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"A Rose for Emily"

Author William Faulkner

Country United States

Language English

Genre(s) Southern Gothic

Publication date 1931

"A Rose for Emily" is a short story by American author William Faulkner first published in the April 30, 1931 issue of Forum. This story takes place in Faulkner's fictional city, Jefferson, Mississippi in the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha County. It was Faulkner's first short story published in a national magazine.

Contents

[hide]

1 Title 2 Plot 3 Adaptations 4 Character List 5 References 6 Bibliography 7 External links

[edit] Title

Faulkner explained the reason for his choice of the title as:

[The title] was an allegorical title; the meaning was, here was a woman who has 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.[1]

[edit] Plot

The story is divided into five sections. In section I, the narrator recalls the time of Emily Grierson's death and how the entire town attended her funeral in her home, which no stranger had entered for more than ten years. In a once-elegant, upscale neighborhood, her house is the last vestige of the grandeur of a lost era. Colonel Sartoris, the town’s previous mayor, had suspended Emily’s tax responsibilities to the town after her father’s death, justifying the action by claiming that Mr. Grierson had once lent the community a significant sum. As new town leaders take over, they make unsuccessful attempts to get Emily to resume payments. When members of the Board of Aldermen pay her a visit, in the dusty and antiquated parlor, Emily reasserts the fact that she is not required to pay taxes in Jefferson and that the officials should talk to Colonel Sartoris about the matter. However, at that point he has been dead for almost a decade. She asks her servant, Tobe, to show the men out.

In section II, the narrator describes a time thirty years earlier when Emily resists another official inquiry on behalf of the town leaders, when the townspeople detect a powerful odor emanating from her property. Her father has just died, and Emily has been abandoned by the man whom the townsfolk thought she was going to marry. As complaints mount, Judge Stevens, the mayor at the time, decides to have lime sprinkled along the foundation of the Grierson home in the middle of the night. Within a couple of weeks, the odor subsides, but the townspeople begin to pity the increasingly reclusive woman, recalling that her great-aunt had succumbed to insanity. The townspeople have always believed that the Griersons thought too highly of themselves, with Emily's father driving off the many suitors deemed not good enough to marry his daughter. With no offer of marriage in sight, she is still single by the time she turns thirty. The day after Mr. Grierson's death, the women of the town call on Emily to offer their condolences. Meeting them at the door, Emily states that her father is not dead, a charade that she keeps up for three days. She finally turns her father's body over for burial.

In section III, the narrator describes a long illness that Emily suffers after this incident. The summer after her father's death, the town contracts workers to pave the sidewalks, and a construction company, under the direction of northerner Homer Barron, is awarded the job. Homer soon becomes a popular figure in town and is seen taking Emily on buggy rides on Sunday afternoons, which scandalizes the town. They feel she is becoming involved with a man beneath her station. As the affair continues and her reputation is further compromised, she goes to the drug store to purchase arsenic. She is required by law to reveal how she will use the arsenic. She offers no explanation, and the package arrives at her house labeled “For rats.”

In section IV, the narrator describes the fear that some of the townspeople have that Emily will use the poison to kill herself. Her potential marriage to Homer seems increasingly unlikely, despite their continued Sunday ritual. The more outraged women of the town insist that the Baptist minister talk with her. After his visit, he never speaks of what happened and swears that he'll never go back. So the minister's wife writes to Emily's two cousins in Alabama, who arrive for an extended stay. Emily orders a silver toilet set monogrammed with Homer's initials and talk of the couple's marriage resumes. Homer, absent from town, is believed to be preparing for Emily's move or trying to avoid her intrusive relatives.

After the cousins' departure, Homer enters the Grierson home one evening and is never seen again. Holed up in the house, Emily grows plump and gray. Despite the occasional lesson she gives in china painting, her door remains closed to outsiders. In what becomes an annual

ritual, Emily refuses to acknowledge the tax bill. She eventually closes up the top floor of the house. Except for the occasional glimpse of her in the window, nothing is heard from her until her death at age seventy-four. Only the servant is seen going in and out of the house.

In section V, the narrator describes what happens after Emily dies. Her body is laid out in the parlor, and the women, town elders, and two cousins attend the service. After some time has passed, the door to a sealed upstairs room that had not been opened in forty years is broken down. The room is frozen in time, with the items for an upcoming wedding and a man's suit laid out. Homer Barron's body is stretched on the bed in an advanced state of decay. The onlookers then notice the indentation of a head in the pillow beside Barron's body and a long strand of Emily's gray hair on the pillow.

[edit] Adaptations

The story was adapted for a longer length film as well in 1987 by Chubby Cinema Company, and has since been released as a 34-minute video. The cast includes Anjelica Huston, John Houseman, John Randolph, John Carradine and Jared Martin.

It has also been adapted many times in various regions in the form of a folk tale, becoming a notable 'camp-fire' story.[citation needed]

The Zombies ' "A Rose for Emily" is a short retelling of the story in song form.[2]

My Chemical Romance 's song "To The End" refers to the story.

