Themes (sparknotes)

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols

Themes
Tradition versus Change
Through the mysterious figure of Emily Grierson, Faulkner conveys the
struggle that comes from trying to maintain tradition in the face of widespread,
radical change. Jefferson is at a crossroads, embracing a modern, more
commercial future while still perched on the edge of the past, from the faded
glory of the Grierson home to the town cemetery where anonymous Civil War
soldiers have been laid to rest. Emily herself is a tradition, steadfastly staying
the same over the years despite many changes in her community. She is in many
ways a mixed blessing. As a living monument to the past, she represents the
traditions that people wish to respect and honor; however, she is also a burden
and entirely cut off from the outside world, nursing eccentricities that others
cannot understand.
Emily lives in a timeless vacuum and world of her own making. Refusing to
have metallic numbers affixed to the side of her house when the town receives
modern mail service, she is out of touch with the reality that constantly
threatens to break through her carefully sealed perimeters. Garages and cotton
gins have replaced the grand antebellum homes. The aldermen try to break with
the unofficial agreement about taxes once forged between Colonel Sartoris and
Emily. This new and younger generation of leaders brings in Homers company
to pave the sidewalks. Although Jefferson still highly regards traditional notions
of honor and reputation, the narrator is critical of the old men in their
Confederate uniforms who gather for Emilys funeral. For them as for her, time
is relative. The past is not a faint glimmer but an ever-present, idealized realm.
Emilys macabre bridal chamber is an extreme attempt to stop time and prevent
change, although doing so comes at the expense of human life.
The Power of Death
Death hangs over A Rose for Emily, from the narrators mention of Emilys
death at the beginning of the story through the description of Emilys death-
haunted life to the foundering of tradition in the face of modern changes. In
every case, death prevails over every attempt to master it. Emily, a fixture in the
community, gives in to death slowly. The narrator compares her to a drowned
woman, a bloated and pale figure left too long in the water. In the same
description, he refers to her small, spare skeletonshe is practically dead on her
feet. Emily stands as an emblem of the Old South, a grand lady whose
respectability and charm rapidly decline through the years, much like the
outdated sensibilities the Griersons represent. The death of the old social order
will prevail, despite many townspeoples attempts to stay true to the old ways.
Emily attempts to exert power over death by denying the fact of death itself.
Her bizarre relationship to the dead bodies of the men she has lovedher
necrophiliais revealed first when her father dies. Unable to admit that he has
died, Emily clings to the controlling paternal figure whose denial and control
became the onlyyet extremeform of love she knew. She gives up his body
only reluctantly. When Homer dies, Emily refuses to acknowledge it once
againalthough this time, she herself was responsible for bringing about the
death. In killing Homer, she was able to keep him near her. However, Homers
lifelessness rendered him permanently distant. Emily and Homers grotesque
marriage reveals Emilys disturbing attempt to fuse life and death. However,
death ultimately triumphs.
Motifs
Watching
Emily is the subject of the intense, controlling gaze of the narrator and residents
of Jefferson. In lieu of an actual connection to Emily, the townspeople create
subjective and often distorted interpretations of the woman they know little
about. They attend her funeral under the guise of respect and honor, but they
really want to satisfy their lurid curiosity about the towns most notable
eccentric. One of the ironic dimensions of the story is that for all the gossip and
theorizing, no one guesses the perverse extent of Emilys true nature.
For most of the story, Emily is seen only from a distance, by people who watch
her through the windows or who glimpse her in her doorway. The narrator
refers to her as an objectan idol. This pattern changes briefly during her
courtship with Homer Barron, when she leaves her house and is frequently out
in the world. However, others spy on her just as avidly, and she is still relegated
to the role of object, a distant figure who takes on character according to the
whims of those who watch her. In this sense, the act of watching is powerful
because it replaces an actual human presence with a made-up narrative that
changes depending on who is doing the watching. No one knows the Emily that
exists beyond what they can see, and her true self is visible to them only after
she dies and her secrets are revealed.
Dust
A pall of dust hangs over the story, underscoring the decay and decline that
figure so prominently. The dust throughout Emilys house is a fitting
accompaniment to the faded lives within. When the aldermen arrive to try and
secure Emilys annual tax payment, the house smells of dust and disuse. As
they seat themselves, the movement stirs dust all around them, and it slowly
rises, roiling about their thighs and catching the slim beam of sunlight entering
the room. The house is a place of stasis, where regrets and memories have
remained undisturbed. In a way, the dust is a protective presence; the aldermen
cannot penetrate Emilys murky relationship with reality. The layers of dust also
suggest the cloud of obscurity that hides Emilys true nature and the secrets her
house contains. In the final scene, the dust is an oppressive presence that seems
to emanate from Homers dead body. The dust, which is everywhere, seems
even more horrible here.
Symbols
Emilys House
Emilys house, like Emily herself, could be seen as a monument, the only
remaining emblem of a dying world of Southern aristocracy. The outside of the
large, square frame house is lavishly decorated. The cupolas, spires, and
scrolled balconies are the hallmarks of a decadent style of architecture that
became popular in the 1870s. By the time the story takes place, much has
changed. The street and neighborhood, at one time affluent, pristine, and
privileged, have lost their standing as the realm of the elite. The house is in
some ways an extension of Emily: it bares its stubborn and coquettish decay
to the towns residents. It is a testament to the endurance and preservation of
tradition but now seems out of place among the cotton wagons, gasoline pumps,
and other industrial trappings that surround itjust as the Souths old values are
out of place in a changing society.
Emilys house also represents alienation, mental illness, and death. It is a shrine
to the living past, and the sealed upstairs bedroom is her macabre trophy room
where she preserves the man she would not allow to leave her. As when the
group of men sprinkled lime along the foundation to counteract the stench of
rotting flesh, the townspeople skulk along the edges of Emilys life and
property. The house, like its owner, is an object of fascination for them. They
project their own lurid fantasies and interpretations onto the crumbling edifice
and mysterious figure inside. Emilys death is a chance for them to gain access
to this forbidden realm and confirm their wildest notions and most
sensationalistic suppositions about what had occurred on the inside.


