A Rose for Emily
William Faulkner
William Faulkner
American Civil War
• Occurred between 1861 and 1865 in the
United States.
• The northern states were going through an
industrial revolution and desperately needed
more people to work in its factories.
• The South was still mainly agricultural and
purchased a lot of goods from abroad and was
therefore against import tariffs.
American Civil War
• 11
southern
slave
states
declared
their secession from the United States and formed
the Confederate States of America, known as the
Confederacy.
• The other 25 states supported the federal
government and formed the Union.
• After four years of warfare, mostly within the
Southern states, the Confederacy surrendered and
slavery was outlawed everywhere in the nation.
Historical points in A Rose
for Emily
• Emily represents the southern aristocratic
family, she had class and power, and according
to her father, none suitor was suitable
enough.
• Homer Barron, a laborer from the north,
known by his sense of humor, came to
Jefferson to construct sidewalks.
Historical points in A Rose
for Emily
• The relationship between them was very
criticized by the society:
“At first we were glad that Miss Emily would
have an interest, because the ladies all said,
‘Of course a Grierson would not think
seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.’ ”
Historical points in A Rose
for Emily
• Tobe, the Negro, represents the slavery once
the society sees him just as a slave. He doesn’t
talk, his opinion doesn’t matter, he just serves
Emily during her life.
A Rose for Emily
A Rose for Emily
• Originally published in the April 30, 1930,
issue of Forum;
• It was the first Faulkner’s short story
published in a major magazine;
• A slightly revised version was published in two
collections of his short fiction, These 13 (1931)
and Collected Stories (1950).
Summary
Chapter I
• The story begins at the huge funeral for Miss
Emily Grierson;
• Her house is now old, but was once the best
house around;
• Since 1894 Emily has had a special arrangement
with the mayor and her family and her paid no
taxes;
• the "newer generation" wasn't happy with it and
tried, unsuccessfully, to get her to pay the
debt.
Chapter II
• Thirty years before her death, the tax collecting
townspeople, paid Emily a visit and complained
about a bad smell at her place;
• The bad smell began 2 years after her father died
and a short time after her lover disappeared from
her life;
• the stink got stronger and new complaints were
made;
• The authorities sprinkled lime around the house
and the smell was eventually gone;
• When her father died everybody felt sorry for
Emily, because he left her the house but no
money.
• Emily refused to admit her father’s death for
three whole days;
• She almost never left the house; And it got worse
when her lover died.
• the only sign of life about the place was the
Negro man.
• People in town judged her and could not
understand why she was still single in her 30’s.
• They also often said that her father had stolen
her youth, because he had driven away a lot
of the young men who tried to approach her;
• But they did not say she was crazy then.
Chapter III
• The story doubles back and tells that not too
long after her father died Emily begins dating
Homer Barron, who is a Yankee and is in town
on a sidewalk-building project;
• The town heavily disapproves of the affair and
brings Emily's cousins to town to stop the
relationship;
• She was sick for a long time. When the town
saw her again, her hair was cut short.
• One day, Emily is seen buying arsenic at the
drugstore, and the town thinks that Homer is
cheating on her, and that she plans to kill
herself.
• “She was over thirty then,still a slight woman,
though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty
black eyes”.
Chapter IV
• Emily buys a bunch of men's items, and
everybody believes that she and Homer are
going to get married;
• Homer had a reputation and people judged
him as either a homosexual or an eternal
bachelor;
• Homer leaves town and the cousins went back
home;
• Homer comes back and he is last seen entering
Miss Emily's house.
• Emily rarely leaves the house after that, except
for a period of half a dozen years when she gives
painting lessons.
• When people next saw Miss Emily, she had grown
fat and her hair was turning gray.
• Emily dies and the story cycles back to where it
began,at her funeral;
Chapter V
• Tobe, miss Emily's servant, lets in the town
women and then leaves by the backdoor
forever;
• After the funeral, and after Emily is buried, the
townspeople go upstairs and break into the
room that they knew had been closed for forty
years.
