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A rose for EmilyWilliam Faulkner
Instructor: Nguyen Duy Mong Ha, M.A. & M.Sc.USSH-VNU-HCMCEmail: [email protected] phone: 0919694811Office hours: Wednesday & Friday afternoon (4-6 p.m)
Office of Educational Testing & Quality Assurance, Block C, DTH Campus
William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897-1962)
• American writer• Nobel Prize (1949)• Novels, short stories, poetry, plays,…• Southern Literature• Home state of Mississippi• Influences of the past-nostalgia
Setting: Time and place• Time: post-civil war Jefferson (1870s)• Place: a small town in the deep south of the US
(background to the values and beliefs of the characters in the story)
• The town of Jefferson is a fallen legacy: The hierarchical regime of the Griersons
• The class system IN FEUDAL SOCIETY: Miss Emily as the only remnant of that greater time (aristocratic family)the «town,» - a gossip circle: stories of various townspeople of Miss Emily (the story was told on the occasion of her death at the age of 74)
Characters
• Miss Emily• The housemaid• Homer Barron• The old men• The officials
Miss Emily
• Voluntary isolation (shut away from the normal world)
• Suffered from pathology/madness/abnormal psychology: queer, eccentric
• No distinction between illusion and reality
• Firmness of will
EvidenceCharacter traits
Evidence• Iron pride, calm dignity• Contempt for public
opinion• Dear, inescapable,
imperious and perverse• Both idol & scapegoat
for the community• Courage • Independence • Tradition, duty, care
Plot: section I
• The time of Emily Grierson’s death and the entire town attended her funeral in her home
• Emily reasserts the fact that she is not required to pay taxes in Jefferson and that the officials should talk to Colonel Sartoris about the matter ( been dead for almost a decade)
• She asks her servant, Tobe, to show the men out.
Section II
• a time thirty years earlier when Emily resists another official inquiry on behalf of the town leaders
• the townspeople detect a powerful odor emanating from her property
• Her father has just died, and Emily has been abandoned by the man whom the townsfolk believed Emily was to marry
• lime sprinkled • Emily is still single by the time she turns thirty
Section III
• a long illness that Emily suffers• northerner Homer Barron is seen taking Emily on
buggy rides on Sunday afternoons• the affair continues and Emily’s reputation is further
compromised, she goes to the drug store to purchase arsenic, a powerful poison
• She is required by law to reveal how she will use the arsenic
• She offers no explanation, and the package arrives at her house labeled “For rats.”
Section IV• fear that some of the townspeople have that Emily will use
the poison to kill herself• Her potential marriage to Homer seems increasingly unlikely • Baptist minister talk with Emily• Emily’s two cousins in Alabama, who arrive for an extended
stay• Because Emily orders a silver toilet set monogrammed with
Homer’s initials, talk of the couple’s marriage resumes• Homer, absent from town, is believed to be preparing for
Emily’s move to the North or avoiding Emily’s intrusive relatives.
• Homer enters the Grierson home one evening and then is never seen again
• Emily grows plump and gray• occasional lesson she gives in china painting• her door remains closed to outsiders• Emily refuses to acknowledge the tax bill• She eventually closes up the top floor of the
house.
Section V• Emily’s body is laid out in the parlor, and the women, town
elders, and two cousins attend the service• the door to a sealed upstairs room that had not been opened
in forty years is broken down by the townspeople• The room : items for an upcoming wedding and a man’s suit
laid out• Homer Barron’s body is stretched on the bed as well, in an
advanced state of decay• the indentation of a head in the pillow beside Homer’s body
and a long strand of Emily’s gray hair on the pillow : Miss Emily has slept for many years in the same bed with her dead lover's rotting corpse ?
Themes
• Isolation (from family, community, tradition , law,…): With no possibility of contact with the living, she turns to the dead.
• Crazy: Development of the pride• Past influences• Illusion & reality• Compassion & forgiveness
Point of view
• “we” = the whole town• Male or female?• Young or old?• Sympathetic, not condemn
Symbolism
• “Rose”• The old house• Emily• Colonel Sartoris• Tradition, past• Changes after time passes