The Strand of Hair
The strand of hair is a reminder of love lost and the often perverse things people
do in their pursuit of happiness. The strand of hair also reveals the inner life of a
woman who, despite her eccentricities, was committed to living life on her own
terms and not submitting her behavior, no matter how shocking, to the approval
of others. Emily subscribes to her own moral code and occupies a world of her
own invention, where even murder is permissible. The narrator foreshadows the
discovery of the long strand of hair on the pillow when he describes the physical
transformation that Emily undergoes as she ages. Her hair grows more and more
grizzled until it becomes a vigorous iron-gray. The strand of hair ultimately
stands as the last vestige of a life left to languish and decay, much like the body
of Emilys former lover.
Faulkner and the Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic is a literary tradition that came into its own in the early
twentieth century. It is rooted in the Gothic style, which had been popular in
European literature for many centuries. Gothic writers concocted wild,
frightening scenarios in which mysterious secrets, supernatural occurrences, and
characters extreme duress conspired to create a breathless reading experience.
Gothic style focused on the morbid and grotesque, and the genre often featured
certain set pieces and characters: drafty castles laced with cobwebs, secret
passages, and frightened, wide-eyed heroines whose innocence does not go
untouched. Although they borrow the essential ingredients of the Gothic, writers
of Southern Gothic fiction were not interested in integrating elements of the
sensational solely for the sake of creating suspense or titillation. Writers such as
Flannery OConnor, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Eudora
Welty, Erskine Caldwell, and Carson McCullers were drawn to the elements of
Gothicism for what they revealed about human psychology and the dark,
underlying motives that were pushed to the fringes of society.
Southern Gothic writers were interested in exploring the extreme, antisocial
behaviors that were often a reaction against a confining code of social conduct.
Southern Gothic often hinged on the belief that daily life and the refined surface
of the social order were fragile and illusory, disguising disturbing realities or
twisted psyches. Faulkner, with his dense and multilayered prose, traditionally
stands outside this group of practitioners. However, A Rose for Emily reveals
the influence that Southern Gothic had on his writing: this particular story has a
moody and forbidding atmosphere; a crumbling old mansion; and decay,
putrefaction, and grotesquerie. Faulkners work uses the sensational elements to
highlight an individuals struggle against an oppressive society that is
undergoing rapid change. Another aspect of the Southern Gothic style is
appropriation and transformation. Faulkner has appropriated the image of the
damsel in distress and transformed it into Emily, a psychologically damaged
spinster. Her mental instability and necrophilia have made her an emblematic
Southern Gothic heroine.
Time and Temporal Shifts
In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner does not rely on a conventional linear
approach to present his characters inner lives and motivations. Instead, he
fractures, shifts, and manipulates time, stretching the story out over several
decades. We learn about Emilys life through a series of flashbacks. The story
begins with a description of Emilys funeral and then moves into the near-
distant past. At the end of the story, we see that the funeral is a flashback as
well, preceding the unsealing of the upstairs bedroom door. We see Emily as a
young girl, attracting suitors whom her father chases off with a whip, and as an
old woman, when she dies at seventy-four. As Emilys grip on reality grows
more tenuous over the years, the South itself experiences a great deal of change.
By moving forward and backward in time, Faulkner portrays the past and the
present as coexisting and is able to examine how they influence each other. He
creates a complex, layered, and multidimensional world.
Faulkner presents two visions of time in the story. One is based in the
mathematical precision and objectivity of reality, in which time moves forward
relentlessly, and whats done is done; only the present exists. The other vision is
more subjective. Time moves forward, but events dont stay in distant memory;
rather, memory can exist unhindered, alive and active no matter how much time
passes or how much things change. Even if a person is physically bound to the
present, the past can play a vibrant, dynamic role. Emily stays firmly planted in
a subjective realm of time, where life moves on with her in itbut she stays
committed, regardless, to the past.
The Narrator
The unnamed narrator of A Rose for Emily serves as the towns collective
voice. Critics have debated whether it is a man or woman; a former lover of
Emily Griersons; the boy who remembers the sight of Mr. Grierson in the
doorway, holding the whip; or the town gossip, spearheading the effort to break
down the door at the end. It is possible, too, that the narrator is Emilys former
servant, Tobehe would have known her intimately, perhaps including her
secret. A few aspects of the story support this theory, such as the fact that the
narrator often refers to Emily as Miss Emily and provides only one
descriptive detail about the Colonel Sartoris, the mayor: the fact that he
enforced a law requiring that black women wear aprons in public. In any case,
the narrator hides behind the collective pronoun we. By using we, the narrator
can attribute what might be his or her own thoughts and opinions to all of the
townspeople, turning private ideas into commonly held beliefs.
The narrator deepens the mystery of who he is and how much he knows at the
end of the story, when the townspeople discover Homers body. The narrator
confesses Already we knew that an upstairs bedroom had been sealed up.
However, we never find out how the narrator knows about the room. More
important, at this point, for the first time in the story, the narrator uses the
pronoun they instead of we to refer to the townspeople. First, he says,
Already we knew that there was one room. . . . Then he changes to, They
waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it. This
is a significant shift. Until now, the narrator has willingly grouped himself with
the rest of the townspeople, accepting the communitys actions, thoughts, and
speculations as his own. Here, however, the narrator distances himself from the
action, as though the breaking down of the door is something he cant bring
himself to endorse. The shift is quick and subtle, and he returns to we in the
passages that follow, but it gives us an important clue about the narrators
identity. Whoever he was, the narrator cared for Emily, despite her
eccentricities and horrible, desperate act. In a town that treated her as an oddity
and, finally, a horror, a kind, sympathetic gestureeven one as slight as
symbolically looking away when the private door is forced openstands out.