• Inside, they find the corpse of Homer Barron,
rotting in the bed;
• On the dust of the pillow next to Homer they
find an indentation of a head, and there, in
the indentation, a long, gray hair.
Analysis
Analysis
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Title
Plot devices
Characters
Symbolism
Plot
Subplot
Setting
Point of view
1. Title
“That was an allegorical title; the meaning (…)
was a woman who had had a tragedy (…), and I
pitied her and this was a salute, just as if you
were to make a gesture, a salute to anyone; to a
woman you would hand a rose...”
(Faulkner, in: OUTÓN, 1999, p. 63)
1. Title
“Oh, it’s simply that the poor woman had no life
at all. Her father had kept her more or less
locked up and then she had a lover who was
about to quit her, she had to murder him. It was
just “A Rose for Emily”—that’s all.”
(Faulkner, in: GWYNN, 1959, p. 87–88)
1. Title
• Getty (2005):
– The only rose Emily actually receives;
– Possible interpretations:
• Symbol: Homer, a relic of the past;
• Symbol: combination of petals – the elements in the story;
• A tribute to Emily from the narrator: either preserving her
secret or ignoring what may lead to it;
• A tribute to Emily from the author: the sub-rosa concept.
2. Plot
• “Plot is the author's arrangement of incidents
in a story. It is the organizing principle that
controls the order of events. this structure is,
in a sense, what remains after a writer edits
out what is irrelevant to the story being told”
(MEYER, 1998, p. 60)
2. Plot
• Plot Elements
Exposition – Miss Emily’s funeral and a story about
taxes.
Raising action – The death of Miss Emily’s father and
Homer Barron’s appearance, which turned the mood of
the town.
Climax – Miss Emily’s hidden agenda: poisoning Homer
Barron. The image of the poison package with a skull
and crossbones where was written: “For rats”.
2. Plot
Falling action – The gossip and suspense generated by
the possible outcome of the strange and unknown
relationship between Miss Emily and the “missing”
Homer Barron. The subsequently years of isolation left
for Miss Emily.
Dénouement – The death of Miss Emily, which opened
an opportunity for the townspeople to enter the
bedroom that has been locked for 40 years, only to find
the rotting corpse of Homer Barron, alongside a strand
of iron-gray hair.
2. Plot
• Non-linearity – The story’s arrangement is out of the
chronological order. It is based on the techniques
called:
• In media res – a narrative mode on which a story
begins either at the mid-point or at the conclusion.
• Stream of consciousness - a narrative mode that seeks
to portray an individual's or collective joint (or not)
point of view expressed through written thoughts
and/or memories put together by monologues
intertwined and alternated with past and present
actions or events.
2. Plot
• Functions
They are used in order to do not give away something
surprising and important to the story’s development or
resolution straightforwardly, helping into building up
suspense and relativizing the facts and events which
took (or take) place.
In the story, the “consciousness” is originated from the
habitants and the town itself merged into a stream.
It’s beginning is also what was supposed to be the end
(not only of the story itself): Emily’s funeral.
2. Plot
• Plot style: character-based
The story revolves more around the characters inner
conflicts, a “big picture” or an abstract theme or
message; the action itself is of secondary importance,
as time itself may not be off utter importance or the
setting is a “dreamworld” of its own. The point of view
and the characters minds make the story goes on,
slower perhaps.
2. Plot
• Conflicts
External – Emily X Society
• Judgement – Restrain - North
• Gossip – Control – Tradition
Internal – Emily X Herself
• Shoulder angel – Victim
• Madness - Father
3.
Characters
• Types of characters:
– Round: when a person suffers changes inside a story
and when this person is complex.
Ex.: Emily Grierson
– Flat and static: a person does not suffer changes and
he/she is not complex.
