Lafferty 1 Jacquelyn Lafferty Professor DeAnglis ENG 102 6,December. 2015 Mind Over Matter In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner, the narrator creates this image of Emily to only benefit the townspeople and the town. The townspeople continue to torment Emily even when she has passed away. The town try’s to protect their image as a southern knit community, with her inheriting her father’s house, the town feels responsible for Emily at this point. Although they feel for Emily, they continuously …show more content…
torment and take Emily’s life into their own hands. The townspeople’s curiosity of Emily makes it hard for Emily to have any privacy at all.
They were unsatisfied with the glimpse of her threw the doorway and windows and they go as far as breaking into her house after she passes away. They invade her privacy, but also justify their behavior but waiting the appropriate mourning time before they did break in. There is no real justification for the townspeople behaviors for the violation of Emily’s home and privacy, but they quickly pass judgement with what they find while inside her home. The townspeople are in a way responsible for Emily’s behavior and could have caused her mental instability. ( check citation) These accusations can be supported by others that say “"A Rose for Emily" is about, among many other things, gossip, and Faulkner, through his narrator, tricks us into implicating ourselves as we gossip about his characters in a way that we usually reserve for neighbors--failing to truly understand them, revealing only our own phobias and fascinations. The narrator's comments are vitally important, but whether or not Homer is homosexual is, finally, unimportant, even if--and, perhaps, especially if--we all agree that he is. Perhaps we should approach "A Rose for Emily" by refusing to discuss the characters of Emily or Homer or Tobe, ignoring all temptation to discuss Oedipal complexes, sexual preferences, and scandal, and by leaving these characters alone--all of them except, of course, the narrator. …show more content…
(Wallace) The entire town conspirers inconsouly to protect Emily and the town because the community is highly vested in protecting their identity as an upstanding, traditional, southern community, even if it means their behavior is fawned upon and dysfunctional.
Their behavior is adaptive to their purpose, but Emily’s behavior is not. The town reputation and community was threatening by Emily’s behavior and this is why they protect her as well as the town. Emily tries to keep her true identity by remaining hidden. It states that in the beginning of the story they see Emily as a “fallen monument”(book pg). Her is valued as a valuable asset to this community and town and that is what they want to keep it that way. The townspeople say “Alive. Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation of the town(pg). This quotes are explained by “The complex figure of Emily Grierson casts a long shadow in the town of Jefferson. The members of the community assume a proprietary relationship to her, extolling the image of a grand lady whose family history and reputation warranted great respect. At the same time, the townspeople criticize her unconventional life and relationship with Homer Barron. Emily is an object of fascination. Many people feel compelled to protect her, whereas others feel free to monitor her every move, hovering at the edges of her life. Emily is the last representative of a once great Jefferson family, and the townspeople feel that they have
inherited this daughter of a faded empire of wealth and prestige, for better or worse upon the town” ( spark notes). The townspeople continuously pester Miss Emily from when she meets Homer until even after she passes away. They are cruel to Emily and they go as far as implying that Homer miss Emily’s Yankee is homosexually. They comment “She will be persuade him yet, because homer himself had remarked he liked men, and it was known that he liked drinking with younger men in the Elk’s- club- that he was not marrying kind” ( pg 34) they assumed that this is why she buys rat poison to kill herself. They are so cruel to Emily; they go as far as putting lime under her window seals because of the smell coming from her house. They work harder to protect their town rather than protect Emily. The thirdreadingthat posits Homer'shomosexual impotence as central points towards the inability of all texts to engage origins which would be to achieve signification. All texts, therefore,are androcratic, for they can only play upon and reflect one another. In this theoretical context, the scene of writing is a homosexual exchange which produces a succession of fictions without true generation? This negation of the need for preferentiality creates a closed system of language that forgets the presence of the other. In fact, the "sprattled silhouette" of the father turned away from his daughter in the tableau may be read as a homosexual pose in which the male (by his turning) forsakes all engagement with the female. His horsewhip (the absent phallus) is turned into text by another father, who also refuses to face the female directly. Homer Barron, in turn, completes the androcratic sequence by rejecting the marriage bed; like the ur-fathers, he too is barren. This flight from signification ultimately returns ,however ,to the primal source (the female) when its fictions exhaust themselves. That second encounter with the female is not the original Emily clothed in the fiction of maidenhood but with a thwarted and bitter "old maid" whose rage poisons and eventually dismembers the male, framing his remains in the text of the marriage chamber. The rage of the female drives from the antithetical dilemma imposed on her by the male; for he is both her violate and protector. The father, in the ancestral fantasy, would claim her maidenhead for himself at the same time he renders it inaccessible from other males. Homer, as impotent lover, both approaches her and turns away: these repetitive patterns of interrupted desire reflect the text's own ambivalence in uncovering its psychogenetic ground”( Arensberg pg:130).