Shmoop
A Rose for Emily Theme of Isolation
There's no getting around the fact that "A Rose for Emily" is a story about the
extremes of isolation by physical and emotional. This Faulkner classic shows
us the process by which human beings become isolated by their families, by
their community, by tradition, by law, by the past, and by their own actions and
choices. In effect, this story takes a stand against such isolation, and against all
those who isolate others. When you get through with this story, you might feel
the urge to take a nice stroll in the county, or at least take a spin around the
park. Go! Breathe the air; feel the sunshine; visit a friend.
A Rose for Emily Theme of Memory and the Past
Gavin Stevens (a William Faulkner character) famously says, "The past is never
dead. It's not even past." This idea is highly visible in all Faulkner's work, and
we definitely see it here, in "A Rose for Emily." Spanning approximately 74
years, this short story spins backwards and forwards in time like memory, and
shows a southern town torn between the present and the past. Post-Civil War
and Pre-Civil Rights, "A Rose for Emily" shows us an American South in
limbo, trying desperately, with each generation, to find a better way, a way
which honors the good of the past, while coming to terms with its evils.
A Rose for Emily Theme of Visions of America
"A Rose for Emily" doesn't look at America through rose-colored glasses, even
though many of its characters do. In the aftermath of slavery, the American
South shown in the novel is in bad shape. The novel deals with the stubborn
refusal of some southerners to see that the America they believed in an
America based on slavery was no more. The story covers about 74 years,
beginning sometime just before the Civil War. The focus, however, is on the
periods from about 1894 to 1935. Because the dates are all jumbled together, we
have to work to untangle the stories present vision of America from the vision
of the past.
A Rose for Emily Theme of Versions of Reality
By showing people with skewed versions of reality, "A Rose for Emily" asks us
to take off our "rose-colored" glasses and look reality in the face. What we
confront is the reality of America in the story, and the reality of the main
character's complete isolation. Faulkner reveals how difficult it can be to see the
past and the present clearly and honestly by depicting memory as flawed and
subjective. This "difficulty" is part of why the main characters goes insane, or
so it certainly appears. Luckily, there are healthy doses of compassion and
forgiveness in the novel. When we start to feel that, we start to see things more
clearly.
A Rose for Emily Theme of Compassion and Forgiveness
"Compassion and Forgiveness" is another major theme that we can find in
almost any Faulkner story. At first, it might not be apparent in this case. We
almost have to be told that these sentiments are behind "A Rose for Emily"
before we can see them. The story can seem downright cruel, the characters
wholly unsympathetic, and the plot gross. When we begin to see the magnitude
of the tragedy, and its impact on multiple generations, we understand the story
is a call for understanding. The story seems to argue that forgiveness,
compassion, and understanding can only come by facing the facts of the past
and the present, which are tangled up together in an tight knot. Faulkner is both
mercilessly subtle, and painfully blunt in this story, but we can feel the spirit of
compassion rushing through.
The House
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Miss Emily's house is an important symbol in this story. (In general, old family
homes are often significant symbols in Gothic literature.) For most of the story,
we, like the townspeople, only see Miss Emily's house from the outside looking
in. Let's look at the some of the descriptions we get of the house:

