Rose For Emily Essay, Research Paper

William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily" is the story of a woman’s

reluctance towards change. The story encompasses the entire town’s unwillingness

to change, while focusing on the protagonist, Emily Grierson. Faulkner uses

symbols throughout the story to cloak an almost allegorical correlation to the

reconstruction period of the South. Even though these symbols are open to

interpretation, they are the heart and soul of the story. While the literal

meaning of Faulkner’s story implies many different conclusions, it is primarily

the psychological and symbolic aspects which give the story meaning. Exploring

these aspects will shed light on Faulkner’s intention of "A Rose for

Emily." After Emily Grierson’s domineering father dies, she refuses to move

on. By defining "moving on" as letting go, we see that Emily is lodged

in the past, unable to ameliorate as the rest of society does. Whenever anything

drastic occurs, Emily becomes reclusive,"After her father’s death she went

out very little… after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at

all." (428), the narrator explains. She had Tobe, her butler to interact

with the world so that she didn’t have to face reality. Psychologically, this is

very important in terms of how Emily views the world and why she commits murder.

If unable to change, one will die in time. Emily though was held to the code of

"noblesse oblige" (430). This meant that even in dire need, Emily

would never reveal her true feelings to the common folk of Jefferson. So she

distorts time, refusing to accept the fact that her father was dead: The day

after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer

condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed

as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father

was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her,

and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as

they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her

father quickly. (429) Emily now clear of her father’s "horsewhip"

(429), was free to explore her sexuality. This newfound freedom led her to fancy

a Yankee day laborer named Homer Barron. Her father would never have approved of

a commoner such as Homer as the townsfolk point out, "We remembered all the

men her father had driven away" (429). Their relationship grew and the

townspeople suspected that they would be married, as is the southern way. They

were mildly surprise that they were not to be married attributing it to

"that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman’s life so many

times…" (432). Her father had doomed her life, stifling any chance for

growth. Not all of the blame is to be placed on Emily’s father, rather, it

should be spread among the people of the town, her father, and Emily herself.

This falling out with Homer is the turning point in the story. Instead of

grieving as a normal person would, Miss Emily turns into a psychotic crazed

lover. At this point in the story she ceases to only be called Miss Emily; and

the town chooses to add poor Emily , as if a noble Grierson would need pity.

Rather than sulk, Emily goes to the drugstore to buy poison, expectedly to kill

herself. She displays her force as a Grierson to the unsure druggist when he

asks why she requires poison, "Miss Emily just stared at him, her head

tilted back in order to look him eye to eye, until he looked away and went and

got the arsenic and wrapped it up" (431). She used her influence as a

Grierson to get what she wanted, even though at this point, the Grierson name,

through several humbling events, was losing its vigor. Still alive, Emily again

chooses to live a hermit’s life, now that Homer is gone. She again takes refuge

in her house which literally and figuratively is Miss Emily’s denial of reality

and time. This is the initiation of her downfall and ultimatly her lonely death.

She refused to be accepted as what she truley was, a commoner. "…She

demanded nore than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson"

(430). Emily, in her home, which for her, was functioning as a temporal shelter,

was impervious to the progression that was sweeping the rest of society.

"Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her

door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them." (432).

Emily died alone, save for her "Negro man to wait on her" (432). The

town had forgotten her, for she alone was in the past. Society typically doesn’t

look back,it instead looks forward. Miss Emily had long since faded into the

past, where no one but scholars would think to look. However the town still

respected Emily for what she was, a "monument" (426). The townfolk did

attend the funeral, in most part "…out of curiousity to see the inside of

her house…" (426). After the funeral, the townspeople investigated the

house finding a room untouched for over 40 years. The house, like Emily, was

stagnant and hadn’t succumbed to the evolution of time. Homer Barron’s decayed

body was found lying in bed. Next to Homer there was an "indentation of a

head" (433), and on this pillow lay a "iron gray hair" that

belonged to Miss Emily, who apparently was sleeping with the corpse for years.

With Emly Grierson dead, the town no longer had a grasp for the traditional

south. Who else would take on the responsibilty of noblisse oblige? In essense,

the reconstruction was complete. Faulkner’s story has serious pyschologial

ramifications. In this context we see a young girl who is forever changed by her

abusive father. She then manifests her desires on an unsuspecting northerner,

who through his eyes, is doing nothing wrong. To Miss Emily desertion is a great

sin and she will stop at nothing to retain Homer and her dignity. One could also

surmise that she has indulged in necrophillia, as well. All because she is

unwilling to recognize that things change over time. The authors consistant use

of symbols throughout the story are yet another facet of the magnificance of

"A Rose for Emily". For example, consider Faulkner’s extensive use of

color in the story. It is not just for describing the setting and characters. It

is actually used to illustrate certain qualities that the author has deemed

meaningful. For instance, Emily’s house, which is now "an eyesore among

eyesores" (427), represents the Old South. It like Emily, was the only

thing from a dying generation left; they both were a testemant to a bygone era.

The house "had once been white" (427), just as Emil’y’s portrait

showed her as a "slender figure in white", and later the house, like

Emily, deteriorates in to an eyesore. Faulkner’s description of Emily in the

youthful portrait is a stark contrast to her in her later years, "…a

small, fat women in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and

vanishing into her belt…She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in

motionless water, and of that pallid hue" (428). Faulkner’s description can

be absorbed in several different ways, but it is clear that the water stands for

time and Emily has been stuck in time since her Homer’s that when digested as a

whole paint a unsettling picture. Faulkner’s own distortion of time make reading

"A Rose for Emily" almost as, according to the author, the old do,

"…confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to

whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which

winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of

the most recent decade of years"(433). Throughout the story Faulkner gives

the reader glimpses of Emily’s life, essentially giving us the opportunity to

draw our own conclusions based on the evidence. The conclusion I’ve drawn is

that Faulkner’s intention of the story was to expose the falling of a once

distinguished way of life. The author also raises the question of the role of

women in Southern society. Yet another function of Faulkner’s work is to make

the reader question the effects of life on all of us.