborer, she was accused of
  being a disgrace to the town and a bad example to
  the young people. The patriarchal and social
  pressure warped her character. She tried hard to
  cling to the past, which meant privilege and
  glory to her. She cut herself off from the
  changing world and lived in complete
  self-isolation. Over the years, she was
  transformed from a subordinate young lady
  controlled by her domineering father to a
  middle-aged woman courting a laborer against the
  accusation of the community and then to a
  murderer who not only killed her love but also
  kept the corpse in her house and even sometimes
  lay down beside the remains of the dead body.

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How did the townspeople think of her?

• For such a woman, the townspeople had
  mixed feelings----she was dear, inescapable,
  impervious, tranquil, and perverse. For better
  or worse, she is the embodiment of the social
  conditions at that time. Through telling this
  story and exploring the character of Miss Emily,
  Faulkner reveals his ambivalent relationship to
  the South, of which he felt proud and ashamed at
  the same time.

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The meaning of the story

• The plot of the story evolves around many
  conflicts the conflicts between Mr. Grierson and
  his daughter, the conflict between Miss Emily and
  Homer Barron, the conflict between Miss Emily and
  the community, the conflict between the South and
  the North, the conflict between Miss Emily and
  the established codes of conduct, and the
  conflict between the past and the present. The
  readers different focus on these conflicts may
  lead to different interpretations. On the whole,
  it tells what it is like to live in the American
  South between the 1860s and the 1930s when the
  South had to digest the loss of the war and cope
  with its legacy in a changing society.

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Questions

• 1. How old was Emily when her father died?
• 2. At what age did Emily teach Chinese painting?
• 3. Why did Emily refuse to pay the tax?
• 4. Why does the narrator use the pronoun we?
• 5. What does this story tell you about the
  culture and mores of the American South during
  that period? How does it compare with your own
  conception of small town life?

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Which of the photos below best represents the
image of Emily Grierson's house before it became
"an eyesore among eyesores"?

• A. B.
• C. D.