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 pumps an eyesore
among eyesores. (1.2)

The fact that the house was built in the 1870s tells us that Miss Emily's father
must have been doing pretty well for himself after the Civil War. The narrator's
description of it as an "eyesore among eyesores" is a double or even triple
judgment. The narrator doesn't seem to approve of the urban sprawl. We also
speculate that the house is an emblem of money probably earned in large part
through the labors of slaves, or emancipated slaves. The final part of this
judgment has to do with the fact that the house was allowed to decay and
disintegrate.

For an idea of the kind of house Miss Emily lived in, take a look at artist Theora
Hamblett's house in Mississippi, built, like Emily's, in the 1870. Now picture
the lawn overgrown, maybe a broken window or two, the paint worn and
chipping and you have a the creepy house that Emily lived in, and which the
children of the "newer generation" probably ran past in a fright.

The house, as is often the case in scary stories, is also a symbol of the opposite
of what it's supposed to be. Like most humans, Emily wanted a house she could
love someone in, and a house where she could be free. She thought she might
have this with Homer Barron, but something went terribly wrong. This
something turned her house into a virtual prison she had nowhere else to go
but home, and this home, with the corpse of Homer Barron rotting in an upstairs
room, this home could never be shared with others. The house is a huge symbol
of Miss Emily's isolation.
The Pocket Watch, the Stationery, and the Hair
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
These are all symbols of time in the story. What's more, the struggle between
the past and the future threatens to rip the present to pieces. When members of
the Board of Aldermen visit Emily to see about the taxes a decade before her
death, they hear her pocket watch ticking, hidden somewhere in the folds of her
clothing and her body. This is a signal to us that for Miss Emily time is both a
mysterious "invisible" force, and one of which she has always been acutely
aware. With each tick of the clock, her chance for happiness dwindles .

Another symbol of time is Emily's hair. The town tells time first by Emily's
hair, and then when she disappears into her house after her hair has turned "a
vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man" (4.6). When Emily no longer
leaves the house, the town uses Tobe's hair to tell time, watching as it too turns
gray. The strand of Emily's hair found on the pillow next to Homer, is a time-
teller too, though precisely what time it tells is hard to say. The narrator tells us
that Homer's final resting place hadn't been opened in 40 years, which is exactly
how long Homer Barron has been missing. But, Emily's hair didn't turn "iron-
gray" until approximately 1898, several years after Homer's death.

In "What's up With the Ending?" we suggest that the town knew they would
find Homer Barron's dead body in the room. But maybe what they didn't know
was that she had lain next to the body at least several years after its owner had
departed it, but perhaps much more recently. Still, the townspeople did have to
break into the room. When and why it was locked up is probably only known by
Emily (who is dead, and wouldn't talk anyway) and Tobe (who has disappeared,
and wouldn't talk anyway).

The stationery is also a symbol of time, but in a different way. The letter the
town gets from Emily is written "on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing
calligraphy in faded ink" (1.4). Emily probably doesn't write too many letters,
so it's normal that she would be using stationery that's probably at least 40 years
old. The stationery is a symbol, and one that points back to the tensions between
the past, the present, and the future, which this story explores.

Lime and Arsenic
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Lime and arsenic are some of the story's creepiest symbols. Lime is a white
powder that's good at covering the smell of decomposing bodies. Ironically, it
seems that the lime was sprinkled in vain. The smell of the rotting corpse of
Homer Barron stopped wafting into the neighborhood of its own accord. Or
maybe the town just got used to the smell. The lime is a symbol of a fruitless
attempt to hide something embarrassing, and creepy. It's also a symbol of the
way the town, in that generation, did things.

