A Rose for Emily (1930)

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A Rose for Emily (1930)

• Emily seen from different perspectives
• -- Emily on Trial
• Emily Empathized

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Outline

1. Your Q A
2. A quick summary of online lecture
3. Emily Seen from various perspectives
4. Emily on Trial
5. Your decision EmilyGuilty or not?
6. Emily Empathized

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Your QA Tobe and Other Men

• Tobe and Racial Discrimination
•  Q  Three people tended to avoid seeing Miss Emil
  y again. They were the druggist, the Baptist minis
  ter and her servant Tobe respectively. Why did the
  y act like this?

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Tobe

• Frequent sign Tobe --going in and out with the
  market basket
• Smell -- Just as if a manany mancould keep a
  kitchen properly, the ladies said so they were
  not surprised when the smell developed. It was
  another link between the gross, teeming world and
  the high and mighty Griersons.
• Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow
  grayer and more stooped,
• He talked to no one, probably not even to her,
  for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if
  from disuse.

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Your QA Rose

• Roses are usually seen as a symbol of love.
  Moreover, the thorns of the rose represent
  Emily. Since her father always obstructed all the
  young men who wanted to get closing to her, she
  might have difficulty getting along with her
  lover which makes her be like the thorns.
• The rose is often thought of as a symbol for love
  which I think in the story it indicates Homer.
  Homer is the "rose" for Emily. Emily's father
  thought no man was good enough for her, so she
  never actually experience the passion of love
  until she met Homer. Homer is her "rose" whom she
  wished to cherish and kept to herself even after
  his body corrupted.

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Your QA Emily

• Emilys house necrophilia, whether she loves
  HB,
• the strand of hair ( it symbolizes Emily)?
• What is symbolic of Emily? The house, the room
• Images put together to be symbolic of Emilys
  personalities iron gray hair, gold chain, ebony
  cane, black-coal eyes,

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Your QA Narrator

• The narrators use of we objective?
• Repetition of "Poor Emily they just want to gl
  oat over her family, which is in straitened circum
  stances.  --Yes, but more than this.

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A Rose for Emily Online Lecture

• Setting
• Plot Gaps and Suspense (the ending as an
  example)
• Different Images of Emily
• The Narrators contradictory views
• of the present
• of the previous generations -- gossips and
  intervention

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Setting Emilys House and the Historical
Background

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Setting Emilys House and its Background

• Reference

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Setting (1) The Grierson House

• Emilys funeral people havent been inside her
  house for 10 years
• (par 2) It was a big, squarish frame house that
  had once been white, decorated with cupolas and
  spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily
  lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had
  once been our most select street. But garages and
  cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even
  the august names of that neighborhood only Miss
  Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and
  coquettish (??) decay above the cotton wagons and
  the gasoline pumpsan eyesore among eyesores. And
  now Miss Emily had gone to join the
  representatives of those august names where they
  lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the
  ranked and anonymous graves of Union and
  Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of
  Jefferson

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Setting (2) Historical Changes

• Time 1862(?) ? 1936
• From Old South to New Souththe Civil War
  Industrialism
• Clues in the text
• 1894 tax remittance no Negro woman should
  appear on the streets without an apron Death of
  the Father tax exempted
• 1896 Homer Barron from the North
• 1897/1898 the smell
• More changes painting lessons stop tax postal
  service
• 1936 -- Emily, dead

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Plot (back and forth) GAPS
Story
Plot Story
Sec 1 Present Emilys Death 1. Emily a lady guarded by her father
The tax episode (2nd Generation) (tax remitted in1894 by Colonel Sartoris) 2. 1894 The fathers death, which Emily denies
Sec 2 ? (vanquished the town people) 30 years before, the smell episode The fathers death 3. Emily changed, goes out with HB (1 year later 2 years after her fathers death )
Sec 3 Homer Baron episode Emily, a changed person with H. Barron ?(wants touch of earthiness) Poison 4. The two cousins intervention // poison HB returns, no longer seen
Sec 4 Homer Baron episode Relatives intervention ? Time passes (30 yrs), she grows fatter and older teaches china-painting at age 40? Emily, isolated, turns down the postal service ? death ? 6 months out of sight ? grey fat 5. Smell ? Emily retreats from public life ? no mail box 30 years later
Sec 5 Present The house opened, secret revealed. (age 74) Tax Emily old and fat Emilys death
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Emily Grierson Images Rumors --the mad woman,
-- or a lady trying to love and to survive?

