A Rose of Emily

TITLE: A Rose For Emily


AUTHOR:

Falkner) was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi. Eventually known for his innovative novels about the highs and lows of life in the American South, young Faulkner began his writing career as a poet. His first collection of verses, The Marble Faun, was published in 1924 to little acclaim. He then tried his hand at prose with 1926's Soldiers' Pay, a novel about World War I and its aftermath.


CHARACTERS:

Emily Grierson - The object of fascination in the story. A eccentric recluse, Emily is a mysterious figure who changes from a vibrant and hopeful young girl to a cloistered and secretive old woman. 

Homer Barron - A foreman from the North. Homer is a large man with a dark complexion, a booming voice, and light-colored eyes. A gruff and demanding boss, he wins many admirers in Jefferson because of his gregarious nature and good sense of humor. 
Judge Stevens - A mayor of Jefferson. Eighty years old, Judge Stevens attempts to delicately handle the complaints about the smell emanating from the Grierson property. To be respectful of Emily’s pride and former position in the community, he and the aldermen decide to sprinkle lime on the property in the middle of the night.
Mr. Grierson - Emily’s father. Mr. Grierson is a controlling, looming presence even in death, and the community clearly sees his lasting influence over Emily. He deliberately thwarts Emily’s attempts to find a husband in order to keep her under his control. 

PLOT:

William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is a classic short story; while the plot can be summarized in just a few words, this will not capture the feeling of the selection. The story is told in five parts, beginning with the end of the story: Miss Emily is dead.

A young woman, Miss Emily Grierson, lives with her father (her mother is dead) in the South. Both of them are what is referred to as "Old South," believing in the old-fashioned mores and customs of the era before the Civil War. Ladies and gentlemen do not discuss money or anything else which might be considered common or dirty, and ladies certainly had to have the approval of their fathers before they could marry.

Unfortunately for Miss Emily, her father never thoguht any of his daughter's suitors were good enough for her, so she never married. After her father died, Emily kept his dead body with her in the house, refusing to let anyone come take him for three days.

Miss Emily lives alone in the house except for a Negro servant Tobe, but after the War she met a man from the North, a carpetbagger who came to the South to help with the reconstruction. Homer Barron and Miss Emily developed a rather scandalous relationship, but something odd happens when it appears Homer is preparing to leave Miss Emily and the South for good.

Miss Emily buys rat poison and a mirror/brush set with Homer's initials on them. Not long after that, the people in town notice a terrible smell emanating from Miss Emily's house. Because of who she is, the town council (or at least the older members of it) cannot possibly talk to her about it, so one night they sneak over and sprinkle lime around the foundation of the house.

Then years pass, rather uneventfully.

Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows--she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her.

When the people enter Miss Emily's house after her death (for everyone is curious about what has been behind her closed doors for so many years), they discover a decayed corpse lying peacefully on the bed in the upstairs bedroom. It is evident that Miss Emily, at least sometimes, slept next to the remains of her former lover, Homer Barron.

STYLE:

"A Rose for Emily" is a short story by William Faulkner. It is narrated by a third person narrator who is not named and is assumed to speak as the voice of the Mississippi town in which the story is set. ... The story's tone is determined by the narrator and his/her attitude toward Miss Emily Grierson, the title character.

THEME:
The southern way of life goes through distinct changes during Emily Grierson's lifetime, approximately 1863–1937. The American Civil War (1861–65) brings the end of slavery as well as the traditional southern way of life. These changes, along with the roles of gender and class in the New South, are the major themes of "A Rose for Emily."