 William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, into an old southern family. When he was a child, his parents moved to Oxford, Mississippi, and except for his service in World War I and some time in New Orleans and Hollywood, he spent the rest of his time in Oxford, which is an inspiration for his writing. He once said “I discovered my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about, and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.”  Faulkner’s major work was written in the late 1920s and the 1930s. He created an imaginary county adjacent to Oxford, calling it Yoknapatawpha County and chronicling its history in a series of experimental novels, including The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936) and The Hamlet (1940). His short story collections —These 13 (1931), Doctor Martino and Other Stories (1934), Go Down, Moses and Other Stories (1942), and Knight’s Gambit (1949) — deal with themes similar to those in his novels and include many of the same characters. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in  He is considered one of the most important Southern writers along with Mark Twain, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams, etc.

 The story is about Emily Grierson, one of the victims of the fallen south after the civil war. She has no choice but live in the past. When her attempt to live in the present is doomed, she kills her lover and sleeps with the body for many years before her own death. This story is told by an unknown narrator in the collective voice, who represents the whole town. The story is usually classified as a gothic story for its theme of love, violence and suffering.

 Emily’s house is described in detail. What’s it like? What surrounds it? Why is it seen as “an eyesore among eyesores” ? Explain the narrator’s attitude to Emily’s house and its surrounding.

 The style of her house is Gothic, with spires, scrolls and cupolas. It is located on the once select street. But now what surrounds it are garages, gasoline pumps, cotton gins and wagons — signals of the rapid industrial development of the south. The phrase “an eyesore among eyesores” has a double irony. On the one hand, the narrator is disgusted by the growing industrialism, which is vulgar and gross; on the other hand, the narrator ridicules the house as a coquet, old and ugly eyesore but unwilling to disappear.

 Find the phrases describing the hall, parlor and furniture in Emily’s house. What’s the general impression conveyed?

 Tarnished gilt easel  The hall is “dim”, with “shadow”, “close dank smell”, “smell of dust and disuse”.  The parlor has “heavy, leather-covered furniture”, the leather is “cracked”, so when sat on, “faint dust rose sluggishly about the thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sunray”.  The gilt easel is “tarnished”.  The general impression is that this place is very old and decayed. It is like an old castle deserted, and it is like a prison to anyone who lives in it.

 Can you describe Emily’s appearance in your own words? What impress you the most about her? Which sentence in paragraph 6 gives you a feeling of fear or terror? What do you think of the detail about her gold chain?

 Emily is small but fat. The dominant colors are white (her face is pallid), gold (her gold chain, the head of the cane) and black (her dress, her ebony cane, and her coal of eyes).  The sentence that invokes fear and terror is that she looks bloated, “like a body long submerged in motionless water”.  At the end of the gold chain is her watch which is hidden. The next paragraph says only the ticking sound can be heard. Time is an invisible force, and each tick says the passage of time and of her youth, yet she chooses to hide the watch, and refuses to face the fact.

 Why doesn’t Emily pay the tax as other town people do? How does Emily dismiss the tax collector? What does this episode tell about her?

 Colonel Sartoris remits her tax.  She asks the tax collectors to see Colonel Sartoris, who has been long dead; and then asks the negro to drive them out of her house.  She lives in the past and is cold and resentful to the new changes around. Also she is a woman of strength and determination. In the next paragraph, it says “she vanquished them, horse and foot”.

 What do you think of Judge Stevens?

 He is a representative of the old generation and their values, according to which, asking Emily to get rid of the smell in her house is like accusing her to her face of smelling bad.

 How is the matter solved concerning the bad smell from Emily’s house?

 Not supposed to confront Emily about the smell in her house, four men secretly sprinkle lime around Emily’s house after midnight.

 How does Emily react to her father’s death? What does this say about her? And how do the town people feel about Emily?

 “…with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her,as people will.”  She simply refuses to accept the death of her father. Though he makes it impossible for her finding a husband and happiness, he is the only person she can cling to against the changing time and world.  The town people are glad because they can pity Emily, who becomes “humanized”, like everybody else, by being left alone without much money in the world.