Faulkner writes “A Rose for Emily” in the view of a memory, the people of the towns’ memory. The story goes back and forth like memories do and the reader is not exactly told whom the narrator is. This style of writing contributes to the notions Faulkner gives off during the story about Miss Emily’s past, present, and her refusal to modernize with the rest of her town. The town of Jefferson is at a turning point, embracing the more modern future while still at the edge of the past. Garages and cotton gins are replacing the elegant southern homes. Miss Emily herself is a living southern tradition. She stays the same over the years despite many changes in her community. Even though Miss Emily is a living monument, she is also seen as a burden to the town. Refusing to have numbers affixed to the side of her house when the town receives modern mail service and not paying her taxes, she is out of touch with reality. The younger generation of leaders brings in Homer’s company to pave the sidewalks. The past is not a faint glimmer but an ever-present, idealized realm. Emily’s morbid bridal ...
The first indication Faulkner gives the reader as to Miss Emily?s instability is towards the end of the first section which describes how several members of the Board of Alderman call upon Miss Emily in an effort to collect her taxes. Faulkner points out earlier in the same section that ten years ago in 1894, Colonel Sartoris, the Mayor of Jefferson at the time, remitted Miss Emily?s taxes following the death of her father. The board members are admitted to the Grierson home where, after listening to the reason for their visit, Miss Emily first suggests that they ?. . .gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves? (89). It is only moments later, after a brief exchange with these city authorities, that Miss Emily further advises them to ?See Colonel Sartoris? (Faulkner 89). The narrator then adds that the colonel has been dead almost ten years, which is Faulkner?s first clue to readers that Miss Emily is perhaps a bit delusional or confused.
In “a romance to kill” the author explains that they believe that the townspeople did not like how Emily was acting when she was with Homer. The townspeople felt that she was just messing around driving around with him out town. The story also shows that the town wanted them to get married but did not like the way they acted. I feel that because Emily grew up in this town and she was high class, people would watch out for her. The town seems to start feeling like they need to just do something to help her along. Emily needed to find love and happiness and start acting like a “lady” in this town. I feel that the townspeople are being frustrated with Emily at this point and need to see her move on but they also seem to gossip about her so often that it seems that they do not like
In a Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, we meet a young woman that is surrounded by death. As the story progresses we find more and more death and decay throughout Emily’s life. This leads to the theme of Death and Dying. Through-out the short story the theme of Death and Dying is represented through many symbols. These symbols include dust, the house and Emily herself. This essay will examine how each of these symbols represent Death and Dying.
Emily father was highly favored in the town. Faulkner writes in his Short Story Criticism, “The Griersons have always been “high and mighty,” somehow above “the gross, teeming world….” Emily’s father was well respected and occasionally loaned the town money. That made her a wealthy child and she basically had everything a child wanted. Emily’s father was a very serious man and Emily’s mind was violated by her father’s strict mentality. After Emily’s father being the only man in her life, he dies and she find it hard to let go of him. Because of her father, she possessed a stubborn outlook on life and how thing should be. She practically secluded her self from society for the remainder of her life.
