Babasa, Ma. Cecilia Beatriz M.

IV – BSITE
Esguerra, Dianne E.

A Rose for Emily

by William Faulkner

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

William Faulkner, born in New Albany, Mississippi, 1897, was one of the 20th century’s greatest
writers. He became renowned through his novels which explore the South’s historical legacy. Some
of his major works include: The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August
(1931), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). His writings are all set in his fictional Mississippi County,
Yoknapatawpha, which provides the readers a look into the practices, folkways, and attitudes that
had divided and united the people of the South since the nation’s inception.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
At the end of the Civil War and eradication of slavery, the Southerners were torn between their
old traditions and the new and more established world order. Religion and politics brought more
complications and divided its people instead of providing order and guidance. Gossip, judgment and
harsh pronouncements were prominent in society preventing individuals to realize their potentials or
to establish their place in the world.

GENRE: Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic is characterized by grotesque, macabre, or fantastic incidents which explore
social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South.

DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION: April 30, 1930

PUBLISHER: Forum Magazine

NARRATOR: The townspeople of Jefferson

POINT OF VIEW: Stream of Consciousness

The narrator always refers to himself in collective pronouns (e.g. we). He is perceived as the
voice of the citizens of the town of Jefferson.

TONE: Ironic, Confessional, Gossipy, Angry, and Hopeful

• Ironic
o The story is ironic because Ms. Emily is continually handed thorns, not roses, (as
opposed to its title) and she herself produces many thorns in return.
• Confessional or Gossipy
o The narrator is confessing the town's crimes against Emily.
o It can be considered gossip if one is confessing the crimes of others.
• Angry
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o The chilling first line of Section IV is a good representative of the elements of tone:
“So the next day we all said, 'She will kill herself'; and we said it would be the best thing.”

• Hopeful
o The hopefulness of the town is evident in the title.
o To place one’s self in the shoes of another, such as Emily’s.
o To have compassion for Emily and to recognize her circumstances in order to build
a more compassionate future, where tragedies like hers do not occur.

STYLE: Flashback
The author used flashbacks in narrating Emily’s life. The story begins with Emily’s death
before moving to the past. Then, Emily’s funeral becomes a flashback as well when it moves on to
the discovery of Homer Barron’s corpse in her attic.
The frequent time shifts portray the past and the present as coexisting and how it influences
each other.

TENSE: Past tense

SETTING (TIME): 1861-1933 (approximately)

SETTING (PLACE): A creepy old house in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi

CHARACTERS:
• Ms. Emily Grierson – an eccentric recluse who is the object of fascination in the story.
• Homer Barron – a foreman from the North, who is poisoned and kept in Emily’s attic
bedroom.
• Mr. Grierson – Emily’s possessive and controlling aristocratic father.
• Col. Sartoris – a former mayor of Jefferson who absolves remits Emily’s taxes after her
father’s death.
• Judge Stevens – the current mayor of Jefferson, who decides to sprinkle lime around
Emily’s house to resolve the complaints against the smell emanating from the property.
• Tobe – Emily’s Negro servant who disappears after his employer’s death.

SUMMARY:
The story, told in five sections, opens in with an unnamed narrator describing the funeral of
Miss Emily Grierson. This story is narrated through a first person’s point of view, with the voice of
the average townspeople. He notes that while the men attend the funeral out of obligation, the
women go primarily because no one has been inside Emily’s house for years. The narrator describes
what was once a grand house ‘‘set on what had once been our most select street.’’ Emily’s origins are
aristocratic, but both her house and the neighborhood have deteriorated. The narrator remarks that
prior to her death, Emily had been ‘‘a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.’’ This is because
Colonel Sartoris, the former mayor of the town, remitted Emily’s taxes dating from the death of her
father “on into perpetuity.’’ Apparently, Emily’s father left her with nothing when he died. Colonel
Sartoris invented a story explaining the remittance of Emily’s taxes, which is the town’s way of
repaying the loan to her father, to save her from the embarrassment of accepting charity.
When Miss Emily was young, her father chased away all the men that were in love with her.
The summer after the death of his father, she fell in love with a Yankee (man from North) by the

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name of Homer Barron. Everyone in the town was gossiping about their relationship and
questioning if they were getting married. They stopped seeing Homer for a while. When he did
return they thought that Emily’s marriage was on the way. But nothing came about. Years sped by
and Ms. Emily grew old, her hair turned iron-gray, and her body became fat.
Miss Emily died years later; the townsmen did not know that she was sick. After the decent
burial they gave for Miss Emily, they entered the mysterious house and went to see the locked room.
When they opened the room it was full of dust. They gave details that the “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.” They also saw a man’s collar,
tie, suit, shoes, and discarded socks. The most shocking thing was that lying right in the bed was the
man; the body had once lain in the position of an embrace. The story said “What was left of him,
rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which is lay;
and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.”
Then the townsmen noticed that in the second pillow beside the man was the indentation of a head,
and one of them lifted something from it and they saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

MORAL: Be compassionate to others.

THEMES:
• Tradition vs. Change
The story emphasizes the differences between the past, with its aristocracy — Colonel
Sartoris’ gallantry, the Griersons’ aloofness and pride, and the Board of old Aldermen's
respect for Miss Emily — and the modern generation's business-like mentality, embodied in
the Board of new Aldermen and the many modern conveniences we hear about.
Ms. Emily Grierson represents the old tradition, which people wish to respect and
honor. She isolates herself from the outside world and chooses to live in her old dilapidated
house, where time has come to a standstill. She refuses any change that comes in her way.
For instance, Emily refused to have metallic numbers affixed at the side of her house when
the town receives modern mail service. Her bridal chamber, which holds the rotting corpse
of Homer Barron, is also an attempt to prevent change and stop time, even at the expense of
life.

• The Power of Death

A series of deaths are found in the story.

Ms. Emily’s funeral at the beginning of the story;

Her father’s death prompting Col. Sartoris to remit Emily’s taxes;

Col. Sartoris’ death causes the new Board of Aldermen to attempt in
collecting taxes from Emily; and

Homer Barron’s death by poison.
Emily tries to deny death as she clings to her deceased loved ones. She clings on to her
dead controlling father whose possessiveness was the only form of love she ever knew.
Emily refuses to acknowledge death when she poisoned Homer Barron. It is the only
method she knows to keep him near her. However, she fails to realize that Homer’s lifeless
corpse will never be able to return her affections. Death ultimately triumphs.

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SYMBOLS:
• Emily’s House
o It represents Emily’s Aristocratic time or the old tradition.
o It represents alienation, mental illness, and death.
• The Pocket Watch, the Stationery, and the Hair
o It represents time.
o Although Emily refuses to admit it, she is acutely aware that time continues to move
on.
• Lime and Arsenic
o These are symbols of a fruitless attempt to hide something embarrassing, and creepy.
o It's also a symbol of the way the town, in that generation did things.
o Emily used arsenic to kill Homer, who was probably planning to break his promise
of marriage to her. She would have considered Homer a “rat.”
o Lime was used to get rid of the smell of Homer’s decaying corpse.
• Taxes
o It symbolizes death of Emily’s father as the Col. Sartoris’ issues the remission of her
taxes.

MEANING OF THE TITLE:

“[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.”
– William Faulkner

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