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JUDITH FETTERLEY ON SEXUAL POLITICS IN "A ROSE FOR EMILY". Fetterley, Judith. Bloom's Major Short Story Writers: William Faulkner, Bloom's Major Short Story Writers, 1999, p24-26, 3p. Language: English. Reading Level (Lexile): 1360. (Literary Criticism) Abstract: This article sees William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" as a careful and enlightening exploration of how Southern women are oppressed by the patriarchy under which they live. "A Rose for Emily" is a story not of a conflict between the South and the North or between the old order and the new; it is a story of the patriarchy North and South, new and old, and of the sexual conflict within it. As Faulkner himself has implied, it is a story of a woman victimized and betrayed by the system of sexual politics, who nevertheless has discovered, within the structures that victimize her, sources of power for herself. If "The Birthmark" is the story of how to murder your wife and get away with it, "A Rose for Emily" is the story of how to murder your gentleman caller and get away with it. Bloom selected reprint from the book "The Resisting Reader." (AN: 16524374) Persistent link to this record (Permalink): Cut and Paste: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=lfh&AN=16524374&site=lrc-live <A href="http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&db=lfh&AN=16524374&site=lrc-live">JUDITH FETTERLEY ON SEXUAL POLITICS IN "A ROSE FOR EMILY".</A> Literary Reference Center

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Section: Critical Views on "A Rose for Emily"

JUDITH FETTERLEY ON SEXUAL POLITICS IN "A ROSE FOR EMILY"

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"A Rose for Emily" is a story not of a conflict between the South and the North or between the old order and the new; it is a story of the patriarchy North and South, new and old, and of the sexual conflict within it. As Faulkner himself has implied, it is a story of a woman victimized and betrayed by the system of sexual politics, who nevertheless has discovered, within the structures that victimize her, sources of power for herself. If "The Birthmark" is the story of how to murder your wife and get away with it, "A Rose for Emily" is the story of how to murder your gentleman caller and get away with it. Faulkner's story is an analysis of how men's attitudes toward women turn back upon themselves; it is a demonstration of the thesis that it is impossible to oppress without in turn being oppressed, it is impossible to kill without creating the conditions for your own murder. "A Rose for Emily" is the story of a lady and of her revenge for that grotesque identity. [...] Not only does "A Rose for Emily" expose the violence done to a woman by making her a lady; it also explores the particular form of power the victim gains from this position and can use on those who enact this violence. "A Rose for Emily" is concerned with the consequences of violence for both the violated and the violators. One of the most striking aspects of the story is the disparity between Miss Emily Grierson and the Emily to whom Faulkner gives his rose in ironic imitation of the chivalric behavior the story exposes. The form of Faulkner's title establishes a camaraderie between the author and protagonist and signals that a distinction must be made between the story Faulkner is telling and the story the narrator is telling. This distinction is of major importance because it suggests, of course, that the narrator, looking through a patriarchal lens, does not see Emily at all but rather a figment of his own imagination created in conjunction with the cumulative imagination of the town. Like Ellison's invisible man, nobody sees Emily. And because nobody sees her, she can literally get away with murder. Emily is characterized by her ability to understand and utilize the power that accrues to her from the fact that men do not see her but rather their concept of her: "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me.... Tobe! ... Show these gentlemen out." Relying on the conventional assumptions about ladies who are expected to be neither reasonable nor in touch with reality, Emily presents an impregnable front that vanquishes the men "horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before." In spite of their "modern" ideas, this new generation, when faced with Miss Emily, are as much bound by the code of gentlemanly behavior as their fathers were ("They rose when she entered"). This code gives Emily a power that renders the gentlemen unable to function in a situation in which a lady neither sits down herself nor asks them to. They are brought to a "stumbling halt" and can do nothing when confronted with her refusal to engage in rational discourse. Their only recourse in the face of such eccentricity is to engage in behavior unbecoming to gentlemen, and Emily can count on their continuing to see themselves as gentlemen and her as a lady on their returning a verdict of helpless noninterference. [...] Not only is "A Rose for Emily" a supreme analysis of what men do to women by making them ladies; it is also an exposure of how this act in turn defines and recoils upon men. This is the significance of the dynamic that Faulkner establishes between Emily and Jefferson. And it is equally the point of the dynamic implied between the tableau of Emily and her father and the tableau which greets the men who break down the door of that room in the region above the stairs. When the would-be "suitors" finally get into her father's house, they discover the consequences of his oppression of her, for the violence contained in the rotted corpse of Homer Barron is the mirror image of the violence represented in the tableau, the back-flung front door flung back with a vengeance. Having been consumed by her father, Emily in turn feeds off Homer Barron, becoming, after his death, suspiciously fat. Or, to put it another way, it is as if, after her father's death, she has reversed his act of incorporating her by incorporating and becoming him, metamorphosed from the slender figure in white to the obese figure in black whose hair is "a vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man."
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She has taken into herself the violence in him which thwarted her and has reenacted it upon Homer Barron.

--Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1978): pp. 34-35, 39-40, 42-43. ~~~~~~~~
By Judith Fetterley The Resisting Reader was a landmark in American literary criticism, establishing Judith Fetterley as one of the strongest voices in feminist scholarship today. She has edited the Reader of 19th Century American Women Writers and The Collected Stories of Alice Cary, and has contributed many articles to collections of essays on American literature. She teaches at the State University of New York at Albany. Over the years many critics have faulted Faulkner for his portrayals of women as either weak or predatory, and have seen him as being insensitive to the reality of women's life. However, in this selection Fetterly sees "A Rose for Emily" as a careful and enlightening exploration of how Southern women are oppressed by the patriarchy under which they live.

Copyright of this work is the property of Infobase Publishing and its content may not be copied without the copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software used for access. This content is intended solely for the use of the individual user. Accession Number: 16524374

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