D
Sino-US English Teaching, ISSN 1539-8072
January 2014, Vol. 11, No. 1, 66-69
DAVID
PUBLISHING
The Causes of Emily’s Characters and
Destiny in A Rose For Emily*
WANG Xiao-yan
Changchun University, Changchun, China
William Faulkner is giant in the realm of American literature. This Nobel Prize-winning novelist and short story
writer is acclaimed throughout the world as one of the 20th century’s greatest writers. A Rose for Emily (1930) is
one of his masterpieces. The story describes how Emily, an old South aristocratic spinster, becomes a crazy devil
and her inner world and inner struggle after the American Civil War, when the conflict between the Southern
tradition is in great conflict with the Northern industry and change. The present paper, first of all, gives a brief
introduction of the story. Then the paper mainly explores the root causes of her eccentric, perverse, aloof, and
haughty characters in three different aspects: (1) the cause of her father; (2) the cause of the conflict between the
Southern tradition and the new change; and (3) the cause of Southern old convention. The paper concludes that
Emily is the victim of the cruelty and brutality of the Southern system.
Keywords: A Rose For Emily, chracters, destiny, causes
Introduction
A Rose for Emily (1930) is one of Faulkner’s best and most widely read short stories, a classic story
representing his favorite subject, theme, and style. “The 1950 Nobel Prize presentation speech calls Faulkner
the ‘unrivaled master of all living British and American novelists’. He is regarded as a ‘deep psychologist’. The
short story A Rose for Emily lives up to that high praise” (as cited in YANG, 2004, p. 139).
The story took place in a mythical town that William Faulkner called Jefferson, Mississippi. It began with the
funeral of Miss Emily, a noble old spinster and the description of people’s different reactions to Emily’s death.
Then the narration flowed backwards to reveal the significant details of Emily’s life. Dominated by her father, a
rich Southern slave owner, and his rigid ideas of social status—they were aristocrat, she had been prevented from
marrying until she was 30. One year after her father’s death, she finally fell in love with a Northerner, “a
carpetbagger” (YANG, 2003, p. 113) in Southerners’ minds, “a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee—a big,
dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face” (YANG, 2003, p. 106). They had a period of
wonderful time. But when the roads were finished Homer Barron wanted to leave. As she found out that her lover
was not intend to marry her, she used a cruel and fantastic way—she poisoned him. And most horrible thing was
that she kept the her lover’s corpse beside her for more than 40 years, thus to keep him with her forever.
*
Acknowledgements: This paper is part of the result of the research programs the author participated “The Study of the Female
Characters’ Social Position in the Early Stage of 20th Century Foreign Literature” [2013] No. B137.
WANG Xiao-yan, associate professor, Foreign Language School, Changchun University.
THE CAUSES OF EMILY’S CHARACTERS AND DESTINY IN A ROSE FOR EMILY
67
The time of the story was just after the American Civil War. The end of slavery did not end white
supremacy. One of their long-standing social problems was to find suitable marriage partners since so few
outside the family were deemed worthy to join it. Emily was living under such circumstances, and it was not
strange for her to develop a kind of eccentric, perverse, aloof, and haughty characters. This paper will explore
three of the root causes of her characters and her destiny.
The Causes of Her Characters and Her Destiny
The Cause of Her Father
One of the causes that attribute to Emily’s characters is the tyrannical upbringing by her father.
In A Rose for Emily, Emily was a tragic figure who forever lived under her father’s domination, even after
his death. He “protects” Emily from the world and the “young men”. Mr. Grierson, the father, was a despot and
treated his daughter as a personal possession. Being a tyrant, arrogant, and cold, he unconsciously made Emily
lonely, afraid, so he could dominate her completely and became her only security, her only master, and her world.