[edit] Character List

Emily Grierson - The object of fascination in the story. An eccentric recluse, Emily is a mysterious figure who changes from a vibrant and hopeful young girl to a cloistered and secretive old woman. Devastated and alone after her father’s death, she is an object of pity for the townspeople. After a life of having potential suitors rejected by her father, she spends time after his death with a newcomer, Homer Barron, although the chances of his marrying her decrease as the years pass. Bloated and pallid in her later years, her hair turns steel gray. She ultimately poisons Homer and seals his corpse into an upstairs room.

Homer Barron - A foreman from the North. Homer is a large man with a dark complexion, a booming voice, and light-colored eyes. A gruff and demanding boss, he wins many admirers in Jefferson because of his gregarious nature and good sense of humor. He develops an interest in Emily and takes her for Sunday drives in a yellow-wheeled buggy. Despite his attributes, the townspeople view him as a poor, if not scandalous, choice for a mate. He disappears in Emily's house and decomposes in an attic bedroom after she poisons him.

Judge Stevens - A mayor of Jefferson. Eighty years old, Judge Stevens attempts to delicately handle the complaints about the smell emanating from the Grierson property. To be respectful of Emily’s pride and former position in the community, he and the aldermen decide to sprinkle lime on the property in the middle of the night.

Mr. Grierson - Emily's father. Mr. Grierson is a controlling, looming presence even in death, and the community clearly sees his lasting influence over Emily. He deliberately thwarts

Emily's attempts to find a husband in order to keep her under his control. We get glimpses of him in the story: in the crayon portrait kept on the gilt-edged easel in the parlor, and silhouetted in the doorway, horsewhip in hand, having chased off another of his daughter's suitors.

Tobe - Emily's servant. Tobe, his voice supposedly rusty from lack of use, is the only lifeline Emily has to the outside world and he cares for her and tends to her needs. After her death, he walks out the back door and never returns.

Colonel Sartoris - A former mayor of Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris absolves Emily of any tax burden after the death of her father, which later causes consternation to succeeding generations of town leaders.

A Rose for Emily Plot AnalysisMost good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.

Initial Situation

Death and Taxes

As we discuss in "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory," Faulkner might be playing on the Benjamin Franklin quote, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes," in this initial scene. We move from a huge funeral attended by everybody in town, to this strange little story about taxes.

Conflict

Taxes aren't the only thing that stinks.

The taxes seem tame compared to what comes next. In Section II, we learn lots of bizarre stuff about Miss Emily: when her father died she refused to believe it (or let on she believed it) for four days (counting the day he died); the summer after her father died, she finally gets a boyfriend (she's in her thirties); when worried that her boyfriend might leave her, she bought some poison and her boyfriend disappeared, but there was a bad smell around her house. We technically have enough information to figure everything out right here, but we are thrown off by the issue of the taxes, and by the way in which facts are jumbled together.

Complication

The Town's Conscience

For this stage it might be helpful to think of this story as the town's confession. This section is what complicates things for the town's conscience. The town was horrible to Miss Emily when she started dating Homer Barron. They wanted to hold her to the southern lady ideals her forbearers had mapped out for her. She was finally able to break free when her father died, but the town won't let her do it. When they can't stop her from dating Homer themselves, they sick the cousins on her.

Climax

"For Rats"

Even though this story seems all jumbled up chronologically, the climax comes roughly in the middle of the story, lending the story a smooth, symmetrical feel. According to Faulkner, Homer probably was a bit of a rat, one which noble Miss Emily would have felt perfectly in the right to

exterminate. Yet, she also wanted to hold tight to the dream that she might have a normal life, with love and a family. When she sees that everybody – the townspeople, the minister, her cousins, and even Homer himself – is bent on messing up her plans, she has an extreme reaction. That's why, for us, the climax is encapsulated in the image of the skull and crossbones on the arsenic package and the warning, "For rats."

Suspense

Deadly Gossip

As with the climax, Faulkner follows a traditional plot structure, at least in terms of the story of Emily and Homer. Emily buys the arsenic, and at that moment the information is beamed into the brains of the townspeople. This is one of the nastiest sections. The town is in suspense over whether they are married, soon will be, or never will be. Their reactions range from murderous, to pitying, to downright interference. We also learn that Homer Barron was last seen entering the residence of Miss Emily Grierson on the night in question. So, we can be in suspense about what happened to him, though by the time we can appreciate that this is something to be suspenseful about, we already know what happened.

Denouement

The Next 40 Years

At this point, we've already been given a rough outline of Emily's life, beginning with her funeral, going back ten years to when the "newer generation" came to collect the taxes, and then back another thirty some odd years to the death of Emily's father, the subsequent affair with Homer, and the disappearance of Homer. The story winds down by filling us in on Miss Emily's goings on in the 40 years between Homer's disappearance and Emily's funeral. Other than the painting lessons, her life during that time is a mystery, because she stayed inside.

Conclusion

The Bed, the Rotting Corpse, and the Hair

The townspeople enter the bedroom that's been locked for 40 years, only to find the rotting corpse of Homer Barron.

