A Rose for Emily (1930)

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A Rose for Emily (1930)

• Quiz

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A Rose for Emily (1930)

• Setting

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1. Find a good match between the image/detail in
the story and its setting?

• 1. garages and cotton gins agricultural
  society
• 2. Men in their Confederate uniforms US civil
  war
• 3. cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies
  the architectural style of the 20th-century South
• 4. free postal delivery Colonel Sartoris as
  mayor

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Ref. Confederate and Union states in the American
Civil War (1861-1865)

http//www.wtv-zone.com/civilwar/map.html
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2. Which of the following does NOT show a
mismatch between Emily and her Society?

1. Her house
2. Her refusal to pay tax
3. Her offering of china painting lesson at the age
   of 40
4. Her going out with Homer Barron.

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A Rose for Emily (1930)

• Plot

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3. Which of the following is an adequate
description of the storys plot?

1. It follows a reverse chronological order.
2. It moves back and forth, and has a final
   disclosure.
3. It begins in the middle.
4. It moves back and forth between the pre-
   Civil-War time and post-Civil-War time.

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4. Which of the following is NOT a major turning
point in Emilys life?

• 1. Her fathers death
• 2. Her going out with Homer Barron
• 3. Her being asked to pay tax
• 4. Her termination of the china painting lesson.

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A Rose for Emily (1930)

• Emily

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5. Which of the following images do NOT represent
Emily?

1. iron-gray hair
2. A carven torso of an idol in a niche
3. two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of
   dough
4. a spraddled silhouette in the foreground

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Ref. The Old Emily Contradictory Signs in her
Appearance

• As an old woman elegant, classy, but stubborn
  and refusing to adjust to the changes of time.
• Emilys Response to Taxation
• (1) Elegant and old-fashioned Writes in a thin,
  flowing calligraphy in faded ink (par 4)
• (2) Signs of will power and class "a small,
  fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain
  descending to her waist and vanishing into her
  belt, leaning on an ebony cane.(par 6)
• (3) Aged and Dying She looked bloated, like a
  body long submerged in motionless water, and of
  that pallid hue.  Her eyes, lost in the fatty
  ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces
  of coal pressed into a lump of dough.(par 6)

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Ref. Old Emily (2) Images of Death vs. Strong
Will

• Death
• Her bloating body
• Her death.
• She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a
  heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head
  propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and
  lack of sunlight.

• Strong Will
• Her keeping a corpse with her.
• Hair -- pepper-and-salt iron-gray, like the hair
  of an active man.
• On the bed a long strand of iron-gray hair.

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Ref. Emilys Family Background

• The decline of the Gierson family old Lady Wyatt
  mad, two cousins away, only her father and her
  left.
• Her Fathers control
• We had long thought of them as a tableau Miss
  Emily a slender figure in white in the
  background, her father a spraddled (??)
  silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and
  clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by
  the back-flung front door. (par 25)

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6. Is what way is, or is not, the young Emily a
Southern belle?

1. She is one because she is rich and coqettish.
2. She is not, because her father is in the way.
3. She is not, because she smells.
4. She is, because she is sought after, and the
   older generation treat her genteelly.

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7. Which of the following is an example of
Emilys adjustment to the changes in her life?

1. Her hair was cut short.
2. After her fathers death, she is dressed as
   usual and with no trace of grief on her face.
3. In her room, there are curtains of faded rose
   color, the rose-shaded lights, upon the
   dressing table, the delicate array of crystal
   and the mans toilet things backed with tarnished
   silver
4. I want some poison, she said.

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A Rose for Emily (1930)

• The Narrators

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8. Which of the following is NOT an example of
the narrators gossip about Emily?

• 1. So the next day we all said, She will kill
  herself.
• 2. Two days later we learned that she had bought
  a complete outfit of mens clothing, including a
  nightshirt, and we said, They are married. We
  were really glad.
• 3. Poor Emily.
• 4. We remembered all the young men her father had
  driven away, and we knew that with nothing left,
  she would have to cling to that which had robbed
  her, as people will.

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Ref. The Narrators Changing Views of Emily

• 1) Finds the Griersons too proud
• Emily single at 30 ? Vindicated (proved right)
• 2) After the fathers death
• We people were glad. At last they could pity
  Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she
  had become humanized.
• Emilys denial of death ( dressed as usual and
  with no trace of grief on her face. par 27) ?
  Sympathetic not crazy we knew that with
  nothing left, she would have to cling to that
  which had robbed her, as people will.
• 3) Poor Emily
• 4) feel sorry for her.

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Ref. Town Peoples Intervention Gossips--Poor
Emily We said

• -- some glad, some disagreeing shouldnt forget
  about her nobility Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk
  should come to her.
• --guessing and gossiping
• Poor Emily, the whispering began.
• Guess Of course it is. What else could . .
  . This behind their hands secretly rustling
  of craned silk and satin behind jalousies ???
  closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the
  thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team
  passed Poor Emily.

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Ref. Town Peoples Gossips

• -- Gossips continued --
• When she had first begun to be seen with Homer
  Barron, we had said, She will marry him.
• Then we said, She will persuade him yet,
  because Homer himself had remarkedhe liked men,
  and it was known that he drank with the younger
  men in the Elks Clubthat he was not a marrying
  man. Later we said, Poor Emily . . .
• -- intervening
• Then the women see it a disgrace to the town and
  a bad example to the young people. ? Baptist
  minister? the relatives are fetched. (par 43)
• Arsenic -- So the next day we all said, She will
  kill herself and we said it would be the best
  thing.

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Ref. Emilys Pride vs. the Gossips

• 1) Amidst gossips She carried her head high
  enougheven when we believed that she was
  fallen. (par 33)
• 2) Arsenic episode
• Appearance She was over thirty then, still a
  slight woman, though thinner than usual, with
  cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of
  which was strained across the temples and about
  the eye-sockets as you imagine a
  lighthouse-keepers face ought to look. (par 34
  meaning?)
• Confrontation Miss Emily just stared at him,
  her head tilted back in order to look him eye for
  eye, until he looked away and went and got the
  arsenic and wrapped it up.

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Narrators moments of sympathy

• 1. after her fathers death
• 2. after Homer Barron disappears and Emily ceases
  to appear on the street for 6 months.
• Then we knew that this was to be expected too
  as if that quality of her father which had
  thwarted her womans life so many times had been
  too virulent and too furious to die.
• 3. in the smell episode begun to feel really
  sorry for her.

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Discussion

• How do we explain each of the following
  adjectives?
• Thus she passed from generation to
  generation-dear, inescapable, impervious,
  tranquil, and perverse. (par 51)

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A Rose for Emily (1930)

• Themes Language

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9. To whom all the past is not a diminishing road
but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever
quite touches, divided from them now by the
narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of
years

• Whom refers to
• 1. Emily
• 2. The narrators
• 3. The elderly that attend her funeral

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Ref. Pay attention to the change of toneand the
image of dust

• The violence  of breaking down the door seemed to
  fill this room with pervading dust.  A thin,
  acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie
  everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as
  for a bridal upon the valance curtains of faded
  rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the
  dressing table, upon the delicate array of
  crystal and the mans toilet things backed with
  tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the
  monogram was obscured. ? The deed of breaking
  into others secret in mind is often violent and
  cruel.

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10. For a long while we just stood there, looking
down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body
had apparently once lain in the attitude of an
embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts
love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had
cuckolded him.

• Theme?
• The failure of social control
• Love and death
• Self vs. Society