1.Historical background

Published in 1930, A Rose for Emily is one of the best known of Faulkner’s short stories. It takes place in a mythical town that Faulkner calls Jefferson, Mississippi during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the town was learning to live with the South’s defeat in the Civil War of 1861-1865 and the consequent dismantling of the slavery-based society that had preceded it. The end of slavery, however, did not end white supremacy, nor in particular the social dominance of the prominent white families who, though small in number, had owned the largest plantations and the greatest numbers of slaves. The prestige of those families persisted, even in their unaccustomed poverty. One of their long-standing social problems was to find suitable marriage partners for their offspring since so few outside the family were deemed worthy to join it. The status of upper class white womanhood—of whom Miss Emily is an example—in Southern slavery-based society was both superior and limited. The wife and daughters of the plantation owner were raised above ordinary women and treated with a chivalrous deference. Though these white women gave birth to the only legitimate heirs, they were powerless to control the behavior of their men. What they did acquire was social power, to the point where a whole community might feel bound to accede to their wishes. The older such a woman became, the harder it was for anyone of lower status to say no to her.

2.Colonel Sartoris

The inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha are divided into four social levels: the aristocrats, the ordinary townspeople, the poor white farmers and the black inhabitants. The first group is made up of pioneers and plantation owners and their descendants. Sartoris is one of the aristocratic names in Jefferson. Of the Sartorises, the most famous is Colonel John Sartoris (1823-1876), who earns the title colonel by commanding the town’s Confederate troops in the Civil War. The Colonel Sartoris of A Rose for Emily is Bayard Sartoris, the son of the old colonel, sometimes known as the Young Colonel. This unearned title is an inheritance from Colonel John, his father. The Young Colonel is the mayor who gives Miss Emily the privilege of not paying taxes in Jefferson. Many of the inhabitants of the county appear in more than one of Faulkner’s works. The young Colonel, who is briefly mentioned but whose influence is important in A Rose for Emily, is one of the main characters of Faulkner’s novel Sartoris.

3.William Faulkner

When we talk about William Faulkner’s life, the most important fact is that he was born and brought up n the American South and lived there almost all his life. Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897 to a distinguished Southern family. He spent his youth in Oxford, a small town in Mississippi, listening to all sorts of stories from and about the people in his hometown. The stories his black nanny told him and the gossip he heard from the townspeople resting and chatting in the small downtown square immersed Faulkner in an oral storytelling tradition that formed an important part of his education.

During World War I, Faulkner served in the Royal Canadian Air Force. After the armistice in 1918, he returned to Oxford, and for some time he led a rather directionless life. He attended the University of Mississippi but left the university within a year; he tried his hand at poetry but without much success; he went north to the cosmopolitan city of New York, but was soon driven back home by loneliness. He became a postmaster, but in less than three years he resigned. All this time, Faulkner had been reading, first whatever interested him and, later, the great poets and novelists. In New York, Faulkner met Sherwood Anderson, a famous writer, and in 1925, having traveled to New Orleans, he gained entry into this cultural center through Anderson. Inspired by Anderson, Faulkner began to write novels.

In his lifetime, Faulkner wrote 19 novels and nearly a hundred short stories. The setting of 15 novels and the majority of the short fiction is the American South. In them, the author tells stories about people from a small region in Mississippi, a fictional place he calls Yoknapatawpha County. His major works include novels The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner is regarded as a regional writer, but the word “regional” is misleading because Faulkner deals with major universal themes in literature so profoundly that he is read and recognized nationally and internationally. As far as writing techniques are concerned, Faulkner is among a handful of remarkable experimentalists writing novels in the 20th century. His effective use of stream of consciousness, multiple points of view, symbolism and imagery, places him among the greatest of modern writers along with James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. In 1949, Faulkner received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

4.Writing features

Faulkner’s work is noted for its complexity partly because he deliberately places a considerable burden upon the reader. Instead of telling a simple straightforward story, he often exploits vague references, ambiguities, symbolism, experimental points of view, jumbled time sequences, avoidance of clear transitions, withholding of vital information to compel the reader to join in the writer’s search for truth. Some of these techniques are use in A Rose for Emily.