A Rose for Emily Themes Little Words, Big Ideas

Isolation

There's no getting around the fact that "A Rose for Emily" is a story about the extremes of

isolation – by physical and emotional. This Faulkner classic shows us the process by which

human be...

Memory and the Past

Gavin Stevens (a William Faulkner character) famously says, "The past is never dead. It's not

even past." This idea is highly visible in all Faulkner's work, and we definitely see it here, in "A

Ro...

Visions of America

"A Rose for Emily" doesn't look at America through rose-colored glasses, even though many of its

characters do. In the aftermath of slavery, the American South shown in the novel is in bad

shape. T...

Versions of Reality

By showing people with skewed versions of reality, "A Rose for Emily" asks us to take off our

"rose-colored" glasses and look reality in the face. What we confront is the reality of America in

the...

Compassion and Forgiveness

"Compassion and Forgiveness" is another major theme that we can find in almost any Faulkner

story. At first, it might not be apparent in this case. We almost have to be told that these

sentiments a...

A Rose for Emily Characters Meet the Cast

Miss Emily Grierson

Miss Emily is an old-school southern belle trapped in a society bent on forcing her to stay in her

role. She clings to the old ways even as she tries to break free. When she's not even forty,

she's...

Tobe

Tobe, first described as "an old man-servant – a combined gardener and cook" (1.1). He is an

even more mysterious character than Emily, and, ironically, probably the only one who knows the

an...

Homer Barron

Homer is the man Emily murderers. Yet, somehow, the focus of the tragedy is on Emily. Given

the information we know about Homer, he isn't a very sympathetic character. This is partly

because the to...

Miss Emily's Father

Emily's father is the guy with the gigantic horsewhip. He's only referred to as "Emily's father."

Faulkner himself didn't approve of the man at all. In an interview, Faulkner expounds on this

chara...

Colonel Sartoris

The Colonel is the guy who initially dreamed up the scheme to relieve Emily of her tax obligations

when her father died. That was a nice thing to do. But, this same Colonel, the mayor, "who," we

ar...

Judge Stevens

Judge Stevens gets one of the best lines in the story: "Dammit, sir, will you accuse a lady to her

face of smelling bad?" (2.9) Given everything the town knows at this point, the smell should

have...

Old Lady Wyatt

Old lady Wyatt is Emily's great-aunt (on her father's side, we believe). Before her death,

according to the townspeople, old lady Wyatt is "completely crazy" (2.11). She seems to be in the

story to...

The Cousins

The town thinks Miss Emily's "two female cousins are even more Grierson than Miss Emily had

ever been" (4.4). That is definitely not a compliment. These cousins from Alabama are relatives of

old la...

Character Roles (Protagonist, Antagonist...)Character Analysis

Protagonist

Emily Grierson

It's strange when our heroes are murderers. In this case, we feel Miss Emily's tragedy so acutely that we hardly feel the tragedy of her murdered lover.

Could we possible insert any of the other characters into the role of protagonist? Tobe would qualify, in terms of being a good guy, but his role in the story is minimized, so we can't use him. Besides, this story is all about Miss Emily and we're stuck with her as a protagonist whether we like it or not.

Antagonist

Emily Grierson

Murderers automatically end up the antagonist category. For Homer Barron, Emily was definitely an antagonist. In a way, the town sees her an antagonist as well. Her own generation persecutes her out of revenge for her family's pretension of nobility. The next generation persecutes her because they know she's a killer, and they don't know how to respect her peculiar situation while keeping the town safe and honoring the principles of justice.

Antagonist

The Town of Jefferson

The town, in its various incarnations, antagonizes Miss Emily and precipitates her fall. There are moments of kindness, and genuine care on the part of the town, but the antagonism is clear, particularly during her relationship with Homer. They played a big role in Homer's death. The town might realize this about itself, which could be why it chooses not to investigate Homer's disappearance and prosecute Emily. They would have put themselves on trial, too. In a way, "A Rose for Emily" might represent the town's own trial.

Antagonist

Emily's Father

We can't leave him out of our antagonist-fest. It seems that Faulkner intended the father to be rather one-dimensional. This relationship is shown as a major cause of Emily's difficulty. Her family isolated her from the rest of the human race in every way possible – his wealth, his status, his refusal to let Emily date are some of the isolating factors. All that wasn't so easy to cast off

after thirty years. And if Emily had any desire to forget who her father was, the town made sure she would never, ever be able to.

Antagonist

Homer Barron

Since another antagonist murdered Homer, and since we have no reliable information on him, we worry about putting him in this category. Still, there are strong insinuations that he wasn't a nice guy and that he might not have treated Emily well.

Foil

Homer Barron and Emily's Father

These guys must be foils. It's even easy to see why there could be confusion between the two characters. Both men have horsewhips. Both are shown as domineering. Homer might be playing northern to Emily's dad's southern, but this is hardly the point. The point is that North or South, both Emily's dad and Homer Barron are domineering men with horsewhips.

