A Rose For Emily

 A literary analysis of William Faulker's short story “A Rose for Emily”. The assignment was to explain why I thought Faulkner gave it that title. I hope you find it interesting. There's a link to the full text of the story here. Be warned, it's sort of creepy.
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/litweb05/workshops/fiction/faulkner1.asp


"A Rose For Emily"

Roses in America have their origins in Europe. In the 19th century the Empress Josephine of France, first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, planted an expansive rose garden on their royal estate. Soon the Empress’s floral pastime spread and became a trendy status symbol among society’s upper classes. Because of its rich history and extraordinary natural attributes, the rose has long been a symbol of wealth, freedom, beauty, romance and love. It is no wonder that in America many southern women of leisure would adopt the classy rose garden as an important feature of their homes. In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner uses the rose, in essence, to symbolize Emily Grierson’s longing for the return of all those rose-like characteristics she once enjoyed. Faulkner’s title is, in fact, a tribute to a dejected woman; he lets poor Emily finally be that cherished rose she so dearly tried to hold on to.

As a young woman Miss Emily’s father is symbolically her gardener, maintaining her position and appearance, nurturing her financially and protecting her from those who would unworthily pick her out of the garden; no suitor is worthy of that delicate flower.

None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau; Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.

With the death of her father, she loses the only man who loves her. Now without any financial support she slowly begins to become a wild and unattractive specimen, unkempt and slowly wilting away. “Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.”

Nevertheless, her pride and cultivation impede here from accepting that she and her status in life are changing. She cannot move forward because the present holds no place for her. Emily is forced to live in a fantastic world devoid of time, progress, and change.

Although a very real probability, the prospects of becoming a spinster are unfathomable to Emily. The social stigma associated with such a position would render her a virtual prisoner in her own home. The summer after Emily’s father dies, Homer Barron, a laborer from the North, starts pursuing Emily, and she begins a pitiful display of desperation. He is described as a “Yankee—a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the niggers." Early on in their strange relationship, it is clear that this man has no intention of marrying her. Nonetheless, she allows things to continue. She knows that she was once a southern belle and the desire of every man and it pains her so heavily now to accept a man whose social status is much lower than her own. She is torn between maintaining her respectable name and position in society and the deep desire to have a strong man as her companion and lover. The desire to be loved proves too great for her and she takes Homer Barron into the home her father left to her. However, she knows that Homer’s romantic acts are only fleeting and that he too will leave her. Her anguish pushes her to a new level of delusion as she endeavors to keep him in her life. In an act of absolute desperation, Emily poisons the poor man with arsenic as he lies in her bed. She embraces his large cadaver. Futilely, she clings on to yet another love that will unavoidably leave her. His body soon stinks as his flesh begins to rot away.

The rest of Emily’s life is a lamentable state of self deception. With her father’s legacy betrayed and no other man to love her, she becomes completely detached from reality. She pretends that she lives in a continual past refusing anything new. “The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good. When the town got free postal delivery Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.”

Years later when a group of officials is sent to collect her taxes, a very different looking Emily attends them. She is no longer the slender epitome of elegance that she once was, but is now

a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another.

Poor Emily, as she is known later in life, eventually loses all she ever values. For Emily a rose is much more than a simple flower –it is her everything. Faulkner’s title lets her have that back.