In it, we can see how the author tells a good story skillfully; how he creates the atmosphere he needs for telling his story; how he keeps the suspense and unfolds the conflict bit by bit; and how he digs deep into the social world of his characters. Utilizing his skills as a writer, Faulkner invites his readers to participate in the process of seeking the truths of the inner lives of the townspeople as they cope with Miss Emily, and of Miss Emily herself. Like a puzzle, once we begin to understand, the story becomes more and more fascinating.

5.Themes

Thematically, this short story is not as simple as it seems: The conflicts in the story can be interpreted on different levels. On a superficial level, it is a murder story with elements of Gothic literature—an eccentric woman living in isolation, an old decaying mysterious house that other people had not been in for decades, and, of course, a dead body in the house, finally discovered after so many years. Similarly, also superficially, the story can be read as a conflict between the South and the North, with Emily representing the declining South and Homer Barron representing the North. Yet to read the story in either of these ways is to miss the most important things the author is trying to convey. On a deeper level, the story explores the inner world of a human being, the inner struggle in the human heart. Short as it is, the story contains many of the characteristics to be found in Faulkner’s longer fiction. Here as elsewhere Faulkner celebrates in detail the workings of the complex social world of a small Southern town. He views it with fondness but in no way idealizes its quirks or its hypocrisies.

The theme of the story is universal, transcending the boundaries of time and space. Like many other works of great literature, it is concerned with love, death, honor, pride, change, and loss.

6.Implicit Chronology

The narration of A Rose for Emily does not follow a normal chronological order. Instead, it shifts in time frequently and gives out bits of information about the main character, Miss Emily, in such a way that the reader has to piece them together by himself. The following implicit chronology has been worked out on the basis of the information from the text.

ca. 1855: Miss Emily is born to the richest family of slave-owner in town

1861-1865: the American Civil War, Confederate troops from here commanded by Col. Sartoris

1870s: Mr. Grierson, Miss Emily’s father, has the family house built in Gothic revival style.

ca. 1886: Mr. Grierson dies; Miss Emily’s inheritance is only the house; she is over 30

ca. 1887: Homer Barron, Northern construction foreman, arrives; he and Miss Emily start courting.

ca. 1888: Homer Barron is seen no more; the smell in the house is notice.

1894: Young Colonel Sartoris, as mayor of the town, exempts Miss Emily from taxes for life.

ca. 1919: Young Colonel dies.

ca. 1927-1928: The tax delegation visits Miss Emily.

ca. 1929-1930: Miss Emily dies at the age of 74.

We must remember that Faulkner is not always accurate about the exact time of a certain event. The purpose of working out this chronology is to give you a rough idea about the time frame in which the story of Miss Emily takes place.

7.Plot

A Rose for Emily basically serves to tell the life story of Miss Emily Grierson, a member of one of the venerable families in the mythical Mississippi town of Jefferson. Faulkner’s story line jumps around in time, creating a somewhat confusing sequence of events. However, we learn that Emily has had a strict father who allows her little freedoms growing up, and he looks down upon most of her suitors. Emily has few friends, and when her father dies, she refuses to allow his body to be removed until forced to do so by authorities. She lives alone in the aging family home, served only by a Negro manservant. Emily eventually courts the visiting Yankee foreman. Homer Barron, spurring gossip throughout the town when it is believed that they are to be married. Homer disappears and the townspeople assume that the relationship is over. Then, a mysterious smell pervades the grounds of the Grierson house. Little is seen of Emily for years, and she retreats to the solitude of her house until her death, when authorities discover a terrible secret.

8.Introduction

Why have a rose for Emily? At that time, giving a rose to a woman was common if they had been through a great tragedy. Emily’s tragedy is her environment, changing quickly and with volatility, causing her to cling to the past in hopes of stopping the change from occurring. This has a deep impact on her mental state, driving her to extreme acts such as murdering Homer and then sleeping with his corpse for years. The town does nothing to stop these events, merely entertain the idea. Terry Heller writes in his analysis of the story that the town, “/chose/ to deal with an idea of Emily, rather than with Emily herself; they are different in that they have different ideas of her and, therefore, approach her... differently.” With nobody willing to help her, Emily died a broken person, and for that Faulkner gave her a rose, in sympathy of her ending.