Foil

Miss Emily and Tobe

These two mirror each other all the way through the story. Neither of them ever marries or has a family. Both are completely isolated from everyone but the each other. Though they are both victims of the worst of southern traditions, they are victims in very different ways. Still, for these two people, all roads lead to isolation.

Miss Emily GriersonCharacter Analysis

Miss Emily is an old-school southern belle trapped in a society bent on forcing her to stay in her role. She clings to the old ways even as she tries to break free. When she's not even forty, she's on a road that involves dying alone in a seemingly haunted house. At thirty-something she is already a murderer, which only adds to her outcast status.

Miss Emily is a truly tragic figure, but one who we only see from the outside. Granted, the townspeople who tell her story know her better than we do, but not really by much. This is why Emily is called "impervious." We can't quite penetrate her or completely understand her. But, perhaps there is a little Emily in all of us. In the spirit of finding the human being behind the mask, lets zero in on a few aspects of Emily, the person.

Daughter and Woman

As far as we know, Emily is an only child. The story doesn't mention any siblings. It also doesn't mention her mother. It strikes us as odd that the narrator doesn't say anything about her mother at all. We can't really think of a reasonable explanation for this, other than that the narrator wants to emphasize just how much Emily was her father's daughter, and just how alone she was with him when he was alive. From all evidence, he controlled her completely until his death, and even continued to control her from beyond the grave. By separating her so severely from the rest of the town when he was alive, going as far as to make sure she didn't have any lovers or a husband, he set her up for a way of life that was impossible for her to escape, until her death.

We might think of her as weak, or as unwilling to take a stand against her father in life. This assessment is kind of like blaming the victim though. The bare sketch we have of her father shows a man who was unusually controlling, domineering, and perhaps capable of deep cruelty, even toward his only daughter. This theory also disguises her behavior after his death, when she tried desperately to shed the image of dutiful daughter, and, probably for the first time, at thirty-something, pursued her own desires for love and sex.

When this attempt at womanhood failed miserably, she reverted back to the life her father created for her – a lonely, loveless, isolated life. Except now, with Homer Barron rotting away upstairs, there are two men that haunt her.

Artist

We don't know for sure if Emily's artistic ability extended beyond china-painting. Some readers and critics seem to think that Miss Emily is responsible for the "crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father" (1.4) that sits on an easel in the parlor. This may well be the case. (Also, it should be noted that "crayon" here could refer to black or colored charcoal, chalk, or oil crayons.)

Even though we don't have the full lowdown on Emily's art, thinking of her as an artist helps us to see the tragedy of her life, and also provides us a bit of a hopeful angle of vision. On the tragic

side, we see that while Emily's art was at first a link to the town, a way to be a member of the community and to have some contact with the outside world. Once the "newer generation" pieced together her secret, even this last link was gone. On the hopeful side, there is some possibility that Emily was able to turn to her art as a source of comfort and for something to do. Maybe after the townspeople found Homer Barron's corpse, they found a houseful of Miss Emily's art as well.

Miss Emily's Legacy

In "What's Up With the Ending?", we discuss that the townspeople aren't at all surprised to find Homer Barron's body rotting in the closed off room. They broke into the room to confirm what had probably become common knowledge over the years. When Emily didn't kill herself with the arsenic, and when the smell appears, they drew the logical conclusion (passed down from one generation to the next) that Emily must have used the poison on Homer. There is some indication that the townspeople were surprised to find Miss Emily's hair on the pillow beside his body. The imprint of a head in the dust suggests that she might have lain there in the not so distant past.

It's possible that she left this "evidence" there on purpose, her final comment on life before she died. It's not much of a will, but perhaps it's still an important legacy for the townspeople, whose parents had cruelly interfered in Emily's happiness, and who themselves further isolated her out of fear, disgust, and general spite. Everyone pitied Emily, but that's a lot different than loving her. What she left them was the legacy of just how human she was, of just how much she wanted love, and just how warped and twisted the desire for love can become when it is declared off limits.

Miss Emily Grierson Timeline

TobeCharacter Analysis

Tobe, first described as "an old man-servant – a combined gardener and cook" (1.1). He is an even more mysterious character than Emily, and, ironically, probably the only one who knows the answers to all the mysteries in the story. He's also a major connection to the theme "Compassion and Forgiveness." Read on to see what we mean.

Caregiver

Tobe gave his whole life to the care of Miss Emily. We don't know what kind of relationship they had beyond that of employer and servant, but there isn't any indication that either of them abused the other. Perhaps they have us all fooled, and there in the haunted old house they carried on a loving, caring relationship.

Whatever the case, we have to hand it to Tobe for taking care of Miss Emily for most of her life, and most of his (as we talk about in the next section). He also must have been the one to alert

the town to both Emily's father's death, and also to her own death. Loyal and discreet, he protected her privacy from the prying eyes and ears of the town. This might be part of why he split after her death, to avoid having to divulge her secrets to the town. Of course, he probably also left because his duty was finally done, and he could escape the stinking, rotting crypt of a house.

The Tragedy of Tobe

In the section above, we speculate about Tobe. That analysis doesn't really get at the tragedy of his life. He was probably born around the same time as Emily (approximately 1861) and so was almost definitely born a slave, probably on a plantation that Emily's father may have owned.