Finally, in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the people of the town finally get to see the internal struggles that Emily faces come to fruition. The town gets to see the real Emily, not the hermit they all thought of her. He narrates to the reader the turmoil internal turmoil that she has suffered since she was a child. Unbeknownst to the townsfolk, her misguided thoughts and led her to the drastic actions that she took. The main conflict throughout the story is the internal feelings and thoughts which influence her actions. Emily’s private battles set the stage for the horrifying death of her
In the short story of A Rose for Emily, the main character illustrates a disturbed individual that doesn't want to separate herself from a deceased loved one. Everyone knows what its like to loose a loved one, but the town of Jefferson had no idea how hard Emily had taken death until they unraveled her deep, dark secret.
Miss Emily’s father restricts the people she is allowed to interact with to the point that she has no social life. So after her father dies, Emily has been isolated so much that she does not know anyone and has no idea how to socialize, and just as Miss Emily is isolated from the townspeople, they feel isolated from her. She becomes not as someone to become close to , but as a person of high society . They view her as "a tradition, a duty, and care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town" (Rose ). Normally, everyday townspeople do not socialize with upper-class citizens, so the people of Jefferson feels like it would be a wrong to converse with Miss Emily. Also, the townsfolk put Emily Grierson on a pedestal of some sort which further sets her apart from the rest of the town. Jefferson looks and treats Emily as a “monument” of the town (Rose ). She is not perceived as a real,
All things considered, “A Rose for Emily” is only one of Faulkner’s complex literary works using such intricate uses of flashbacks and foreshadowing. Faulkner chose his events and descriptive language well to support key event such as, Mr. Grierson’s death, Emily’s purchase of arsenic, and the odor complaints by the townspeople. All of these events lead up to the ultimate culmination of events that shows the demise of one Homer Barron and Emily
They begin to date and see each other regularly. The narrator reveals that “when she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, [the people of Jefferson] said, “she will marry him” (6). The emptiness that she felt from her father’s death would soon go away because Homer was filling in the empty hole where her father was. The story goes on to read that Homer left town for some time, leaving Emily behind with nobody by her side. “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (3). The narrator insinuates that Emily becomes a recluse. When Homer finally returns, the narrator’s account of the townspeople’s gossip causes readers to become more suspicious of Emily’s unusual
In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the main character, Emily last name, is the last aristocratic member of her society. Left with her father’s house and not much else, the town seems to care for Emily, if for no reason other than
In Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner was writes about two lovers, Emily Grierson and Homer Barron, with conflicting personalities that eventually leads up to Emily poisoning Homer in his sleep. In this story, Emily Grierson was the daughter of a wealthy man of high social class in a southern town called Jefferson, and he was a very overbearing man that didn’t allow her to see men for any reason at all. We also see Emily much like the rose, an object of beauty and desire that soon begins to wither and die.
It can be observed that Emily, the protagonist of the story, never truly held herself to the same standards as her community. Also, that her community only tolerated her behavior because of who her father was to the town. (FAulkner) In the case of A Rose for Emily, the society rejects the individual, and even further isolates her a little more with every rebellious or questionable action she takes. In the story, Faulkner chooses to write Emily’s actions in a scattered way so that we don’t get the complete picture until the end of the story. This allows us to be able to see her in the way her town did. From Faulkner’s writing style, it can also be observed that the town isolated her and as a result of the isolation, rejected her from their
The narrator is vague about the intricate details of her life, perhaps because he presents her story as a member of the town, which means he is only able to narrate it from an observational point of view as opposed to an interactive point of view. “‘A Rose for Emily’ is told from a community point of view, so that the narrative voice in the story is the voice of “our town” and “we,” a group .” (Skei, 150). Certain representations of social expectations can be gleaned from parts of the text. This is especially the case when it comes to gender relations and family. William Faulkner’s short story shows how the nineteenth century was set in certain limiting social expectations especially for women, especially
Emily Grierson was a mysterious character. Throughout her whole life she had been secretive and isolated within her own house. Going through a trauma after her father’s death, she received sympathy from the town. As her father had always kept her in isolation, she was never expected to be one of those to go out and date someone. But one day she met Homer Barron, who was not from around Jefferson. They seem to go