Even after her father’s death, Emily still lived under his shadow and also the shadow of her father’s aristocratic
family—the Grierson. She refused to dispose of her father’s body after his death which was a symbol of her
clinging to the past and kept his portrait in a prominent place in her living room which symbolized her father’s
authority. Emily’s whole world, the one her father had made for her, ended when he died. Her father had deserted
her, leaving her nothing but the decay of the old white house. Emily not only clung to her father’s memory, she
also began to assume his domineering traits. Her father exerted a destructive influence on Emily, because her
aristocratic consciousness inherited from her father had thwarted her woman’s life many times.
As a result, Emily even did not accept the passing of time and new way of life. She became isolated, eccentric,
and lonely. She refused to pay tax and lost the ability to handle her relationship with others. It was not just pathetic
attempts to cling to the past, it developed into obsession and finally, homicidal mania. Rather than lose Homer as
she lost her father, she killed him in order to keep him. She lived many years as a recluse. Abnormal characters
were easy to form when under such strong pressure. It was Emily’s father who ruined her life and then Homer’s.
Faulkner once said that Emily’s life was probably destroyed by a selfish father (Nebeker, 1970, p. 3).
The Cause of the Conflict Between the Southern Tradition and New Change
The time of the story is during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the town was learning to live
with South’s loss in the Civil War and the consequent dismantling of the slavery-based society that had preceded
it. Gradual changes had taken place in the South, and the invasion of the Northern industrialization had also found
its way in the Southern society and intruded into the minds of the Southerners. But the Southerners were still
associated with the outdated traditional modes of thought; they were desperately submitted to the old way of life.
In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner depicted the conflicts between the old tradition and the new change, and the
doomed defeat of the old tradition.At the beginning of the story, Emily described her 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” (YANG, 2003, p. 103). But with the time passing, her house was on its way to
“coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps” (YANG, 2003, p. 103). And the once most
select street was then encroached and obliterated by garages and cotton gins. All the houses changed except Emily’s,
68
THE CAUSES OF EMILY’S CHARACTERS AND DESTINY IN A ROSE FOR EMILY
and so was Emily. She could not, or to be exact, would not keep the pace of the times. She clung to the old things
and refused the change. Unwilling to adjust herself to the new change helped to cause Emily’s abnormal character.
Another well-chosen example is Colonel Sartoris, an important character in the story. Sartoris is one of the
aristocratic names in Jefferson. Of the Sartoris, Colonel John Sartoris, the father, including his peers, who
invented story to tell a kind lie to Emily that she needed not to pay tax, so as to look after the single lady without
insulting her dignity. But only a man of Colonel John Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it.
Now with the dying of the that generation, the moral values of the South tradition which Faulkner admired, were
lost. With their more modern ideas, the new generation of the Sartoris and his peers might be more practical,
efficient, and businessman-like. They were some little dissatisfied with the hereditary obligation upon the town.
So they went to her home to collect tax anyhow, even though in vain. The conflicts between the old generation
and the new one indicated the decline of the Southern tradition.
Faulkner revealed with intensity the rootless of the Southern descendants. They witnessed that the Northern
industrialization penetrated the South, but their inherited Southern aristocracy forbade their acceptance of the
new order of life. They stubbornly objected to the invasion of the Northern way of life, but in vain. So the
Southern descendants had to suffer from the loneliness and bitterness of separating from the new world. The
disillusionment of the Southerners was wel1 revealed in the portrayal of Emily. Emily was one the of the
representatives of the Southerners. Her characters were greatly influence by the conflict and finally caused her
tragic end. For Miss Emily, she held a firm conception that the Southern tradition or her family system was some
sort of superiority. Therefore, when another new system—the Northern one came into being, she just could not
accept the truth and did some deeds to resist it. She even refused the new way of signing and posting to protect
her aristocratic position. It was such behaviors and traditions that made her abnormal characters.