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Emily Different Images

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(1) Young Emily

• The decline of the Gierson family old Lady Wyatt
  mad, two cousins away, only her father and her
  left.
• (1) 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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The Young Emily isolated, trying to adjust

• After her fathers death ?
• 2) isolated, she refuses to accept it
• no trace of grief on her face. She told them
  that her father was not dead
• she would have to cling to that which had robbed
  her, as people will.
• 3) Trying to adjust? With an angelic look as a
  girl, she is proud but trying to adjust (at the
  age of 32?)
• "When we saw her again, her hair was cut short,
  making her look like a girl, with a vague
  resemblance to those angels in colored church
  windows-sort of tragic and serene" (par 29)

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(4) Emily Going for Arsenic

• (par 34) 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
  eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keepers
  face ought to look. I want some poison, she
  said.
• The druggist looked down at her. She looked back
  at him, erect, her face like a strained flag.
  Why , of course, the druggist said. If thats
  what you want. But the law requires you to tell
  what you are going to use it for.
• Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted
  back in order to look him eye for eye, until he
  looked away and went

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(5) Emily Smell Episode

• (par 24) a window that had been dark was lighted
  and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her,
  and her upright torso motionless as that of an
  idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into
  the shadow of the locusts that lined the street.
• After a week or two the smell went away

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(6) The Old Emily Tax Episode

• (par 6) 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 with a
  tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and
  spare perhaps that was why what would have been
  merely plumpness in another was obesity in her.
  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 as they moved from one face to
  another while the visitors stated their errand.

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(7) Emily The Elderly

• 3. (par 55) The funeral
• Emily underneath the bought flowers,
• the fathers crayon face above,
• the elderly talking of Miss Emily as if she had
  been a contemporary of theirs, believing that
  they had danced with her and courted her perhaps,
  confusing time with its mathematical progression,
  as the old do, 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
• ? the past is forever present other meanings?
• 4. The room upstairs with its rose decoration

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Two Concepts of Time
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Images of Love and Death

• See here
• Many others here, too.

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Pay close attention to the description of Emilys
Room

• (par 5) It smelled of dust and disusea close,
  dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor.
  It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered
  furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of
  one window, they could see that the leather was
  cracked and when they sat down, a faint dust
  rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with
  slow motes in the single sun-ray.

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Pay close attention to the description of Emilys
Room

• A contrast to the image of the past as a green
  meadow --
• (57) 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 (bridal chamber ??)
  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. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if
  they had just been removed, which, lifted, left
  upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust.
  Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded
  beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded
  socks.
• (58) The man himself lay in the bed.

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Pay close attention to the description of Emilys
Room

• Room death, decay rose color tender and
  loving care in the arrangement
• (60) Then we noticed that in the second pillow
  was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted
  something from it, and leaning forward, that
  faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the
  nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
  

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Narrators Their Contradictory Views -- Old
generations-- Younger generations

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Contradictory Views on Emily (1) As History

• A lady and the last Grierson
• for the town people
• An object of observation and gossip.
• A symbol of history
• Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a
  care a sort of hereditary obligation upon the
  town. (par 3)
• A strong personality and an old fashioned lady
  Thus she passed from generation to
  generation-dear, inescapable, impervious (?????),
  tranquil, and perverse. (par 51)

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Contradictory Views on Emily (2) As a Lady

• 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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Contradictory Views on Emily (2) As a Lady

• An object of observation and gossip.
• (par 25) smell episode That was when people had
  begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our
  town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her
  great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last,
  believed that the Griersons held themselves a
  little too high for what they really were. None
  of the young men were quite good enough for Miss
  Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a
  tableau, . So when she got to be thirty and was
  still single, we were not pleased exactly, but
  vindicated even with insanity in the family she
  wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if
  they had really materialized.

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3) Town Peoples Intervention Gossips--Poor
Emily

• -- 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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Town Peoples Intervention Gossips

• -- Gossips continued --
• (par 43) 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.
• ? the relatives are fetched.