 How do the town people think of Emily going out with Homer, a northerner? And which sentence can tell Emily’s feeling?

 At first the town people are glad that Emily has an interest in a man but they don’t think she is serious. When they realize she is, they whisper and rumor in agitation, and feel pity for her fall.  “She carried her head high enough — even when we believe that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than even the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness.”

 What does the encounter between Emily and the druggist impress you the most? Explain why.

 What impresses the readers the most might be Emily staring at the druggist eye for eye till he looks away and get the arsenic she demands. She is a person of dominating force and authority.

 Which details tell that Emily lives in isolation and she refuses to accept changes?

 She refuses to pay the tax and refuses to have mailbox installed for postal delivery.  Her front door is shut, admitting no visitors. She is only seen through the downstairs windows and the top floor of her house is shut.

 Read paragraph 53 carefully. How do the old men feel about Emily, about past time?

 The old men feel they have danced with her, and even courted her perhaps.  They feel time is like a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years.

 Does the ending surprise you? What is the most Gothic detail in this part?

 Details in the previous parts, such as arsenic, the bad smell, foreshadow the discovery of the crime. Yet, the writer’s attention to details in the locked room, such as the dust, the faded rose color, the rotten body and nightshirt, render a vivid impact of the horror. The most Gothic detail should be the strand of hair in the pillow next to the body. Readers as well as the town people are horrified to learn that Emily has lied in the bed beside the body for many years!

 The story is not told according to the chronological order. Please reconstruct the sequence of events. What effect is intended by such plotting?

 Emily’s father dies. Colonel Sartoris remits her taxes.  Homer Baron and his construction gangs come to the town.  Emily buys poison.  The smell around her house is reported, and lime is sprinkled.  Emily retires for six months and reappears fat and graying.  About forty, Emily gives lessons in china-painting for a period of six or seven years.  After Colonel Sartoris dies, the Aldermen call on Emily for taxes, whom she dismisses.  Emily dies and Homer Baron’s body is found.  Arranging the incidents not according to their chronological order always helps create an air of suspension and mystery, and invite the readers’ active reading.  On the other hand, this plotting foregrounds the concepts of time, the confusion between past and present, the conflict between the old and the new, which underlie Emily’s fate as a female in a fallen south.

 What people in the story represent the past, and what things and people represent the present? And what does the narrator, a collective voice “we”, represent?

 Emily, her house, negro servant, Colonel Sartoris, Judge Stevens, and the Board of Alderman who accept the Colonel’s attitude to Emily and rescind her taxes, represent the values of the past.  Homer Barren, the new Board of Alderman, “the next generation with its more modern ideas” represent the new values.  The narrator, in a plural first-person voice, represent the view of the town, which is undergoing the transition from the old system and values into its new ways of life.

 What do you think are Emily’s motives to murder Homer Baron?

 There are various interpretations.  One of them goes that Emily kills Homer Barron to save face, to preserve her dignity, for being rejected after showing up with him in the public is a disgrace, a violation of the southern chivalric ritual.  Or she kills Homer Barron to stop time, to cling to what is denied her.  Another interpretation is that she kills Homer because of the unresolved Oedipal complex, her being unable to get over the feeling towards her father.

 The title of the story is “A Rose for Emily”. What is the meaning of the title? What may the rose symbolize? Can we know William Faulkner’s attitude to Emily?

 The title reveals Faulkner’s sympathy to his character Emily. Faulkner himself has an ambivalent attitude towards the past. On the one had, he knows the glory of the past is based on nothing but slavery, which is cruel and evil; but on the other hand, he misses the old traditions, customs and culture. The capitalist and industrial development brings new evils.  Emily is a victim of the past. Her father, obviously a patriarchal authority, denies her of suitors and she grows old as a spinster, which fact makes her situation in the fallen south even worse, with her father dead. Unable to cope with the new reality, she fights to preserve her dignity as a woman as much as she can, even if the price to pay is the murder of her lover.  The title probably suggests that Emily deserves sympathy and respect for her loneliness, her love and suffering, her unknown and unrealized dream for a happy life.

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