Assuming he was born with the family or was with them from a young age, he stayed with them through the Civil War, and, as we have seen, through all the rest, too. As a black man in the South his options were limited, maybe even more limited than Emily's. Like her, he might have become convinced that the world outside that house was not the place for him. He might have felt intense loyalty to Miss Emily, and maybe even, like the town, an obligation to her. If they were raised together, they might easily have developed a kind of brother-sister relationship. Alternatively, he might have despised her, or been disgusted and horrified by her. He might have wished for her death. As a human being in a completely bizarre situation, he might have felt a complex tangle of all of those things, and more.

Homer BarronCharacter Analysis

Homer is the man Emily murderers. Yet, somehow, the focus of the tragedy is on Emily. Given the information we know about Homer, he isn't a very sympathetic character. This is partly because the town, as represented by the narrator, doesn't like him. Jeffersonians don't like him because he's a rough-talking, charismatic northerner and an overseer in town working on a sidewalk-paving project.

How involved with Emily he was, we don't know. He may have intended to marry her, but became dissuaded by the wacky antics of her cousins and the town. Why he went to her house that last time, and how exactly he ended up dead in the bed, we don't know. We don't even know if he really did, or was about to, break off his relationship with Emily before she killed him.

Homer's Sexuality

We also don't know if he was gay. We bring this up because this is one of the big questions students have after reading the story. The following line is the source of this confusion:

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. (4.1)

What a strange sentence to unpack. Remember also, that it's gossip, in the most hard-core gossip section of the story. In this fragment, the town seems to be saying that even though

Homer is gay, and even though he isn't the marrying kind, Emily will still manage to hook him. Unpacked, we can really see the spite. Their comments means that she definitely won't succeed, but that if she does, he's not the kind of man she thinks he is.

Nothing in the story tells us whether Homer was gay or not, but you can be pretty sure that's what the town people were insinuating.

The Guy Deserves Some Compassion

It's hard to find anything nice to say about Homer, but that doesn't mean we can't extend to him that compassion this story tries (in it's macabre way) to bring out in us. Whatever he did, whoever he was, he didn't deserve to be murdered. In over-sympathizing with Emily, and with the town's rationalization and cover-up of the murder, we run the risk of erring where they erred.

While Emily probably would have ended up in an awful insane asylum had the town investigated the disappearance of Homer Barron officially, Homer Barron might have had family or friends that never learned about what happened to him. Even if he didn't, isn't it important that the justice speak for those victims who can't speak for themselves?

Miss Emily's FatherCharacter Analysis

Emily's father is the guy with the gigantic horsewhip. He's only referred to as "Emily's father." Faulkner himself didn't approve of the man at all. In an interview, Faulkner expounds on this character:

In this case there was the young girl with a young girl's normal aspirations to find love and then a husband and a family, who was brow-beaten and kept down by her father, a selfish man who didn't want her to leave home because he wanted a housekeeper, and it was a natural instinct of – repressed which – you can't repress it – you can mash it down but it comes up somewhere else and very likely in a tragic form, and that was simply another manifestation of man's injustice to man, of the poor tragic human being struggling with its own heart, with others, with its environment, for the simple things which all human beings want. In that case it was a young girl that just wanted to be loved and to love and to have a husband and a family. (source)

That description is pretty straightforward. The story is meant to show a very selfish man in a very selfish society. He's kind of a one-note fellow, and that note is Me, me, me, me, me!

Colonel SartorisCharacter Analysis

The Colonel is the guy who initially dreamed up the scheme to relieve Emily of her tax obligations when her father died. That was a nice thing to do. But, this same Colonel, the mayor, "who," we are told also "fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an

apron" (1.3). That's not so nice. Unfortunately, the coexistence of these two modes was the norm in those days among powerful political figures

Judge StevensCharacter Analysis

Judge Stevens gets one of the best lines in the story: "Dammit, sir, will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?" (2.9) Given everything the town knows at this point, the smell should have generated a warrant to inspect her home. He's portrayed as an older, (he's 80), powerful, and a very southern man, and he raises a little question.OK, we know that Colonel Sartoris was the mayor when Emily's father died, and we know that it was two years later that the townspeople began complaining about the smell. The town could have changed mayors in two years, but would they have elected a mayor that was eighty years old? We challenge you to figure this out.

Old Lady WyattCharacter Analysis

Old lady Wyatt is Emily's great-aunt (on her father's side, we believe). Before her death, according to the townspeople, old lady Wyatt is "completely crazy" (2.11). She seems to be in the story to suggest that insanity runs in Emily's family

The CousinsCharacter Analysis

The town thinks Miss Emily's "two female cousins are even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been" (4.4). That is definitely not a compliment. These cousins from Alabama are relatives of old lady Wyatt and had been estranged from Emily's father since the time of old lady Wyatt's death. In fact, they were so estranged that they didn't even show up to Emily's father's funeral.

