A rose for Emily by William Faulkner

Background
The myth of old south, antebellum of the south
The story in sections
Section 1: Emily’s death and how her house symbolises the last vestige of the majesty of a
lost era. She refuses to pay taxes.
Section 2: describing 30 years earlier when she refused another official inquiry on behalf of
the town. The odd smell is coming from her house; they sprinkle lime to get rid of the smell
in the middle of the night. When her father died she denied believing, then after three days
she turns her father’s body over for burial.
Section 3: Describing her long illness and the relation with the northern Businessman Homer
Barron. This affair compromised her reputation and when she went to by arsenic from the
drugstore townspeople thought that she is going to kill herself, but the package came to the
house labelled with “For rats.”
Section 4: Barron’s disappear, her isolation
Section 5: What happened after her death, in the mysterious room they found items for an
upcoming wedding and a man’s suit and Barron laying in the bed with an indentation on the
pillow It was Emily`s head and her hair.

Themes
Time and narrative
Time in the story is non-linear; starting from the first event to the next like dominoes pieces,
one falls after other. It is a sequence of back and forth occurrences. When townspeople
discover in Homer’s corpse and Miss Emily’s hair, that final scene shapes all scattered events
in the story and explains what happens before. That tells why she bought the poison in her
thirties, not to end her misery as they thought, but to murder her fiancé.
Why the story swings back and forth? What makes Faulkner build his story towards the end?
Faulkner cracks and shifts the time. The story begins in section one with funeral and end we
see the funeral as a flashback. We knew about Emily’s life through flashback, her life when
she was young and to the old woman. It is the question of time; an illusion we created which
never exist. For Emily, the life is not irreversible series from the past through the present to
the future, in fact, her entire life is controlled by the glorified past. Emily created an
individual time for her; her physical existence is beyond the present she stays committed to
the past in her denial. Not only Emily but also the townspeople, their longing for the old
south, their desire to go back to the time they remember as iconic, affect the way they are
telling the story. Emily’s death and how her house symbolises the last vestige of the majesty
of a lost era.
“as the old do, 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.”
“the indentation of a head” and “a long strand of irony-gray hair”
Throughout the story, the narrator hides well; it is hard to identify him or her. Speaking of
“we” perspective makes us think of townspeople.
In general, the speaker admires “Miss Emily”, respects her aristocratic standing to overcome
the member of city council or even to by the poison. Paradoxically, the narrator continues to
admire Emily’s isolation even when she committed one of the ultimate acts of depression; to
sleep with a dead Yankee. Necrophilia.
The narrator moves from respecting Emily to sympathy. Delightly mentions that she is at the
age of 30 and still single.
In her relationship with the northern businessman, the narrator doesn’t condemn her for her
love for a low-status Yankee, but once the town believes that Miss Emily is engaging in
adultery, the narrator’s shift his attitude from his to townspeople.
Who is the narrator then? Well, it seems that the speaker is a more than one voice; shifting
according to the situation.
Using “we” narrator eliminate the gap between readers and the story, Falkuner creates a
sense of closeness and.
By using the "we" narrator, Faulkner creates a sense of closeness between readers and his
story. The narrator-as-the-town judges Miss Emily as a fallen monument, but simultaneously
as a lady who is above reproach, who is too good for the common townspeople, and who
holds herself aloof. While the narrator obviously admires her tremendously — the use of the
word "Grierson" evokes a certain type of aristocratic behavior — the townspeople resent her
arrogance and her superiority; longing to place her on a pedestal above everyone else, at the
same time they wish to see her dragged down in disgrace. Nevertheless, the town, including
the new council members, shows complete deference and subservience toward her. She
belongs to the Old South aristocracy, and, consequently, she has special privileges.
The Post Civil-War South -The antebellum South
Society in the south relied on agriculture resources to increase their economic benefits. The
large plantations possessed by white southerners increased their wealth as well as their social
status. Using low-cost black labours keep operating their money machine at lowest. Plantation
life shapes the social life and forms a specific hierarchy; the wealthy white farmer was treated
like aristocrats, middle-class and poor white like commoners and black were property.
With this social division, the plantation also rises the aristocratic culture that embraces values
very highly chivalric ideals. Values like honour, social dignity and female virtues. A rose for
Emily is a portray of the lost south, where the slavery had been abolished, commercial
plantations system collapsed yet the southerners clung to their aristocratic culture. Desiring to
return to a mythical glorious past in memory than it ever was in reality.
Faulkner’s depiction of the Southern.
1. Colonel Sartoris (passing a racist law and excusing Emily from paying taxes).
2. Emily’s family is highly respectful in Jefferson community.
3. The father refused a marriage proposal from lower class young men.
4. People of Jefferson approved and preserve social rigid (Homer/Yankee). Holding to
their old tradition even after Emily’s father’s death. Another example, the
townspeople nonetheless tolerate Miss Emily’s arrogance because she is a living
monument to their honoured past. Or even Grierson family house itself, or the
cemetery where Civil War soldiers are buried.
Symbolism
The Grierson Family House
The mansion was once superb and lovely, an expression of Southern culture, and built in a
style of elegant architecture of which without doubt recalls the plantation houses of the Old
South from before the Civil War. The people of Jefferson admire and honour that house, for
them it is monument a grip of the glorious aristocratic past of the South. However, the
Grierson’s residence carries more complicity. It is after all, physically falling and a disgrace
in the highly respected town. Sign of social and cultural progress overstepped the house.

The strand of hair ultimately stands as the last trace of a life left to fail and decay, much like
the body of Emily’s former lover.