Ashley Cushinberry
Dr. Chamberlain EN 300
December 10, 2014
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
A Rose for Emily written by William Faulkner captures the life of a wealthy woman coping with life after the death of a loved one. Death is an indescribable feeling that can cause pain, anger, and sorrow for almost everyone. Early on in the story, Emily’s father passes away leaving her with all of these emotions concealed on the inside. After her father’s death Emily was left alone to grieve which caused her to react to his death in an unusual manner eventually leading to a state of depression. Emily barricades herself in her home away from the outside world for a long period of time trying to cope with her loss, but it seems as if life has moved on without her. Once she emerges from her home, it is like she is trapped in the past. Emily no longer has a sense of place and time. Emily finally finds happiness in a man by the name of Homer, but because of her family’s status in the community it causes a rift between Emily and herself on whether to keep him around or not. This caused Emily to go into a deeper depression, hiding from the world once again. Although death is a reoccurring theme in the story, it is not the only thing that has critics striving to understand the story even further.
For starters, the title of the story has one scholar by the name of Laura Getty extremely interested because Faulkner does not come right out and say why he titled this story “A Rose for Emily.” It is almost as if one has to pull bits and pieces from the story to try to make sense of it all. Getty offers two opinions about the meaning of the title. Her first theory states that the rose symbolizes Homer’s death at the end of the story because when he was found his body had already decayed. Faulkner never reveals how long Homer had been dead, but it must have been a significant amount of time because of the condition in which his body was in. Getty’s second theory describes the rose as a representation of Emily and the narrator’s relationship. Seeing that Faulkner did not take the time to explain who the narrator was, I am not convinced the rose represented anything involving their relationship. When I think about a rose it displays love and affection. With the death of Emily’s father and the death of Homer, I can say the rose signified the love she once felt for both her father and Homer.
Another scholar, Michael Burduck, offered his own opinion about the narrator and Emily’s relationship. According to Burduck, the importance of knowing who the narrator is can bring great insight on this story as a whole. Faulkner does not mention whether the narrator is a man or woman, friend or enemy, or just a stranger from the neighborhood. This scholar believes the narrator is a woman because of the sympathy shown while telling the story. He uses the discussion of Emily’s love life to prove this point. “Then we knew that this was to be expected too, as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent and furious to die.” (p.306) According to Burduck, women understand each other and this particular conversation amongst the townspeople showed readers that the narrator understood and felt the same pain of loneliness as Emily did. In Michael Burduck’s critical review, he speaks about another author named Hal Blythe. Blythe did an article about “A Rose for Emily” suggesting that the narrator is a male. According to Blythe, attempts to assuage the grief produced by Miss Emily's rejection of him by relating her story; telling her tale allows him to exact a measure of revenge. I do not believe knowing the narrator is important in understanding the story because regardless who it could be, Faulkner demonstrates by not revealing the narrator that all humans are capable of having empathy for another being. The narrator has seen Emily going through a difficult time in her life and the narrator tells her story in a manner that is sensitive to Emily’s feelings. Ray B. West Jr. author of “Atmosphere and Theme in Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily’ discusses the importance of time throughout the story. Faulkner switches back and forth between the past and present in the entire story. He begins the story with the townspeople attending Emily’s funeral. “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant—a combined gardener and cook—had seen in at least ten years. (p.302) Beginning with the present, West believes Faulkner was preparing his readers for every event that followed. Agreeing with West, time definitely makes this story even more interesting to read, but I believe time also played a role in understanding Emily’s mindset. After the death of her father, Emily fell into a state of depression which caused her to lose the ability to differentiate between the past and present. There is a scene in the story where the townspeople are trying to persuade Emily to pay taxes. Faulkner describes the agreement that Emily had with Colonel Sartoris which was said that Emily did not have to pay taxes because her father loaned the town money at some point. However, “When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction” (p. 302). Since her father’s passing Emily had remained in her house for many years, she does not realize that Colonel has died as well. She replies to the townsmen that they must “See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.” (p.303) Faulkner does not state whether Emily knew the Colonel has passed away, but from what is said Emily has had a difficult time accepting death before so this situation may not be any different than the last. Sometimes people like to pretend that something did not happen, thinking that it will just go away especially when a person is in such pain as Emily was.