The situation with the cousins exposes some of the dark irony of the story. The townspeople call in the cousins to stop Emily from dating Homer, but when they decide they hate the cousins, they switch sides and try to push Emily and Homer together.

A Rose for Emily AnalysisLiterary Devices in A Rose for Emily

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Miss Emily's house is an important symbol in this story. (In general, old family homes are often

significant symbols in Gothic literature.) For most of the story, we, like the townspeople, only

see...

Setting

Setting is usually pretty rich in Faulkner. SimCity-style, William Faulkner created his own

Mississippi County, Yoknapatawpha, as the setting for much of his fiction. This county comes

complete wit...

Narrator Point of View

The fascinating narrator of "A Rose for Emily" is more rightly called "first people" than "first

person." Usually referring to itself as "we," the narrator speaks sometimes for the men of

Jefferson...

Genre

Even before we see the forty-year-old corpse of Homer Barron rotting into the bed, the creepy

house, and the creepy Miss Emily let us know that we are in the realm of horror or Gothic fiction.

Comb...

Tone

We can think of a bunch more adjectives to describe the tone of the story, these seems to be the

dominant emotional tones the narrator is expressing as Miss Emily's story is told. (Keep in mind

tha...

Writing Style

While Ernest Hemingway boils things down to the essentials, his friend William Faulkner lets the

pot boil over, spilling onto the stove, down onto the floor, and maybe somehow catching the

kitchen...

What's Up With the Title?

You probably noticed that there is no rose in the story, though we do find the word "rose" four

times. Check out the first two times the word is used:When the Negro opened the blinds of one

window,...

What's Up With the Ending?

It's funny that a story as out of sequence as "A Rose for Emily" ends at the end – with the

discovery of the forty-year-old corpse of Homer Barron. Readers and critics often feel that if the...

Plot Analysis

Death and TaxesAs we discuss in "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory," Faulkner might be playing on

the Benjamin Franklin quote, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and

taxes," in...

Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis: Tragedy

Meeting Homer BarronAlthough she doesn't quite fit the profile a Booker tragic hero, Miss Emily

has often been thought of as a very special tragic case. We think that applying Booker to her

present...

Three Act Plot Analysis

The curtains open on the huge funeral of Miss Emily Grierson, which is taking place on the

grounds of a decrepit southern house. The fact that nobody in town has been in Emily's house for

a decade...

Trivia

William Faulkner is a character in David Cronenburg's Naked Lunch. (Source) William Faulkner

and Ernest Hemingway were friends.(Source)Or were they… Hemingway's take on Faulkner:

"Poor Faulkn...

Steaminess Rating

We want to go with PG-13 on this one, because there is no sex mentioned. However, readers

and critics take it all the way to necrophilia, though, in which case you'd have to bump the rating

to an R...

A Rose for Emily Symbolism, Imagery & Allegory Sometimes, there’s more to Lit than meets the eye.

The House

Miss Emily's house is an important symbol in this story. (In general, old family homes are often significant symbols in Gothic literature.) For most of the story, we, like the townspeople, only see Miss Emily's house from the outside looking in. Let's look at the some of the descriptions we get of the 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, 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 decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps – an eyesore among eyesores. (1.2)

The fact that the house was built in the 1870s tells us that Miss Emily's father must have been doing pretty well for himself after the Civil War. The narrator's description of it as an "eyesore among eyesores" is a double or even triple judgment. The narrator doesn't seem to approve of the urban sprawl. We also speculate that the house is an emblem of money probably earned in large part through the labors of slaves, or emancipated slaves. The final part of this judgment has to do with the fact that the house was allowed to decay and disintegrate.

For an idea of the kind of house Miss Emily lived in, take a look at artist Theora Hamblett's house in Mississippi, built, like Emily's, in the 1870. Now picture the lawn overgrown, maybe a broken window or two, the paint worn and chipping and you have a the creepy house that Emily lived in, and which the children of the "newer generation" probably ran past in a fright.

The house, as is often the case in scary stories, is also a symbol of the opposite of what it's supposed to be. Like most humans, Emily wanted a house she could love someone in, and a house where she could be free. She thought she might have this with Homer Barron, but something went terribly wrong. This something turned her house into a virtual prison – she had nowhere else to go but home, and this home, with the corpse of Homer Barron rotting in an upstairs room, this home could never be shared with others. The house is a huge symbol of Miss Emily's isolation.

The Pocket Watch, the Stationery, and the Hair

These are all symbols of time in the story. What's more, the struggle between the past and the future threatens to rip the present to pieces. When members of the Board of Aldermen visit Emily to see about the taxes a decade before her death, they hear her pocket watch ticking, hidden somewhere in the folds of her clothing and her body. This is a signal to us that for Miss Emily time

is both a mysterious "invisible" force, and one of which she has always been acutely aware. With each tick of the clock, her chance for happiness dwindles .

