A Rose for Emily
(1930)
Quiz
A Rose for Emily
(1930)
Setting
1. Find a good match between
the image/detail in the story and its setting?
1. garages and cotton gins
agricultural society
2. Men in their Confederate uniforms
US civil war
3. cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies
architectural style of the 20th-century South
4. free postal delivery
the
Colonel Sartoris as mayor
Ref. Confederate and Union states in
the American Civil War (1861-1865)

http://www.wtv-zone.com/civilwar/map.html
2. Which of the following does NOT
show a mismatch between Emily and
her Society?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Her house
Her refusal to pay tax
Her offering of china painting lesson at the
age of 40
Her going out with Homer Barron.
A Rose for Emily
(1930)
Plot
3. Which of the following is an adequate
description of the story’s plot?
1.
2.
3.
4.
It follows a reverse chronological order.
It moves back and forth, and has a final
disclosure.
It begins in the middle.
It moves back and forth between the preCivil-War time and post-Civil-War time.
4. Which of the following is NOT a major
turning point in Emily’s life?
Her father’s death
2. Her going out with Homer Barron
3. Her being asked to pay tax
4. Her termination of the china painting lesson.
1.
A Rose for Emily
(1930)
Emily
5. Which of the following images do
NOT represent Emily?
1.
2.
3.
4.
iron-gray hair
A carven torso of an idol in a niche
two small pieces of coal pressed into a
lump of dough
a spraddled silhouette in the foreground
Ref. The Old Emily:
Contradictory Signs in her Appearance
As an old woman: elegant, classy, but stubborn
and refusing to adjust to the changes of time.
Emily’s Response to Taxation:


(1) Elegant and old-fashioned: Writes in a thin, flowing
calligraphy in faded ink; (par 4)
(2) Signs of will power and class: "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.“(par 6)
(3) Aged and Dying: 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.“(par 6)

Ref. Old Emily (2): 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.“
Ref. Emily’s Family Background


The decline of the Gierson family: old Lady
Wyatt mad, two cousins away, only her father
and her left.
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 backflung front door.” (par 25)
6. Is what way is, or is not, the young
Emily a Southern belle?
1.
2.
3.
4.
She is one because she is rich and
coqettish.
She is not, because her father is in the
way.
She is not, because she smells.
She is, because she is sought after, and
the older generation treat her genteelly.
7. Which of the following is an example of
Emily’s adjustment to the changes in her life?
1.
2.
3.
4.
Her hair was cut short.
After her father’s death, she is “dressed as
usual and with no trace of grief on her face.”
In her room, there are “curtains of faded rose
color, … the rose-shaded lights, upon the
dressing table, …the delicate array of crystal
and the man’s toilet things backed with
tarnished silver”
“I want some poison,“ she said.
A Rose for Emily
(1930)
The Narrators
8. Which of the following is NOT an example of the
narrators’ “gossip’ about Emily?
1. So the next day we all said, “She will kill
herself.”
2. Two days later we learned that she had bought
a complete outfit of men’s clothing, including a
nightshirt, and we said, “They are married.” We
were really glad.
3. “Poor Emily.”
4. We remembered all the young men her father
had driven away, and we knew that with nothing
left, she would have to cling to that which had
robbed her, as people will.
Ref. The Narrators’ Changing Views of Emily
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.
Ref. Town People’s Intervention &
Gossips--”Poor Emily” “We said”
-- 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.”
Ref. Town People’s Gossips
-- Gossips continued -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.”  Baptist
minister the relatives are fetched. (par 43)
Arsenic -- So the next day we all said, “She will kill
herself”; and we said it would be the best thing.
Ref. Emily’s Pride vs. the Gossips
1) Amidst gossips: “She carried her head high
enough—even when we believed that she was
fallen.” (par 33)
2) Arsenic episode:
Appearance –”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. (par 34 meaning?)
Confrontation – “Miss Emily just stared at him, her
head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye,
until he looked away and went and got the arsenic
and wrapped it up.”
Narrators – moments of sympathy
1. after her father’s death
 2. after Homer Barron disappears and Emily
ceases to appear on the street for 6 months.
“Then we knew that this was to be expected
too; as if that quality of her father which had
thwarted her woman’s life so many times had
been too virulent and too furious to die.”
 3. in the smell episode – “begun to feel really
sorry for her.”

Discussion:


How do we explain each of the following
adjectives?
“Thus she passed from generation to
generation-dear, inescapable, impervious,
tranquil, and perverse.” (par 51)
A Rose for Emily
(1930)
Themes &
Language
9. 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 …
“Whom” refers to
1. Emily
2. The narrators
3. The elderly that attend her funeral
Ref. Pay attention to the change of
tone…and the image of dust

The violence of breaking down the door seemed
to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin,
acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere
upon this room decked and furnished as for a
bridal: 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.  “The deed of breaking into other’s
secret in mind is often violent and cruel.”
10. For a long while we just stood there, looking
down at the profound and fleshless grin. The
body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an
embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts
love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had
cuckolded him.
Theme?
1. The failure of social control
2. Love and death
3. Self vs. Society