Although Emily was still grieving over the death of her father, she met Homer Barron. Homer was hired by the town to do some construction work. “At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, “Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.” (p.304) Emily was a woman of high class so she had certain standards and expectations that she had to meet when it came to finding a husband. Falling for Homer caused conflict for Emily within herself. Here she was in love with a man, yet he did not meet her qualifications. Many critics have often wondered what Emily’s motive was behind the killing of Homer since she loved him so much. Hal Blythe, the author of “Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily” suggests that Homer is homosexual. In his article, Blythe implies that when Homer is first brought into the story, Faulkner made it a point to say how “the little boys would follow him in groups” which hints at Homer’s sexual preference. (p.304) Blythe also uses “he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elk’s Club-that he was not a marrying man” as an example of Homer’s homosexuality. Judith Caesar, author of “Faulkner’s Gay Homer, Once More,” does not believe that Homer could have been gay. In her opinion, the time frame in which the story was written is evidence that Homer could not been homosexual because the term gay had an entirely different meaning. She states that “In the nineteenth century, it referred to engagement in prostitution.” Referring back to Blythe’s example of how Homer preferred to hang out with men, Caesar suggests that Homer is simply immature. Judith Caesar goes on to say in her article how many people have often taken the story’s content out of context because of the time frame in which one has read it. According to her article, Homer and Emily’s relationship took place in 1870, and many reviews about Homer’s sexuality were written in the nineties. “It also shows a perhaps understandable ignorance of the ways in which words and phrases, especially code words and euphemisms, change over time.” I would definitely have to agree with Caesar on this aspect of deciding if Homer is gay because there are a lot of different slang terms that often change even in this day and age.
Faulkner does not offer enough evidence in this story for me to decide whether Homer was gay or not gay. Both arguments do create for great discussion because one can be curious to know the real truth behind Homer’s death. Blythe believes that Emily found out about Homer’s homosexuality and this is what prompted her to murder him. Nonetheless, I link Homer’s death to the depression Emily had been feeling the entire story. Anger is an emotion that surfaces with the loss of a loved one and I believe this is what drove Emily to kill him. The scene in the story where Emily goes to the drug store to buy poison slowly shows Emily’s anger building. “She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eye-sockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keepers face ought to look” (p.305). When Emily found out that Homer was not going to marry her, it sent her over the edge. She had given up her family’s values and morals by courting someone beneath her and he was not even going to marry her. I believe this is when Emily decided to kill him. She endured the loss of her father so Emily felt like she could endure the loss of a man that used to mean so much to her.
When a person suffers from low self esteem and is in a state of depression, sometimes the outside world can affect a person’s mind to a great extent. Pingping Yang wrote an article titled “A road to destruction and self destruction: the same fate of Emily and Elly” describing the similarities between Emily and another one of Faulkner’s characters from another story. According to Pingping, both of these characters were similar to one another because they both showed how much of an affect society can have on women and young girls. In “A Rose for Emily”, Faulkner showed his audience how Emily shut the world out by staying in her house alone for long periods of time after her father’s passing. Yang believes the death of Emily’s father was defining moment for her character because she had lost someone extremely dear to her. It changed the way she saw the world, especially her world. I would most certainly agree with this author when speaking on Emily’s character. The thing that makes this an even more interesting argument is that Faulkner never allows his audience to see what Emily’s life was like before her father’s death. Although the narrator says “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (p.304). Faulkner is hinting at how much control her father had over Emily and her choices in life. Once he died, Emily was left to make decisions on her own and it was difficult for her to do. Going back to her relationship with Homer, she tried to venture out and try something new with him like going out in public with him on Sunday afternoons. Soon people of the town began to talk so Emily had to return to the privacy of her home to continue the relationship with him.
“Refusing to Accept Death” by Tracy Caldwell discusses the levels of difficulty that comes with losing a loved one regardless of who you are. She speaks about the grueling pain that a person feels when saying their final goodbye to a loved one. Caldwell says the most challenging thing about death is having the courage to accept that it happened and will happen again. Death was a reoccurring event in Faulkner’s story beginning with the death of Emily’s father and her feelings toward it. In the story Emily had a hard time accepting that her father had passed even when the people of town approached her about giving her father a proper burial. The narrator says “Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead” (p.304). With the passing of Homer, Faulkner never explained when Homer passed or what caused his death. It was left for the reader to make sense of every event leading up to Emily’s funeral which took place in the beginning of the story. It was later revealed at the end of the story that Homer had died. Caldwell says Emily’s feelings about her lover’s death were far beyond the normal signs of denial. In fact, Faulkner revealed to his readers that it was possible that Emily had been sleeping next to Homer’s dead corpse for quite some time not ready to let go. I agree with Caldwell that Emily’s actions were beyond the normal scope of how a person handles death. Sleeping next to a dead corpse for who knows how long is a little outrageous, but as a reader we have to try to understand Emily’s reasoning.
All in all, I do not believe Emily Grierson was ridiculously out of her mind, as some readers may believe by her actions. I believe Emily was simply broken. Life has taken so much from her and this was her way of dealing with life’s pressures. Emily was never shown how to live life for herself so when things went wrong in her life she hid in her home. I believe Emily suffered from depression and did not know how to come out of it. Back in that time, mental illness was not something people dwelled on. A person may have automatically been judged and considered crazy instead of being helped. In today’s world, there are all types of outlets for people that suffer from mental illness such as doctors and medicine. Fortunately, I have not had to bear the pain of losing a loved one, but I can definitely empathize with Faulkner’s character. We read in the news all the time about bizarre murders that lovers have committed against one another. It makes you wonder what happened to this person for them to hurt enough to kill another being. Sometimes we just never know what a person can be suffering from on the inside and most importantly it makes us realize that it is not our place to cast judgment. I believe overall this is what William Faulkner wanted us to take out of his story.