Another symbol of time is Emily's hair. The town tells time first by Emily's hair, and then when she disappears into her house after her hair has turned "a vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man" (4.6). When Emily no longer leaves the house, the town uses Tobe's hair to tell time, watching as it too turns gray. The strand of Emily's hair found on the pillow next to Homer, is a time-teller too, though precisely what time it tells is hard to say. The narrator tells us that Homer's final resting place hadn't been opened in 40 years, which is exactly how long Homer Barron has been missing. But, Emily's hair didn't turn "iron-gray" until approximately 1898, several years after Homer's death.

In "What's up With the Ending?" we suggest that the town knew they would find Homer Barron's dead body in the room. But maybe what they didn't know was that she had lain next to the body at least several years after its owner had departed it, but perhaps much more recently. Still, the townspeople did have to break into the room. When and why it was locked up is probably only known by Emily (who is dead, and wouldn't talk anyway) and Tobe (who has disappeared, and wouldn't talk anyway).

The stationery is also a symbol of time, but in a different way. The letter the town gets from Emily is written "on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink" (1.4). Emily probably doesn't write too many letters, so it's normal that she would be using stationery that's probably at least 40 years old. The stationery is a symbol, and one that points back to the tensions between the past, the present, and the future, which this story explores.

Lime and Arsenic

Lime and arsenic are some of the story's creepiest symbols. Lime is a white powder that's good at covering the smell of decomposing bodies. Ironically, it seems that the lime was sprinkled in vain. The smell of the rotting corpse of Homer Barron stopped wafting into the neighborhood of its own accord. Or maybe the town just got used to the smell. The lime is a symbol of a fruitless attempt to hide something embarrassing, and creepy. It's also a symbol of the way the town, in that generation, did things.

We lump it together with arsenic because they are both symbols of getting rid of something that smells, and in the case of "A Rose for Emily," it happens to be the very same thing. Remember what the druggist writes on Emily's packet of arsenic, under the poison sign? "For rats." Faulkner himself claims that Homer was probably not a nice guy. If Homer is planning to break a promise to marry Emily, she, in the southern tradition, would most probably have considered him a rat.

The arsenic used to kill a stinky rat creates a foul stench, which the townspeople want to get rid of with lime. (If you want to read more about arsenic, click here). We should also note that arsenic is a favorite fictional murder weapon, due to its reputation for being odorless, colorless, and virtually undetectable by the victim. Director Franz Capra's 1944 film Arsenic and Old Lace is good example of this.

Death and Taxes

Notice how the first section of the story involves what Benjamin Franklin said were the only two certain things in the world: death and taxes. Franklin was talking about the fact that even the U.S. Constitution would be subject to future change.

Miss Emily's death at the beginning of the story, and the narrators memory of the history of her tax situation in Jefferson might be what Alfred Hitchcock called "macguffins." A macguffin is "an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance" (source). Neither the funeral nor the tax issue seem to be about are all that important to the tale of murder and insanity that follows.

Still, we should question whether or not they actually are macguffins.

The taxes are can be seen as symbols of death. The initial remission of Miss Emily taxes is a symbol of the death of her father. It's also a symbol of the financial decline the proud man must have experienced, but kept hidden from Emily and the town, until his death. Since the story isn't clear on why Emily only got the house in the will, the taxes could also be a symbol of his continued control over Emily from the grave. If he had money when he died, but left it to some mysterious entity, (the story is unclear on this point), he would have denied Emily her independence.

Over 30 years after the initial remission of Miss Emily's taxes when the "newer generation" tries to revoke the ancient deal they inherited, taxes are still a symbol of death, though this time, they symbolize the death of Homer Barron.

As we argue in "What's Up With the Ending?", the town is probably already aware that she has a rotting corpse upstairs. Maybe the taxes were just an excuse to definitively see what was going on at the house. The next phase of their plan might well have been foreclosure. They could have used the tax situation to remove Emily from the neighborhood, and to condemn her house. Perhaps they wanted to remove the "eyesore," and to cover up everything Miss Emily says about the past and present of the South.

The fact that they didn't do this might just turn the taxes into a symbol of compassion. Wasn't it out of compassion that her taxes were initially remitted? That the "newer generation" decides to continue the tradition also shows that some of the older ways might well have merit.

A Rose for Emily Setting Where It All Goes Down

A creepy old house in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, 1861-1933 (approximately)

Setting is usually pretty rich in Faulkner. SimCity-style, William Faulkner created his own Mississippi County, Yoknapatawpha, as the setting for much of his fiction. This county comes complete with several different families including the Grierson family. "A Rose for Emily" is set in the county seat of Yoknapatawpha, Jefferson and as you know, focuses on Emily Grierson, the last living Grierson. For a map and a detailed description of Yoknapatawpha, click here.

OK, so the where is pretty easy. Though Jefferson and its inhabitants are unique, we can see their town as any southern town during that period. The situations that arise in the story develop in large part because many southerners who lived during the slavery era didn't know what to do when that whole way of life ended. Imagine if suddenly you are told and shown that your whole way of life is a sham, an atrocity, an evil. Then heap on a generous helping of southern pride, and you have tragedies like this one. This story also explores how future generations deal with this legacy. To really feel the movement of history in the story, and to understand the movements of Emily's life, it important to pin down the chronology of events.

