Literary Criticism of William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

Literary Criticism of William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

In William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," Emily becomes a minor legend during her lifetime. After her death, when her secret is revealed, hers becomes a story that no one can forget. "A Rose for Emily" is the story of the old maid who fell in love with a northerner, but resisted being jilted once too often. And only after her death, "When the curious towns people were able to enter her house at last, did they discover that she had kept her dead lover in the bed where she had killed him after their last embrace." (Kazin 162) . "In her bedroom, Emily and the dead Homer have remained together as though not even death could separate them."(Kazin 162) . Even though her lover had been dead for many years, she found her own way for them to remain together.

While being isolated in her home, she becomes somewhat of a small legend in the town, after she dies, and her secret is revealed, "it becomes so appalling that no one can forget." (Kazin 162) . "It is the monstrousness of this view which creates the final atmosphere of horror, and the scene is intensified by the portrayal of the unchanged objects which have surrounded Homer in life." (Lewis 157)."Miss Emily Grierson remains in voluntary isolation away from the bustle and dust and sunshine of the human world of normal affairs, and what in the end is found in the upstairs room gives perhaps a sense of penetrating and gruesome horror."(Brooks and Warren 158) . As revolting as it is, Emily chooses to separate her self from daily life and live in that house for years with the dead body of her lover, Homer.

This story also tells a story of a woman set in her ways, for example; when townspeople come to her door every year ...

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... and serene."(West 149) . " The suggestion is that she had already begun her entrance into that nether-world, but that she might even yet have been saved, had Homer Barron been another kind of man."(West 149) . "Many stories such as this show all too clearly how well Faulkner can re-invent the direction of the reader's emotions is the real aim of the commercial short story."(Kazin 162) . Also A Rose for Emily would seem to be saying that man must come to terms with the past and the present."(Lewis 157) . It does seem that A Rose for Emily is saying that a man must come to terms with the past, especially this is shown in the story when it tells how Emily refused to acknowledge the death of her father. It also shows how a man must come to terms with the present, in telling how Emily refused to recognize the death of Colonel Sartoris.

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