We lump it together with arsenic because they are both symbols of getting rid of
something that smells, and in the case of "A Rose for Emily," it happens to be
the very same thing. Remember what the druggist writes on Emily's packet of
arsenic, under the poison sign? "For rats." Faulkner himself claims that Homer
was probably not a nice guy. If Homer is planning to break a promise to marry
Emily, she, in the southern tradition, would most probably have considered him
a rat.

The arsenic used to kill a stinky rat creates a foul stench, which the townspeople
want to get rid of with lime. (If you want to read more about arsenic, click
here). We should also note that arsenic is a favorite fictional murder weapon,
due to its reputation for being odorless, colorless, and virtually undetectable by
the victim. Director Franz Capra's 1944 film Arsenic and Old Lace is good
example of this.
Death and Taxes
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Notice how the first section of the story involves what Benjamin Franklin said
were the only two certain things in the world: death and taxes. Franklin was
talking about the fact that even the U.S. Constitution would be subject to future
change.

Miss Emily's death at the beginning of the story, and the narrators memory of
the history of her tax situation in Jefferson might be what Alfred Hitchcock
called "macguffins." A macguffin is "an object, event, or character in a film or
story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking
intrinsic importance" (source). Neither the funeral nor the tax issue seem to be
about are all that important to the tale of murder and insanity that follows.

Still, we should question whether or not they actually are macguffins.

The taxes are can be seen as symbols of death. The initial remission of Miss
Emily taxes is a symbol of the death of her father. It's also a symbol of the
financial decline the proud man must have experienced, but kept hidden from
Emily and the town, until his death. Since the story isn't clear on why Emily
only got the house in the will, the taxes could also be a symbol of his continued
control over Emily from the grave. If he had money when he died, but left it to
some mysterious entity, (the story is unclear on this point), he would have
denied Emily her independence.

Over 30 years after the initial remission of Miss Emily's taxes when the "newer
generation" tries to revoke the ancient deal they inherited, taxes are still a
symbol of death, though this time, they symbolize the death of Homer Barron.

As we argue in "What's Up With the Ending?", the town is probably already
aware that she has a rotting corpse upstairs. Maybe the taxes were just an
excuse to definitively see what was going on at the house. The next phase of
their plan might well have been foreclosure. They could have used the tax
situation to remove Emily from the neighborhood, and to condemn her house.
Perhaps they wanted to remove the "eyesore," and to cover up everything Miss
Emily says about the past and present of the South.

The fact that they didn't do this might just turn the taxes into a symbol of
compassion. Wasn't it out of compassion that her taxes were initially remitted?
That the "newer generation" decides to continue the tradition also shows that
some of the older ways might well have merit.
A creepy old house in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi,
1861-1933 (approximately)
Setting is usually pretty rich in Faulkner. SimCity-style, William Faulkner
created his own Mississippi County, Yoknapatawpha, as the setting for much of
his fiction. This county comes complete with several different families
including the Grierson family. "A Rose for Emily" is set in the county seat of
Yoknapatawpha, Jefferson and as you know, focuses on Emily Grierson, the last
living Grierson. For a map and a detailed description of Yoknapatawpha, click
here.

OK, so the where is pretty easy. Though Jefferson and its inhabitants are
unique, we can see their town as any southern town during that period. The
situations that arise in the story develop in large part because many southerners
who lived during the slavery era didn't know what to do when that whole way of
life ended. Imagine if suddenly you are told and shown that your whole way of
life is a sham, an atrocity, an evil. Then heap on a generous helping of southern
pride, and you have tragedies like this one. This story also explores how future
generations deal with this legacy. To really feel the movement of history in the
story, and to understand the movements of Emily's life, it important to pin down
the chronology of events.

The dates we use, other than 1874, are just a little rough, but in the ballpark.

1861 Miss Emily Grierson is born.
1870s The Grierson house is built.
1893 Miss Emily's father dies.
1893 Miss Emily falls ill.
1893 Miss Emily's taxes are remitted (in December).
1894 Miss Emily meets Homer Barron (in the summer).
1895 Homer is last seen entering Miss Emily's house (Emily is "over thirty;
we use thirty-three for our calculations).
1895 The townspeople become concerned about the smell of the Grierson
house and sprinkle lime around Emily's place.
1895 Miss Emily stays in for six months.
1895-1898 Miss Emily emerges and her hair gradually turns gray.
1899 Miss Emily stops opening her door, and doesn't leave the house for
about five years.
1904 Miss Emily emerges to give china-painting lessons for about seven
years.
1911 Miss Emily stops giving painting lessons. Over ten years pass before she
has any contact with the town.
1925 They "newer generation" comes to ask about the taxes. This is thirty
years after the business with the lime. This is the last contact she has with the
town before her death.
1935 Miss Emily dies at 74 years old. Tobe leaves the house. Two days later
the funeral is held at the Grierson house. At the funeral, the townspeople break
down the door to the bridal chamber/crypt, which no one has seen in 40 years.