The dates we use, other than 1874, are just a little rough, but in the ballpark.

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).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.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.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.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.

This doesn't answer all the questions by any means. Since nobody in the town ever knew what was really going on in Emily's house, there are numerous holes and gaps in this history. Still, you can use this as a guide to help make sense of some of the confusing moments.

A Rose for Emily Narrator: Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

First Person (Peripheral Narrator)

The fascinating narrator of "A Rose for Emily" is more rightly called "first people" than "first person." Usually referring to itself as "we," the narrator speaks sometimes for the men of Jefferson, sometimes for the women, and often for both. It also spans three generations of Jeffersonians, including the generation of Miss Emily's father, Miss Emily's generation, and the "newer generation," made up of the children of Miss Emily's contemporaries. The narrator is pretty hard on the first two generations, and it's easy to see how their treatment of Miss Emily may have led to her downfall. This lends the narrative a somewhat confessional feel.

While we are on the subject of "we," notice no one townsperson is completely responsible for what happened to Emily. (It is fair to say, though that some are more responsible than others.) The willingness of the town to now admit responsibility is a hopeful sign, and one that allows us to envision a better future for generations to come. We discuss this further in "Tone," so check out that section for more information.

A Rose for Emily Genre

Horror or Gothic Fiction, Southern Gothic, Literary Fiction, Tragedy, Modernism

Even before we see the forty-year-old corpse of Homer Barron rotting into the bed, the creepy house, and the creepy Miss Emily let us know that we are in the realm of horror or Gothic fiction. Combine that with a southern setting and we realize that it's not just Gothic, but Southern Gothic. The Southern Gothic genre focuses – sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly – on slavery, or the aftermath of slavery in the South. You can definitely see this in "A Rose for Emily."

Since author William Faulkner won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice (first in 1955 for A Fable, and then in 1963 for The Reivers), and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1949) we'd also have to put it in the category of "Literary Fiction."

Even if Faulkner hadn't won all those prizes, we'd still put "A Rose for Emily" in this category. The story is masterfully told, and it's obvious that much care and skill went into it. It's also strikingly original and experimental in terms of form. This is part of what makes it a classic Modernist text. The Southern Gothic is a perfect field on which to perform a Modernist experiment. Modernist is all about what happens when everything you thought was true is revealed to be false, resulting in shattered identities. Modernism tries to make something constructive out of the pieces. We can see all that loud and clear in "A Rose for Emily."

A Rose for Emily ToneTake a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?

Ironic, Confessional, Gossipy, Angry, Hopeful

We can think of a bunch more adjectives to describe the tone of the story, these seems to be the dominant emotional tones the narrator is expressing as Miss Emily's story is told. (Keep in mind that it's also the town's story.)

The irony of the story is closely tied to the rose in the title, and to Williams Faulkner's explanation of it:

[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. (source)

It's ironic because in the story Miss Emily is continually handed thorns, not roses, and she herself produces many thorns in return. This is where the "confessional" part comes in. Since the narrator is a member of the town, and takes responsibility for all the townspeople's actions, the narrator is confessing the town's crimes against Emily.

Confession can be another word for gossip, especially when you are confessing the crimes of others. (Here one of the big crimes is gossip.) The chilling first line of Section IV is a good representative of the elements of tone we've been discussing so far: "So the next day we all said, 'She will kill herself'; and we said it would be the best thing." This is where the anger comes in. Because this makes us angry, we feel that the narrator too is angry, particularly in this whole section. This leads us back to confession and hopefulness.

The hopefulness of the town is the hardest for us to understand. It comes in part from the title again – if we can put ourselves in the same space as Faulkner and manage to give Emily a rose, to have compassion for her even though she is a murderer, to recognize her tragedy for what it is, this might allow us to build a more compassionate future for ourselves, a future where tragedies like Emily's don't occur. This also entails taking off our "rose-colored glasses" (as we discuss in "What's Up With the Title?") and facing the ugly truths of life, even confessing our shortcomings. Hopefully, we can manage to take those glasses off before death takes them off for us.

A Rose for Emily Writing Style

Lush

While Ernest Hemingway boils things down to the essentials, his friend William Faulkner lets the pot boil over, spilling onto the stove, down onto the floor, and maybe somehow catching the kitchen on fire.

With Faulkner we can feel the vines tangling, the magnolias blooming, the plants around Emily's

house breeding, helping to hide her from the harshness of the world she lives in, a world in which she doesn't really belong. This tangling of blooming and breeding is replicated in the fancy words and long, complicated sentences for which Faulkner is famous.

Part of lushness is that other side of nature, the side we might not want to look at, and the side that's in store for everything in nature: death and decay. Faulkner never neglects this side (certainly not here), and with every blooming rose, he gives us a rotting one, too.

The lushness is also ironic, and perhaps a reaction against a lack of lushness. We know that although Emily's place was probably lush and overgrown, she never went outside to enjoy it, and only rarely even let in the light from outside. The story not only celebrates a lush life, by representing its opposite, but also cautions us against alienating others, against pushing others to hide from the light of life.