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Town Peoples Intervention Gossips-

• (par 45) Emily bought a toilet set and suit for
  the wedding ? They are married. We were really
  glad
• (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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Contradictory Views on Emily (3) As a Scandal
--The Smell Episode

• Conflicting View points among the town people
• The women the negroor any man--cannot do
  good housekeeping.
• another link between the gross, teeming world
  and the high and mighty Griersons.
• The young mansend her a word and ask her to
  clean up her house and give her a deadline.
• Judge Stevens cannot accuse a lady that she
  smells.

All concerned with social proprietyof different
kinds, but not her well-being.
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Contradictory Views on Emily (3) As a Scandal

• To avoid confrontation (par 24)
• The men sneak there to sprinkle lime (as
  disinfectant - ???)
• They see Emily Miss Emily sat in it, the light
  behind her, and her upright torso motionless as
  that of an idol.
• Then they feel really sorry for her. (par 25)

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Is Emily a Murderer?
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Emily on Trial Emily Empathized

• -- Group 2,4, 6, 8, 10, 12 Is Emily guilty of
  murdering Homer Barron? -- Group 1,3, 5, 7, 9,
  11 Why does she do it? What could have been done
  to avoid it?

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• Opening statementsThe prosecution 4 and then
  the defense 8 make opening statements to the
  judge or jury. These statements provide an
  outline of the case that each side expects to
  prove.
• 2) Prosecution case-in-chief The prosecution 4
  presents its main case through direct examination
  of prosecution witnesses. (Prosecution calls
  witnesses from group 10 and 12.)
• 3) Cross-examination. The defense 8 may
  cross-examine the prosecution witnesses.Lawyer
  --asking the witnesses to get direct evidence
• 4) Defense case-in-chief.The defense 8
  presents its main case through direct examination
  of defense witnesses, including Emily 6
• 5) Cross-examination.
• The prosecutor cross-examines the defense
  witnesses.6) 2 Judge's questions 7) Jury's
  deliberations

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Courtroom Vocabulary --Simplified
evidence courtroom a trial sentence attorney
a witness Perpetrator Suspect defendant Plaintiff counsel for the defense counsel for the prosecution case the deceased the victim Prosecution/ Prosecutor custody lawyer
The court is now in session, .The case before us
is that of Id like to call my first
witness -- Thank you, . No further
questions. Sir, I must protest
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• George Oh, right, yes, uhhhh, oh.....Uh,
  gentlemen, you have heard all the evidence
  presented here today, but in the end it is up to
  the conscience of your hearts to decide, and I
  firmly believe, that like me, you will conclude
  that Captain Blackadder is in fact, totally and
  utterly, GUILTY......of nothing more than trying
  to do his duty under difficult circumstances.

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Witnesses

• 10 first generation

For Prosecutor For Defendants Lawyer
those who complained about Emily's smell Colonel Sartoris or Judge Stevens (those who respect the Griersons as aristocrats)
those who witness her "fall"--going out with Homer Barron Those that say Poor Emily
the druggist that sells arsenic to Emily Those in their brushed Confederate uniforms that remember Emily as young
Tobe and the two cousins of Emily's a tradition, a duty, and a care for town people, a sort of hereditary obligation Tobe and the two cousins of Emily's a tradition, a duty, and a care for town people, a sort of hereditary obligation
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Witnesses

• 12 second generation
• ,
• those who g o inside the house and find the
  corpse and other evidence (further divided into
  men and women)

For Prosecutor For Defendants Lawyer
those who think Emily should pay tax Those taking painting lessons with Emily
Those that find her impervious and perverse Those that find her dear, inescapable and tranquil,
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Emily Empathized

• Factors to Consider
• Group 1-- Emily as the last Grierson
• Group 3 -- Emily as a symbol
• Group 5 -- The narrators
• Group 7 -- Historic setting
• Group 9 11 -- How to avoid it

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Lets Take a Break!!!

1018 1038 Discussion 1038 1118 Emily on
Trial 1120 1140 Emily Empathized 1140
1200 Peer Response Conclusion
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The Failure of Emilys Love Why?

• Dating Homer Barron, an Outsider
• A Northerner, but sociable (pretty soon he knew
  everybody in town ? the center of a group.)
• From a different class A foreman
• He likes only men.
• The town peoples intervention? getting the two
  cousins to come
• What could possibly be Emilys responses? The
  meanings of her strained look (arsenic scene) ?
  Why?