The Cause of the Southern Old Convention
In Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, Miss Emily was one of the victims of the Southern old convention. From
some point of view, she never had her own life, and could never control her fate. She just lived in the world
according to the norms and standards formed by tradition and society. The status of upper class white women
hood in the Southern slavery-based society was both superior and limited. So it was hard for woman like Emily to
find a suitable marriage partner. Dominated by a selfish and despotic father, Emily never enjoyed the happiness
of a woman’s life. And furthermore, born in such a distinguished family, Emily had been instructed and
cultivated to be a “pure woman” who should not have emotion or sex desire. In fact, she was only regarded as a
tool to decorate her family: In the opinion of the town people, “alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and
a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (YANG, 2003, p. 103), and when she died, the whole town
went to her funeral, “the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument” (YANG, 2003, p. 103).
For the town people, she was the symbol of the old times, and her death signified the fall of the old tradition. In
their opinion, Emily was a lady who must fulfill her “noblesse oblige” instead of being a woman, a wife, or a
mother. She should feel ashamed if she dared have any sex desire, because she was “with a vague resemblance to
those angels in colored church windows” (YANG, 2003, p. 107). This romantic illusion exempted her from any
responsibility but at the same time deprived of her right to enjoy life.
In this novel, Emily is set as a monument, the symbol of a tradition, a class, a way of life, and certain values.
THE CAUSES OF EMILY’S CHARACTERS AND DESTINY IN A ROSE FOR EMILY
69
As a symbol, Emily had to mind her aristocratic behavior and set an excellent example to other women in town.
She was mythologized as a pure angel instead of a human being. With regard to her dating with a Yankee, Homer,
the town people commented: “Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer”
(YANG, 2003, p. 107), and older people said that “even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse
oblige” (YANG, 2003, p. 107). What was more, the ladies forced the Baptist minister to call upon Emily to
interfere with the dating, but in vain. At last, the minister’s wife wrote to Miss Emily’s relatives in Alabama to
stop her disgraceful behavior.
This old fashion not only caused bias towards Emily, but also became a principle to frame Emily’s
thoughts and behaviors. What she could do is to obey the principle and rules in the Southern convention. In the
end, the great pains caused by the inhibitions of her desires and the conflicts with the social requirement caused
her miserable destiny.
Conclusions
William Faulkner is giant in the realm of American literature. This Nobel Prize-winning novelist and short
story writer is acclaimed throughout the world as one of the 20th century’s greatest writers. A Rose for Emily is a
representative of his short stories. In this short story, Faulkner depicts the tragic downfall of Emily. Her story
truly reflects the tragedy of the fallen aristocrats as well as the cruel reality of the South after the Civil War when
the conflict between the Southern tradition is in great conflict with the Northern industry and change. The
complex relationships between Emily and the generation of the old as well as the new show that people have
strong mental conflicts when they are accepting advance and rejecting the tradition. In this sense, A Rose for
Emily reveals the truth that the progress of society is the interaction between past and now, new and old, fantasy
and reality, life and death, change and eternity.
After the above analysis, it can be concluded the building of Emily’s eccentric, perverse, aloof, and haughty
characters is her tyrannical father, the conflict between the Southern tradition and new change and the Southern
old convention, all of which are the character of the American South. In fact, she is the victim of the cruelty and
brutality of the Southern system.
References
Allen, D. W. (1984). Horror and perverse delight: Faulkner’s A Rose For Emily. Modern Fiction Studies, (4), 685.
CHANG, Y. X. (2002). A survey of American literature. Tianjin: Nankai University Press.
GUI, Y. Q. (1985). Selected reading in English and American literature. Beijing: Translation Company Press.
Morton, C. (2005). A Rose for Emily: Oral plot, typographic story. Storytelling, 5(1), 7-12.
Nebeker, H. E. (1970). Emily’s rose of love: Thematic implications of point of view in Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily. The Bulletin
of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, 24(1), 3-13.
Rubinstein, A. T. (1988). American literature: Root and flower. Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press.
XIE, Q. (2007, April). Analysis of the changing portraits in A Rose for Emily. Canadian Social Science, 3(2), 66.
YANG, L. M. ( 2003). Contemporary college English. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
YANG, L. M. (2004). Teachers’ book of contemporary college English. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.