This doesn't answer all the questions by any means. Since nobody in the town
ever knew what was really going on in Emily's house, there are numerous holes
and gaps in this history. Still, you can use this as a guide to help make sense of
some of the confusing moments.
A Rose for Emily Genre
Horror or Gothic Fiction, Southern Gothic, Literary Fiction, Tragedy,
Modernism
Even before we see the forty-year-old corpse of Homer Barron rotting into the
bed, the creepy house, and the creepy Miss Emily let us know that we are in the
realm of horror or Gothic fiction. Combine that with a southern setting and we
realize that it's not just Gothic, but Southern Gothic. The Southern Gothic genre
focuses sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly on slavery, or the aftermath of
slavery in the South. You can definitely see this in "A Rose for Emily."

Since author William Faulkner won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice (first in
1955 for A Fable, and then in 1963 for The Reivers), and the Nobel Prize for
Literature (1949) we'd also have to put it in the category of "Literary Fiction."

Even if Faulkner hadn't won all those prizes, we'd still put "A Rose for Emily"
in this category. The story is masterfully told, and it's obvious that much care
and skill went into it. It's also strikingly original and experimental in terms of
form. This is part of what makes it a classic Modernist text. The Southern
Gothic is a perfect field on which to perform a Modernist experiment.
Modernist is all about what happens when everything you thought was true is
revealed to be false, resulting in shattered identities. Modernism tries to make
something constructive out of the pieces. We can see all that loud and clear in
"A Rose for Emily."


A Rose for Emily has been read variously as a Gothic horror tale, a study in
abnormal psychology, an allegory of the relations between North and South, a
meditation on the nature of time, and a tragedy with Emily as a sort of tragic
heroine. The short story is unique in its writing critiqueSouthern Gothic
genre. Gothic fiction is an important genre of literature that combines elements
of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been
invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle
of Otranto. The effect of Gothic fiction depends on a pleasing sort of terror.
The Southern Gothic Tradition: William Faulkners A Rose for Emily
The southern gothic style is one that employs the use of macabre, ironic
events to examine the values of the American south. Faulkners A Rose for
Emily, in which a well-to-do woman is discovered to have the rotting corpse of
her lover in her.
The most important and defining aspect of southern gothic writing is the
use of macabre, or grotesque, events. Such events are easily identified. A Rose
for Emily, told through the eyes of an entire southern town, depicts a woman
named Emily, who is the last remaining member of a once great family. The
town watches as Emily grows more and more estranged as years pass.
Eventually, when she dies alone, the town enters the house and is shocked to
find the badly decomposed body of her lover, who had been assumed to have
left Emily years before, in the bed of an upstairs room. Faulkner ends the story
on a decidedly gruesome note, writing 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 (p 555).
Another defining aspect of the southern gothic writing style is the use of
southern archetypes. In A Rose For Emily, Faulkner main character, Emily, is
an archetype of the classic southern reclusive, aging spinster. She lives out her
entire life in her familys giant house, alone, save for the one remaining servant.
When she finally does find a lover, she poisons him and keeps his body to
prevent him from leaving her.
The final defining aspect of southern gothic writing is the use of irony,
and it can be found in Faulkners story.
Faulkners A Rose for Emily also contains irony of a similar nature. Emily is
a relic of a once great family, whose social standing is enough to keep her from
having to pay taxes. Yet even though she is in the upper class of the southern
social structure, she commits a heinous crime and loses her mind. Faulkner uses
this irony to criticize the class system that existed in the south in that period.
William Faulkner is one of the most influential writers ever to emerge
from and write about the American south. He used the southern gothic style of
writing in his stories to examine and criticize the social class structure in the
south, using similar examples of irony, southern archetypes, and gruesome
events. Faulkners story ended with that criticism of the social class structure,
provides perfect examples of an important part of Americas rich, yet young,
literary traditionthe southern gothic style.
Gothic Elements in a Rose for Emily
William Faulkners captivating story A Rose for Emily is a shining example
of gothic literature. Faulkner expresses sadness for the love that is not returned,
and a drive that Miss Emily Grierson uses to get what she wishes for. He adapts
a gloomy and mysterious tone in order to compare Miss Emilys rejection to
young adults today.
Faulkner opens his story by expressing the amount of respect that is shown at
Miss Emilys funeral. It is said that the entire town attended this event, but also
that some only showed up to see what the inside of her house looked liked
because no one had been inside in over ten years. He explains this to show the
mysterious appeal of Miss Emily. By explaining the mystery in Miss Emily, he
conveys a dark tone that baffles the audience.
Faulkner then shifts the story toward explaining what Miss Emilys house
had once looked like. It was a big grim house that was once white. It was the
only one left on the street and many believes that it was an abomination to the
community. It is evident that Miss Emily and her house are connected in a
way. Miss Emilys family was once one of the most prominent in the town
because of the relationship the father had with Colonel Sartoris, but as she grew
older the opinions of her social status changed along with her. Her father not
only had great power within the community, he also had power over her as
well. This authority is shown through the portrait that Faulkner painted in the
story: Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a
straddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a
horsewhip. He believed none of the young men in the town were good enough
to court his daughter. She did not have relationships with anyone; because of
this when her father died she clung on to his body for three days before they
buried him. At the end of the second chapter the narrator explains, We
believed she had to do that....