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Emilys Stubbornness a. strongb. (The Smell)
obsessive?

• 1. Emily as a strong Lady vs. the Town
• Dammit, sir, Judge Stevens said, will you
  accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?
• So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as
  she had vanquished their fathers thirty years
  before about the smell.
• 2. Love and death The smell (sec II two years
  after her fathers death and a short time after
  her sweetheart had deserted her)
• ? She refuses to let go.

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Emilys Stubbornness c. Her Unmoved Image
Death

• (par 24) Emily sat in it, the light behind her,
  and her upright torso motionless as that of an
  idol.
• (par 51) Now and then we would see her in one of
  the downstairs windowsshe had evidently shut up
  the top floor of the houselike the carven torso
  of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at
  us, we could never tell which.

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Emily (3) 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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Note

• Old South vs. New South -- Following the Civil
  War, prominent Southern whites wanted to portray
  the New South as a region which no longer
  embraced the plantation and slave labor mentality
  of the "Old South." The New South had the same
  capability to develop manufacturing and industry
  as the North. However, this New South creed
  became more of a slogan for various Southern
  towns and cities, but it wasn't exactly the
  public relations miracle many elite Southerners
  hoped it would be. While many Southern states did
  start to distance themselves from the prejudices
  and inequalities of the Old South, there were
  still a number of issues which continued to
  tarnish the perception of a truly New South.
  Segregation between blacks and whites was still
  an active practice, for example. (source)
• noblesse oblige (sec 3)-- "Noblesse oblige" is
  generally used to imply that with wealth, power
  and prestige come responsibilities. (source)

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Genre The Gothic Story

• The Gothic horror tale is a literary form dating
  back to 1764 with the first novel identified with
  the genre, Horace Walpole's The Castle of
  Ontralto. Gothicism features an atmosphere of
  terror and dread gloomy castles or mansions,
  sinister characters, and unexplained phenomena.
  Gothic novels and stories also often include
  unnatural combinations of sex and death.
• Some can be thrilling, and some, profound
  discovery of human nature (unconsciousness)

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A Rose for Emily as a southern gothic

• disturbed people doing disturbing things
• strange characters
• macabre occurrences
• grotesque
• social issues, behavioral codes
• taboo topics
• American Gothic

Norton
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William Faulkner on Emily
Norton

• From Faulkner at Nagano (1956)
• Faulkner I feel sorry for Emilys tragedy
  her tragedy was, she was an only child, an only
  daughter. At the time when she could have found a
  husband, could have had a life of her own, there
  was probably some one, her father, who said, No,
  you must stay here and take care of me. And then
  when she found a man, she had no experience in
  people. She picked out probably a bad one, who
  was about to desert her. And when she lost him
  she could see that for her that was the end of
  life, there was nothing left, except to grow
  older, alone, solitary she had had something and
  she wanted to keep it, which is badto go to any
  length to keep something but I pity Emily.

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William Faulkner on Emily and the Title

• I dont know whether I would have liked her or
  not, I might have been afraid of her. Not of her
  but of anyone who had suffered, had been warped,
  as her life had probably been warped by a selfish
  father.
• The title was an allegorical title the meaning
  was, here was a woman who had had a tragedy, an
  irrevocable tragedy and nothing could be done
  about it, and I pitied her and this was a salute
  . . . to a woman you would hand a rose.

From Faulkner at Nagano, ed. Robert Jelliffe
(Tokyo Kenkyusha Ltd., 1956), pp. 7071.
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A Rose for Emily - The Zombies
Introduction to Literature

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Mid-Term Exam

• Text Analysis Questions (30) -- 2 out of 4
• Essay Questions (30) 2 out of 4 no
  overlapping of choice of texts in Part 1) and 2)
• Comparison Question (40) -- 1 out of 2

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Mid-Term Exam

• Essay Questions choose 2
• Where does the narrator show the environment
  more than tell what happens in Boys and
  Girls? Give two examples and explain the
  effects.
• How is Mangans Sister described in Araby with
  what images and why?
• How do you describe Sammys language in A P?
  Analyze at least two features and give examples
  to each.
• How do you characterize the narrators in A Rose
  for Emily?