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Averi Wigington
English 1101-LCG
Prof. D. McMahand
November 15th 2010
Old South verses New South: The Struggle for
Control In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
William Faulkner was born in Oxford,
Mississippi in 1897. Living in the south gave Faulkner
a firsthand account of the struggle between letting go
of the past and trying to move forward. He also saw
the struggles people around him were facing: the
struggle to make ends meet, the struggle to be treated
as an equal, the struggle of clutching to the old ways
and give in to the new. Faulkner brings this theme to
life in “A Rose for Emily.” Emily Grierson is an elderly
woman who desperately clings to the past while the
world around her is moving into the future. Emily’s
life is a mystery to her townspeople; once she died,
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however, the entire town was in attendance at her
funeral, only to see what happened to her. In telling
this tale, Faulkner goes back and forth between the
present of the story and flashbacks to efficiently
divulge each and every detail. Faulkner elegantly uses
a non-linear timeline to intensify the ever-present
struggle between the ideologies of the old south and
those of the new south. Miss Emily Grierson is a
woman who embodies the old south. The customs, the
etiquette, the unspoken rules, and that’s the way she
likes it. When the times begin to change, she retreats
into her house, refusing to go along with the new
styles of living. Yet, when Miss Emily looks out her
window and she sees something that she might like
about the new south, his name is Homer Barron.
Homer is “a Yankee- a big, dark, ready man, with a big
voice and eyes lighter than his face” (Faulkner 31). He
immediately becomes a center of attention and
entertainment in the town. He is the epitome of the
new south. The relationship between Miss Emily and
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Homer Barron is a blending of old south and new
south, the merging of two eras.
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 remarked- he liked men, and it was
know that he drank with the younger men
in the Elks’ Club- that he was not the
marrying man. Later we said. “Poor Emily,”
behind the jalousies as they passed on
Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy,
Miss Emily with her head held high.
(Faulkner 33)
Homer obviously has no intention of marrying Miss
Emily; due to the fact the he is either a confirmed
bachelor or preferres the company of men, though
Faulkner never clarifies. Either way, he is with Miss
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Emily purely because doing so gives him recognition
and a good standing in the town. He wants to be seen
out with her, but not have any commitments to her in
the slightest. He wants the popularity and the prestige
that comes with Miss Emily and her title, but still
wants to have his drinks with the boys and be a
“man’s man.”
Hypocrisy is another thematic device highly
present in this story as well as the battle of ideals.
Homer displays a double-sided or hypocritical attitude
that is also obvious with the townspeople. They see
Miss Emily as a prestigious member of the town and
respect her as an older woman. Yet, when she and
Homer are seen out in public together, the town is
outraged. Because Miss Emily is an unmarried
woman, she obviously needs a chaperone to watch her
at all times. To the town’s dismay, Miss Emily does not
want a chaperon and does not care who is unsettled
by her disobedience of that rule. Miss Emily is also a
hypocrite. She is a ritual believer of old southern
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traditions and she falls in love with a man who does
not. She loves her old ways, but also falls for a man
who loves the new south. The condescending
undertone of the town’s people goes hand in hand
with the hypocrisy in the story. They want her to
change, yet they continue to treat her like an
ancient relic. While telling the story of Miss Emily,
Faulkner uses a non-linear timeline to go back and
forth from the present time of Miss Emily’s funeral to
flashbacks of her life, thus further adding to the
conflicting ideals of the old and new south. The
constant time change embodies the south’s inability to
let go of the past and move on with the future. They
cannot come to terms with the new south coming in
and taking over. The people of the south believe that
they must hold on for dear life, in fear of being
forgotten, so they continually go back, and remember
and recall customs and events of the old south to keep
them alive. This style of storytelling upsets the
chronology of the work. The timeline is constantly
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taking the readers back to a gruesome or grotesque
experience in order to reveal the horrible truth that is
in the present. Taking the reader to a dark and ugly
place is common in works written by Southern Gothic
writers like William Faulkner and Tennessee
Williams. This often includes creating characters with
qualities that will make the reader cringe with disgust,
but with enough good qualities to keep the reader
intrigued. Southern Gothic writers often use these
flawed characters to heighten the repulsive aspects of
the south.
The old south is an era filled with struggle. The
rich struggle to keep the poor lower class poor. The
lower class struggle to keep their livelihoods afloat.
There have been racial struggles and the constant
battle to hold tightly to the past in fear of the future.
Faulkner’s gothic short story “A Rose for Emily” is the
tale of a woman’s life and death and how the era of the
old south refused to let go of the past to move forward
with changes of the new era. Miss Emily is so tightly
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bound to her old southern ways that she even keeps
her dead lover in her house and lies with him. Miss
Emily is a necrophiliac, in more ways than one. She
loves her ways so much that even after their death to
the new south; she clings to them like her dead lover,
Homer. She cannot let go, not even on her own death
bed. Faulkner uses a non-linear timeline to go back
and forth through time as another example of an
inability of growth. Faulkner disrupts the chronology
of the story in order to represent the south’s inability
to let go of the past.