William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily - A Gothic Horror Tale


William Faulkner is widely considered to be one of the great American authors
of the twentieth century. Although his greatest works are identified with a
particular region and time (Mississippi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries), the themes he explores are universal. He was also an extremely
accomplished writer in a technical sense. Novels such as The Sound and the
Fury and Absalom, Absalom! feature bold experimentation with shifts in time
and narrative. Several of his short stories are favorites of anthologists, including
"A Rose for Emily." This strange story of love, obsession, and death is a
favorite among both readers and critics. The narrator, speaking for the town of
Jefferson in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, tells a
series of stories about the town's reclusive spinster, Miss Emily Grierson. The
stories build up to a gruesome revelation after Miss Emily's funeral. She
apparently poisoned her lover, Homer Barron, and kept his corpse in an attic
bedroom for over forty years. It is a common critical cliche to say that a story
"exists on many levels." In the case of "A Rose for Emily", this is the truth.
Critic Frank A. Littler, in an essay published in Notes on Mississippi Writers
regarding the chronology of the story, writes that "A Rose for Emily" has been
read variously as ". . .a Gothic horror tale, a study in abnormal psychology, an
allegory of the relations between North and South, a meditation on the nature of
time, and a tragedy with Emily as a sort of tragic heroine." These various
interpretations serve as a good starting point for discussion of the 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. In a lecture to students
documented by Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner in Faulkner in the
University: Class Conferences at the University of Virginia 1957-1958,
Faulkner himself claimed that "A Rose for Emily" is a "ghost story." In fact,
Faulkner is considered by many to be the progenitor of a sub-genre, the
Southern gothic. The Southern gothic style combines the elements of classic
Gothicism with particular Southern archetypes (the reclusive spinster, for
example) and puts them in a Southern milieu. Faulkner's novels and stories
about the South include dark, taboo subjects such as murder, suicide, and incest.

James M. Mellard, in The Faulkner Journal, argues that "A Rose for Emily" is a
"retrospective Gothic," that is, the reader is unaware that the story is Gothic
until the ending when Homer Barron's corpse is discovered. He points out that
the narrator's tone is almost whimsical. He also notes that because the narrator's
flashbacks are not presented in an ordinary sequential order, readers who are
truly unfamiliar with the story don't put all the pieces together until the end.
However, a truly careful first reading should begin to reveal the Gothic
elements early in the story. Emily is quickly established as a strange character
when the aldermen enter her decrepit parlor in a futile attempt to collect her
taxes. She is described as looking ". . .bloated, like a body long submerged in
motionless water, and of that pallid hue." She insists that the aldermen discuss
the tax situation with a man who has been dead for a decade. If she is not yet a
sinister character, she is certainly weird. In section two of the story, the
unexplained smell coming from her house, the odd relationship she has with her
father, and the suggestion that madness may run in her family by the reference
to her "crazy" great-aunt, old lady Wyatt, are elements that, at the very least,
hint at the Gothic nature of the story. Emily's purchase of arsenic should leave
no doubt at that point that the story is leading to a Gothic conclusion. It would
seem that a reader would have to be very naive not to suspect that something
awful is going to happen at the end of the story.

It is Emily's awful deed that continues to captivate readers. Why would she do
something so ghastly? How could she kill a man and bed his corpse? This line
of questioning leads to a psychological examination of Emily's character. David
Minter, in William Faulkner: His Life and Work, notes in several different
passages the significant influence that Sigmund Freud, the father of modern
psychoanalysis, had on Faulkner's fiction. Freud theorized that repression,
especially if it is sexual in nature, often results in psychological abnormality. In
the story, Emily's overprotective, overbearing father denies her a normal
relationship with the opposite sex by chasing away any potential mates. Because
her father is the only man with whom she has had a close relationship, she
denies his death and keeps his corpse in her house until she breaks down three
days later when the doctors insist she let them take the body. Later in the story,
the ladies of the town and her two female cousins from Alabama work to
sabotage her relationship with Homer Barron. Of course, the narrator suggests
that Homer himself may not exactly be enthusiastic about marrying Emily.
However, it is left to the reader to imagine the exact circumstances leading to
Homer's denouement. Finally, Emily takes the offensive by poisoning Homer so
he can't abandon her. The discovery of a strand of her hair on the pillow next to
the rotting corpse suggests that she slept with the cadaver or, even worse, had
sex with it. Emily's repressive life therefore contributes to her (rather severe)
psychological abnormality: necrophilia.