Example: all the other characters in “A Rose for
Emily”
3. Characters
• Miss Emily Grierson:
– The main character; protagonist;
– Mysterious character, once that she kept her life in
secret;
– She was born in an old southern aristocratic family;
– Only child and lived with her father until his death;
– Her life was totally controlled by her father;
3. Characters
• Miss Emily Grierson:
– Her youth image was innocent and beautiful, for she
had many suitors:
She was described as “a slender figure in white” (p.
123), “which is typical of the virginal quality young
women are expected to have at the time” (QUN,
2007, p.67).
– She never got married, because her father thought
“none of the young men were quite good enough for
Miss Emily and such” (p. 123).
3. Characters
• Miss Emily Grierson:
– After her father’s death she became object of pity
for the townspeople;
– Change in appearance: short hair making her look
like a little girl or an angel  lack of sexuality,
contrasting to what people might expect from a
woman who was 30 years old.
3. Characters
• Miss Emily Grierson:
– In the final scene: necrophiliac person;
– “Necrophilia means sexual intercourse with or
attraction toward corpses”;
– Her necrophilia is revealed when her father died: she
was unwilling to admit that he had died and stayed
with the corpse at home for 3 days;
3. Characters
• Miss Emily Grierson:
– Necrophiliacs tend to be controlling in their
relationships: Emily was unable to find a traditional
way to express her desire to possess Homer;
– She decided to take his life away to achieve total
power over him, keeping his body hidden for years.
3. Characters:
• Mr. Grierson:
– Emily’s father;
– Nobody was enough for his daughter;
– Controlled his daughter’s life even in death;
– Faulkner: “He was a selfish man who didn't want his
daughter to leave home because he wanted a
housekeeper (...)”; (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008)
– A selfish man in a selfish society.
3. Characters
• Homer Barron:
– A foreman from the North who went to Jefferson to
work on a sidewalk-paving project;
– Sexuality: people judged him as
homosexual or an eternal bachelor:
either
a
“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.”
(p. 126);
3. Characters
• Homer Barron:
– A demanding boss, admired in the town because of
his sense of humor;
– Distrusted by some of the townspeople because he
was both a Northerner and a day laborer;
– He started going out with Emily every Sunday in a
yellow-wheeled buggy.;
– Disappeared in Emily’s house and decomposed in
an attic bedroom after she killed him.
3. Characters
• Colonel Sartoris:
– Previous mayor of Jefferson, he absolved Emily of
paying any tax burden after her father’s death;
– Despite this kind attitude, Colonel Sartoris had
shown some prejudicial remarks: “he fathered the
edict that no Negro woman should appear on the
streets without an apron” (p. 119-120);
– The coexistence of these behaviors was normal
during that time among powerful political figures
and elites.
3. Characters
• Judge Stevens:
– Previous mayor of Jefferson portrayed as an older
because of his age (80 years old);
– A typical southern man;
– He did not absolve Miss Emily of paying the taxes;
– He and the aldermen decided to sprinkle lime on
Emily’s property in the middle of the night in order
to solve the problem of the smell emanated from
her house.
3. Characters
• Tobe (The Negro):
– A Negro manservant, “combined gardener and cook”
(p. 119), who carefully took care of Emily and her
needs;
– Loyal and discreet, he protected Emily’s privacy from
the Jeffersonians;
– His skin color isolated him from the world: people did
not accept him as a socialized person;
– He probably had the answers Miss Emily’s mysteries
in the story, but he disappeared after he death.
3. Characters
• Old Lady Wyatt:
– Emily’s aunt;
– She is described for the townspeople as a
"completely crazy" (p. 123) person before her
death;
– She seems to be in the story to alert the readers
that insanity happens in Emily’s family.
4.
Symbolism
“A symbol is a person, object, or event that suggests
more than its literal meaning. A literary symbol can
be a setting, character, action, object, name, or
anything else in a work that maintains its literal
significance while suggesting other meanings.
Symbols cannot be restricted to a single meaning;
they are suggestive rather than definitive.”
