A Rose For Emily Rhetorical Analysis

In William Faulkner’s somewhat disturbing short story, A Rose for Emily, Emily is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of women in society. In the story, she does not conform to society’s patriarchal expectations. This is apparent when comparing the expectations of Emily in the story to the expectations of women during the time it was written. It is also revealed in what the townspeople say and do as well as the behaviors and responses from Emily regarding the pressure of conformity put on her.

During the time in which A Rose for Emily was written, there were specific gender roles set in society—especially for women. These patriarchal expectations in America at the time are no different than those found in Faulkner’s short story. A Rose

for Emily was written in 1931, which was a few years into the Great Depression. Many women at the time were already in jobs and if they were not working yet, they planned to get employed. Women that were not employed, however, had a prominent place in their home for their husbands. With that being said, it was widely expected during the time of the Depression that women were to be married, and sometimes be in the workplace. But, in the story, Emily did not fit any of those qualities. She never married, never worked, and never left the house. She is the epitome of how women were expected to not be during the 1930s and the Great Depression.

The patriarchal expectations in which Emily does not fit into brings about people to respond in oppressing ways toward her.

Faulkner used her strange characteristics to make a claim that a woman is defined her her ability to complete her feminine objectives in society. Otherwise, she is more of an object than a person. This is supported by the story when the townspeople did not see Emily as a person and referred to her death as a "monument falling." The people that knew her, thought of her as something that stands out and doesn’t fit into their normal life. This has to do with her refusal or inability to find a living man and get married, as well as her reclusive nature. The strange thing about her is that she is isolated from the town, yet she is always being watched and talked about by the townspeople. As a woman, she gets gossiped about more than a man under similar circumstances would. She is also seen ridiculed behind her back by the narrator when he or she says that “only a woman could have believed” the far-fetched comment made by Colonel Sartoris about her taxes. The comments and actions by the townspeople exist either for the fact that Emily is a woman or for the fact that Emily does not fit into the defined expectations of the patriarchal society she lives in. If she was a “normal” woman—if she fit better into the society she lived in—the gossip and ridicule she experienced would cease to exist. Faulkner includes this to justify ridicule or gossip about a woman in

the real world that does not fit into the patriarchal expectations of society like Emily in the story does not. In the end, the townspeople just do not know how to accept the anomaly that she is compared to the rest of them so they choose to mistreat her.

Emily is a strange woman; the townspeople got that right. She killed her gay boyfriend and kept his corpse in her house to sleep with. Her reaction to how people treat her, though, is somewhat contradictory. Although she wants to fit into their expectations and understands she is defined by her inability to do so, she is defiant when given the chance. The issue she has is called out by the other characters in the story when they say her family “held themselves a little too high for what they really were.” She defies the patriarchal society by holding herself higher than the men in her life. When the tax collectors come to her house, she literally kicks them out as if she is in charge and they are under her. She even has a male Negro servant all to herself; a male that she is the boss of. Faulkner included her self-proclaimed status above men in order to emphasize how it disrupts society. The contradiction then lies in her father’s control of her. He had total control of her until his death when she was 30, and, honestly, he still had control of her after his death. This helps Faulkner in displaying the importance of a man’s dominance over a woman.

William Faulkner knows that the character he has written about disrupts the operations of patriarchy. The point of his writing is to display the issues that unordinary women bring to the life of everyone around them. He parallels the societal expectations in the story to the societal expectations he is used to within the time he wrote it, and the people in the story criticizing Emily is Faulkner’s way of saying it is all right to criticize in order to spark change and fix the disruptions caused. It makes sense Faulkner would characterize his symbol as a lunatic that kills the man she was supposed to marry because he is known for having misogynic tendencies. A Rose for Emily is really about what a woman is defined by in a normal patriarchal society.