“A Rose for Emily”
William Faulkner
The Setting -- Jefferson

 The county seat of the
imaginary
Yoknapatawpha County
(Faulkner often used
this setting in his works)
 Jefferson resembles
William Faulkner's reallife home of Oxford,
Mississippi
 Late 1800’s – early
1900’s
Fractured
Timeline/Nonlinear Structure

 The story is told in five sections
 Sections 1 and 5 are the present
 Sections 2-4 are flashbacks to various points in
time
 Is similar to gossiping . . . A chunk of info from
here, a chunk from there
 The townspeople only discovered details of her
life in bits by watching her
 We find out the details of her life in bits in
pieces like the characters do
Ghost Story

Faulkner calls “A Rose for Emily” a ghost
story
Faulkner’s stories often included these
characters:
The reclusive spinster
The black loyal worker
The southern gentleman
The intruder from the North
Why Emily Feels above the
Law

Colonel Sartoris remits her taxes
She didn’t have to give a reason for buying
the poison
No one approaches her about the smell in her
house
Foreshadowing

 Not admitting her
father was
dead/keeping his body
for three days
 Buying arsenic
 The smell
The Rose

 In general, roses often symbolize love and honor but
are also used in funerals
 The rose in the title of the story could symbolize both
love and morbid tragedy
 The “rose for Emily” could be Homer & the vision of
marriage she has with him (love)
 The “rose for Emily” could be the tragedy of killing
him to keep him with her forever (“funeral”)
The Rose

 In medieval times, the
white rose was a sign of
secrecy
 The rose could be Miss
Emily’s secret
 The rose that she
loved, kept, and
cherished
The Rose

 In 1955, Faulkner said the rose was a tribute for
Emily
 “[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” (Faulkner at Nagano
70-71).
 http://ww2.faulkner.edu/admin/websites/cwarma
ck/William%20Faulkner%20speaks%20on.pdf
Miss Emily

 Emily represented the “Old South” – how it was
slowly dying & making way for the newer,
industrialized South
 Emily’s life, defined by death, is like the Old South –
she fades from real life although continuing to
physically exist
 Faulkner refers to her as a “fallen monument” –
connected to the ways of the Old South
 Modern townspeople don’t know what do with her, so
they just leave her alone
Miss Emily

 Reluctant to change
 Refuses to pay taxes
when the new aldermen
try to collect – “Talk to
Colonel Satoris”
 Won’t let the town put
numbers on her house
for modern mail
 Her bridal chamber is an
attempt to stop time
from going on and a
refusal to accept change
(Homer leaving)
Her House
 Her run-down house in the
middle of a town that was
changing/growing is the last
sign of the Old South

 Before the Civil War was
beautiful and fancy
 Part of a rich, privileged
neighborhood
 Now decaying and out of
place amidst the gas pumps
and cotton wagons
 Also represents mental illness
and isolation
 Her bridal suite, lack of
visitors and outside
connections