(MEYER, 1998, p. 215 e 216)
4. Symbolism
• Symbolism is very prominent throughout “A
Rose for Emily”, playing a big role in the
underlying meaning of the entire story.
4. Symbolism
• The Grierson’s house’s mirroring: a symbol of
Miss Emily’s physical attributes when compared
chronologically:
4. Symbolism
• The Grierson’s house’s mirroring:
– The house: "white, decorated with cupolas and
spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome
style of the seventies“ (p. 119); built to impress and
engage the townspeople’s attention.
– Miss Emily: regarded as her father’s property, she
used to dress in a similar manner; representation of
the Old South; considered a “monument” of
Southern manners and an ideal of past values.
4. Symbolism
• The Grierson’s house’s mirroring:
As time goes by….
– Both the house and Miss Emily decay;
– Both were seen as empty and also lifeless at the
time of Miss Emily’s death: “an eyesore among
eyesores” (p. 119), and “a fallen monument” (p.
119).
4. Symbolism
• The Grierson’s house’s mirroring: a symbol of
Miss Emily’s change in social status:
– The house: “big, squarish (…) set on (…) Jefferson’s
most select street” (p. 119); extremely solid,
impervious to the insignificant problems of the
common people.
– Miss Emily: powerful and strong; symbol of the
Southern tradition and rich past.
4. Symbolism
• The Grierson’s house’s mirroring:
– Her scandalous appearances with Homer Barron
further diminished her reputation among the
public;
– Inevitably, the prestige and desirability of the
Grierson’s house fell right alongside Miss Emily's
diminishing name.
4. Symbolism
• Homer Barron: a symbol of the adaptable North
in the traditional South:
– He is an emblem of the North and changes in the
South;
– Representation of modernity, innovation and
industrialization: progress over values  resistance
among traditionalists;
– Representation of the Yankee attitudes toward the
Griersons and also toward the entire South.
4. Symbolism
• Tobe: a symbol of slavery
“This name (a variant of Toby) of Emily's
servant symbolizes slavery and a better
future, as suggested by the two words
(to and be) that make up his name”.
(Cummings Study Guides, 2010)
4. Symbolism
• Disrespected and dehumanized throughout
the story, people called “the Negro”, stripping
him of his human qualities;
• Niggers were considered only labors, not
socialized people.
5. Plot – Sequence of events
Young years
Her father
died
• Emily lived under her father’s control
• She did not marry anybody
• Emily became ordinary and object of compassion
• Her taxes were remitted
• She was not considered crazy
• She got sick and reclusive
• She recovered and showed up again with the hair cut short
• Homer Barron came to Jefferson with the construction crew
The following • Emily and Homer started to be seen together
summer
• Emily’s humanization and liberation period
5. Plot – Sequence of events
Poor Emily
Closed front
door
• Emily could not think seriously of a Northerner
• She would marry him
• She would persuade him
• She would kill herself
• Ladies and relatives’ interference
• Homer left
• Homer had returned , but later disappeared completely, murdered
by Emily
• Emily locked herself up again
• She gave lessons in china-painting
• She was bothered about the smell
• She was bothered about her taxes
5. Plot – Sequence of events
Last years
After her
death
•
•
•
•
•
Emily was isolated from the changes in the city
She closed the top floor
She was an image in the downstairs’ windows
The Negro kept going inside and out with the market basket
She got sick and died
• The Negro disappeared
• Homer’s corpse was found in one of the upstairs’ rooms
• A long strand of iron-gray hair was found next to the dead
body
6. Subplot
• Prejudice: racism
“(…) Colonel Sartoris, the mayor – he who
fathered the edict that no Negro woman should
appear on the streets without an apron (…)”
(p.119-120);
Tobe, “the Negro”, as a symbol of slavery.