Some readers have interpreted the story as an allegory of the relations between
the North and the South. This is apparently because the character of Homer
Barron is a Yankee and Emily kills him. However, it would be difficult to argue
that Emily's motivation in dating Homer is to kill him because he is a
Northerner. The most obvious explanation for her willingness to date a man
outside of her social caste would be that she is simply a very lonely woman. A
less obvious, but nonetheless reasonable, explanation for her relationship with
Homer would be that is her way of rebelling against her dead father. During his
lifetime, her father prevented her from having an "acceptable" suitor. Thus, she
rebels by associating with a man her father would have considered a pariah: a
Yankee day laborer. There is really little to suggest that the story is an allegory
of the Civil War other than the fact that a Yankee is killed by a Southerner.
Faulkner himself, in his lecture on the story at the University of Virginia, denies
such an interpretation. He said that he believed that a writer is ". . .too busy
trying to create flesh-and-blood people that will stand up and cast a shadow to
have time to be conscious of all the symbolism that he may put into what he
does or what people may read into it."

One can more confidently argue that "A Rose for Emily" is a meditation on the
nature of time. Although the story is only a few pages long, it covers
approximately three-quarters of a century. Faulkner cleverly constructed the
story to show the elusive nature of time and memory. Several critics have
written papers in attempts to devise a chronology for the story. It would surely
please Faulkner that few of these chronologies are consistent with each other. In
"A Rose for Emily, he is not concerned with actual dates. He is more interested
in the conflict between time as a subjective experience and time as a force of
physics. For example, in section five of the story, the narrator describes the very
old men gathered at Emily's funeral The old men, some who fought in the Civil
War, mistakenly believe that Emily was a contemporary of theirs when in fact
Emily was born sometime around the Civil War. The old men have confused ". .
.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 bottleneck of the most recent
decade of years." Here, Faulkner profoundly and poetically comments on the
human need to deny the passage of time and the astounding capacity of the
human mind to use memory in that ultimately futile denial. Emily, of course,
has other methods of denying time.

Since the denial of time is futile, it is also tragic. This is one reason the story
can be read as a tragedy. But every tragedy needs a hero or heroine. Can Emily
actually be considered a tragic heroine? At first glance, this is a tough sell.
Many readers quite reasonably believe that Emily is some kind of monster,
regardless of what Freud might have said. However, as many critics have noted,
Faulkner's title suggests that he may think otherwise. "In his fiction," notes
Minter in his biography of Faulkner, "he characteristically mingles compassion
and judgement. Even his most terrible villains . . .he treats with considerable
sympathy." Emily is such an example. In fact, the narrator twice describes
Emily as an idol. Although she commits a foul crime, Faulkner views Emily as
a victim of her circumstance. Faulkner despised slavery and racism, but he
admired much of the chivalry and honor of the old South. Emily is a product of
that society and she clings desperately to it as when she refuses to give up her
father's body. She also becomes a victim of her old society. The one time in her
life that she dares to let the past become a "diminishing road," that is, when she
dates Homer, she is ridiculed, ostracized, shamed, and finally jilted. Her
response is an effort to actually freeze time by poisoning Homer and keeping
his corpse in her ghoulish boudoir.

Finally, it is a tribute to Faulkner's talent that this compact yet expansive story
lends itself to so many interpretations. The discussion above briefly describes
the most common interpretations made by readers and critics. However, there is
a great deal of scholarship, entire volumes, written on "A Rose for Emily."
Several critics, including Isaac Rodman in The Faulkner Journal and Milinda
Schwab in Studies in Short Fiction, have presented convincing arguments of the
town's complicity in Homer's murder. Many critics written interesting papers on
literary allusions that they find in the story, alternately, many critics find
allusions to "A Rose for Emily" in contemporary literature. (A interesting paper
might be written comparing and contrasting Faulkner's Emily with the character
of Norman Bates, the schizophrenic, homicidal hotel-keeper/amateur
taxidermist of Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film, Psycho.) "A Rose for Emily"
remains a remarkable, provocative work regardless of the critical approach.