A Rose for Emily
(1930)
Emily seen from different
perspectives
-- Emily on Trial &
Emily Empathized
Outline
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Your Q & A
A quick summary of online lecture
Emily Seen from various perspectives
Emily on Trial
Your decision: Emily—Guilty or not?
Emily Empathized
Your Q&A: Tobe and Other Men


Tobe and Racial Discrimination
Q: Three people tended to avoid seeing Miss
Emily again. They were the druggist, the Baptis
t minister and her servant
Tobe respectively. Why did they act like this?
Tobe




Frequent sign: Tobe --“going in and out with the
market basket”
Smell -- “Just as if a man—any man—could
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.”
Your Q&A: 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.
Your Q&A: Emily




Emily’s 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
Emily’s personalities: iron gray hair, gold
chain, ebony cane, black-coal eyes, …
Your Q&A: Narrator


The narrator‘s use of “we” –objective?
Repetition of "Poor Emily” –
“they just want to gloat over her family, which is
in straitened circumstances.” --Yes, but more
than this.
“A Rose for Emily”– Online Lecture
Setting
B. Plot –Gaps and Suspense (the ending as
an example)
C. Different Images of Emily
D. The Narrators’ contradictory views
1. of the present
2. of the previous generations -- gossips
and intervention
A.
Setting – Emily’s House and
the Historical Background
Setting: Emily’s House and its
Background
Cupolas,
spires,
scrolls, the
heavily
lightsome
style
Reference
Southern
Belle
Gasoline
pump
Mail box
tax
Setting (1): The Grierson House


[Emily’s funeral; people haven’t 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 (嬌媚) decay above the cotton wagons and the
gasoline pumps—an 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
Setting (2): Historical Changes



Time: 1862(?)  1936
From Old South to New South*—the 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
PlotGAPS
Plot (back and forth)
Story
Story
Sec 1
Present: Emily’s Death
1. Emily a lady
guarded by her
father
•The tax episode (2nd Generation)
(tax remitted in1894 by Colonel Sartoris)
2. 1894 The father’s
death, which Emily
denies
Sec 2
•  (vanquished the town people) 30 years before, the
smell episode The father’s death
3. Emily changed,
goes out with HB
(1 year later; 2 years
after her father’s
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
Emily’s death
Emily Grierson: Images &
Rumors
--the mad woman,
-- or a lady trying to love and to survive?
Emily: Different Images
(1) Slender
• Controll
Young
ed
Emily
(2)Deprive
d Emily, a
Pauper
(5)Motionless •Smell
like an idol
(6)Fat, like a
• The
Father’s
death
(3)ShortHaired,
tragic &
serene
bloated
•Tax
corpse
• Goes
out with
HB
(4) Proud • Gets
arsenic
Emily
• Joins the
(7) Dead army of
soldiers
(1) Young Emily


The decline of the Gierson family: old Lady
Wyatt mad, two cousins away, only her father
and her left.
(1) Her Father’s control
 “We had long thought of them as a tableau;
Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the
background, her father a spraddled (跨坐)
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)
The Young Emily: isolated, trying to adjust

After her father’s 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)
(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-keeper’s 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 that’s 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
(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
(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.
(7) Emily & The Elderly
3. (par 55) The funeral –
Emily underneath the “bought” flowers,
 the father’s “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…
Two Concepts of Time
Chronological
Time
Mathmatic
Progression
Decay +
progress
Winterless
Meadow
Images of Love and Death
See here
Many others here, too.
Pay close attention to the description
of Emily’s Room …

(par 5) It smelled of dust and disuse—a 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.
Pay close attention to the description
of Emily’s 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 (棺材罩布) as
of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked
and furnished as for a bridal (bridal chamber 新房): 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 man’s 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.
Pay close attention to the description
of Emily’s 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.
Narrators:
Their Contradictory Views
-- Old generations
-- Younger generations
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 generationdear, inescapable, impervious (不受影響的), tranquil,
and perverse.” (par 51)
Contradictory Views
on Emily (2): As a Lady
1) Finds the Griersons too proud:
Emily single at 30  Vindicated (proved right)
2) After the father’s death
 We: “people were glad. At last they could pity Miss
Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had
become humanized.”
 Emily’s 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.
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.
3) Town People’s Intervention
& Gossips--”Poor Emily”
-- some glad, some disagreeing: shouldn’t
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 [百葉窗]
closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the
thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team
passed: “Poor Emily.”
Town People’s 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 remarked—he liked men, and it
was known that he drank with the younger men in
the Elks’ Club—that 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.
Town People’s 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.
Contradictory Views on Emily (3):
As a Scandal --The Smell Episode

Conflicting View points among the town
people:




The women: the negro—or any “man”--cannot do
good housekeeping.
“another link between the gross, teeming world
and the high and mighty Griersons.”
The young man—send 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 propriety—of
different kinds, but not her well-being.
Contradictory Views on Emily (3):
As a Scandal


To avoid confrontation (par 24)
The men sneak there to sprinkle lime (as
disinfectant - 消毒劑);


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)
Yes
No
• to love and keep him
• to seek revenge against the
town people or the cousins
• HB had a heart attack
• The father’s corpse
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?
1) Opening statements
The 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
Courtroom Vocabulary --Simplified
eviden courtroom
ce
a trial
sentence attorney
a witness
Perpetrat
or
Suspect
the
deceased
the victim
Prosecution/
Prosecutor
custody
defendant
Plaintiff
counsel for the
defense
counsel for the
prosecution;
case
lawyer
The court is now in session, ….The case before us is
that of …
I’d like to call my first witness…
-- Thank you, ~. No further questions.
Sir, I must protest …

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.
Witnesses

[10] first generation
For Prosecutor
For Defendant’s Lawyer
those who complained
about Emily's smell
Colonel Sartoris or Judge
Stevens (those who
respect the Griersons as
aristocrats)
those who witness her
Those that say “Poor Emily”
"fall"--going out with Homer
Barron
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
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 Defendant’s 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,
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
Let’s Take …
a Break!!!
10:18 – 10:38 Discussion
10:38 – 11:18 Emily on Trial
11:20 – 11:40 Emily Empathized
11:40 – 12:00 Peer Response &
Conclusion
The Failure of Emily’s 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 people’s intervention getting the two
cousins to come

What could possibly be Emily’s responses? The
meanings of her strained look (arsenic scene) 
Why?

Emily’s Stubbornness: a. strong
b. (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 father’s death and a short time
after her sweetheart […] had deserted her”)
 She refuses to let go.
Emily’s 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 windows—she had
evidently shut up the top floor of the house—
like the carven torso of an idol in a niche,
looking or not looking at us, we could never
tell which.
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.“
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)
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)
“A Rose for Emily” as a southern
gothic







51
“disturbed people doing disturbing things”
strange characters
macabre occurrences
“grotesque”
social issues, behavioral codes
taboo topics
Norton
American Gothic
William Faulkner on Emily

Norton
From Faulkner at Nagano (1956)
[Faulkner]: I feel sorry for Emily’s 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 bad—to go to any length to keep something; but I
52
pity
Emily.
William Faulkner on Emily and the
Title


I don’t 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. 70–71.
Introduction to Literature
A Rose for Emily - The
Zombies
Mid-Term Exam
1)
2)
3)
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
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 Mangan’s Sister described in “Araby” with
what images and why?
How do you describe Sammy’s 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”?