6. Subplot
• Prejudice: sexism
– Women’s liberation:
“Then some of the ladies began to say that it was
a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the
young people.” (p. 126)
– Men’s and women’s capacities and duties:
“Only a man of Colonel Sartoris generation and
thought could have invented it, and only a woman
could have believed it.” (p. 120)
6. Subplot
• Prejudice: discrimination against foreigners
and people of different social status:
“Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of
a Northerner, a day laborer.” (p. 124)
6. Subplot
• Intolerance:
– Intolerant remarks within discrimination;
– Against the Griersons:
“People in our town (…) believed the Griersons held
themselves a little too high for what they really
were.” (p. 123)
“When her father died, it got about that the house
was all that was left to her; and people were glad.
(…) Now she would know the old thrill of the old
despair of a penny more or less.” (p. 123)
6. Subplot
• Madness:
– Lady Wyatt: Emily’s aunt;
– Emily’s father: keeping his daughter only for himself
and abusing her mentally.
– Miss Emily:
• Reclusion
• Murder
• Corpses
• Macabre
7. Setting
“Setting is the context in which the action of a
story occurs. The major elements of setting are
time, place, and social environment that frame
the characters. These elements establish the
world in which the characters act.”
(MEYER, 1998, p. 143)
7. Setting
• Time
Estimated era: 1861-1933 -> A brief timeline
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).
7. Setting
• Time
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.
7. Setting
• Time
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.
7. Setting
• Time
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.
7. Setting
• Time
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.
(Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008)
7. Setting
• Place
An old and creepy house in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha
County, Mississippi – a southern in-decadence town
inside a ficcional county created by the author.
7. Setting
7. Setting
• Social environment
A small town rather unique, in decadence, beholder of
the infamous “big brother” environment: filled with
gossip, judgement, unbreakable traditions, and in this
case, with strong influences from the slavery era. A
society in transition, therefore vulnerable and
confused, but that still carries on the southern legacy:
not only the tradition, but the rivalry with the north.
7. Setting
• Historical context:
Confederate ( South )
Union ( North )
Favored slavery
Felt they were fighting a second war of
independence
Made living from small farms and
plantations
Opposed slavery
Felt they were fighting a war to free the
slaves
Wanted to lower taxes on goods
Believed in states' rights
Made living from factories and trade
Wanted to higher taxes on Europeans
goods so Southerners would buy Northern
products
Believed that the Union must be saved
above all else
7. Setting
• Tone (writer)/mood (reader)
A literary technique related to the attitudes toward the
subject and toward the audience implied in a literary
work which. Tone and mood are not interchangeable.
The tone is often defined as what the author is feeling
towards the subject, rather than what the reader feels,
which is defined as mood.
7. Setting
Tone – The author is sympathetic towards Emily, to
whom he offers a rose of consolation after many
thorns, thus configuring na ironical situation. He also
made the narrator a confessional one: through it passes
a sense o communitary guilt frequently overlapped by
all the gossip made towards Miss Emily, what
generated angry and revolt. However, the given rose
(color) works also as hope source; that a future of no
choices like of Emily’s is not to be repeated again: the
overcomming of inevitability by facing the ugly truth.
7. Setting
Mood – Throughout the story, the presence of death,
decadence, sickness and darkness as feelings
wandering over the readers’ heads is constant. Those
presences are conveyed by:
• The house – Miss Emily – Miss Emily’s father
• The funeral – The assassination – The corpse smell
• The status quo of the town
7. Point of view
“Point of view refers to who tells us the story
and how is it told. What we know and how we
feel about the events in a story are shaped by
the author’s choice of a point of view. The teller
of a story, the narrator, inevitably affects our
understanding of the characters’ actions by
filtering what is told through his or her own
perspective”
(MEYER, 1998, p. 174)
8.
Point of view
• “We”: representation of the whole community
and general opinion;
• Small distance between narrator and reader: the
last is part of the former’s voice;
• Unreliable narrator, because of the insertion in
the story;
• Partial omniscience;
• The reader watch the events from a distant
point of view.