Literary Analysis of William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily

Literary Analysis of William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily
The story of Emily is set in the little backwater town of Jefferson, full of very intrusive, nosy and ill-mannered hyper-vigilant townsfolk. The setting provides an angle that is meant to shape the reader’s mind to side with Emily’s plight. Starting from her death then flashing back into her life story, Faulkner builds a steady tempo which portrays Emily as a victim of circumstances, and her apparent rebellious nature after her father dies is seen as a natural consequence of the devastation she underwent emotionally and socially. This contextual setting not only creates the character roles for Emily, but it also raises a few questions. The conservative nature of the social period mystifies the path Emily takes. She had to have acquired some of her backbone rebellious nature from somewhere, and some scholars have speculated on abuse by her father which caused her to become mentally deranged and therefore developed originally dubious traits. William Faulkner stated that, “Homer Barron was a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face.”. This insight into the motivation and social triggers that resulted in Emily’s intriguing and enigmatic story provide a window into what happens in any close-knit society. When the societal expectations smother individual development and snuff out the fundamental freedoms that are entitled to anyone, the resulting rebellious retaliation by the person will prove not only scandalous to said society but will also instigate some degree of fear and terror into the daily equation of the people around.

Faulkner is very skilled at putting up convincing literary smoke screens and causing an apparent confusion not only among the characters in his narrative but also among the readers and even the critics. This technique he has craftily infused into the atmosphere surrounding the story of Emily. First, the town seems very confused on what exactly is going on between Homer and Emily. Contradictory conclusions are produced when the town tries to dig behind the physical evidence they observe. They think that Homer will marry Emily, but it turns out he is not the marriage type, and he probably has sexual aberrations. They bring in the cousins to try and force Emily to stop her apparent promiscuity with Homer, but in the end, they want the marriage to happen so that they can get rid of the cousins. They think that Emily is a spoilt and broken woman and their suspicions are further fueled and asserted by the way the Baptist minister reacts after he is sent to interrogate Emily on her relationship with Homer. He never divulges what happened in that interview, and this raises the question of what he discovered in the interview (Heller, par. 6). But it’s almost given that what he might have heard terrified him out of his wits. Pull back the curtain, and she doesn’t look broken, she doesn’t even portray the weakness, especially in her social life as the townsfolk have come to conclude. This apparent lack of solidity in the setting of the narrative serves to create an enigmatic tone to the story which is used by the author to appeal to the reader’s imagination. The confusion is an integral part of the context of the narrative, it gives the author a window to allow Emily commit her more eccentric actions such as her publicized romantic affiliation to a social outcast. Emily was born into a proper southern family and raised in the strictest of codes available at the time; this is seen in the way her father possessively shields her from romances it her teenage years. Therefore being born into such a family dictates that she should have any romantic ties to the “yankee.” But the smoke screen generated by the author showing the towns miscalculated prejudices against Emily helps build the enigma surrounding the integrity of her actions.
“A Rose for Emily” takes up the pedestal of a screen showing the natural and rapid degeneration of the Southern Gothic politic. Faulkner’s southern town of Jefferson is proven to have the typical intolerance for a racial mix especially in the context of sexual relations, and he brings this out in the way the town reacts to Homer coming into the social fabric of the time. Emily threatens the long-standing social norm of conservativeness through her continued relationship with Homer and she also refuses door numbers and taxation. And this is an indicator of the way the south was fast fading into the social oblivion of a more liberal society. But in the end, Emily may have murdered Homer in outrage to his ethnic persuasions or his apparent interest in a sexual relationship with her but an unwillingness to accept to marry her (Argiro, 445). The complexities appear on many levels, and Faulkner provides a ripe ground for academic curiosity into the political impact Emily’s actions had in the little town of Jefferson.
To give a bit more depth and girth to the enigma surrounding the narrator of Emily’s story, a view into the life of the author can provide us a much-needed angle of insight. The narrator proves to be just a little bit limited regarding his or her understanding of the happenings inside Emily’s gothic residence. Faulkner built the conclave into which Emily fades, and he also uses the voice of a member of the townsfolk to provide the reader with an avenue of entry into the story of Emily. But he uncannily limits the ability of the eye in the story, depriving them of the usual omniscient and omnipresent capability usually afforded to the reader through the voice of the story. Faulkner created the template for Jefferson back in 1929 when a shortened version of his work Flags in the Dust, which didn’t get published until after his death due to lack of a willing publisher, it later appeared as Sartoris (Millgate, par. 3). It is in the storyline of “Flags in the dust” where the town of Jefferson was born. The compactness of the mental environment may have played a key role in the ability of Faulkner to be able to generate a narrator with an unusually short-sighted view into the world created by the author. Short sightedness of the narrator could also be a ploy to give mystery to the story and leave the reader speculating on the instances and coming up with their conclusions to the storyline. The relatively close-knit kind of unity among members of Jefferson also provides a view into Emily’s actions. Miss Emily said, “I have no taxes in Jefferson.” The unanimity of their rhetoric creates a high socially pressurized kind of environment. The townsfolk have a natural disliking for non-Caucasian individuals, and they particularly frown upon close association with them. This mentality stereotypes and radicalizes Emily’s relationship with Homer. The interrogative nosiness of the people of Jefferson also pushes Emily over the edge, and she resents them for trying to be controlling just as her father had been. This resentment then manifests itself as rebellion and brashness seen in the way she carries on to have a romantic relationship out of wedlock aggravating the town’s opinion of her.
In the end, the story of Emily is the tragedy of humanity’s inability to empathize with individuals who show non-conformity to the established dictates of society. When Emily begins her vendetta against the domineering attitude of the town by cultivating her relationship with Homer the town goes ballistic, inviting her cousins to come and pressurize her to get married. Instead of trying to understand why she was doing that, the people strives to push her into their mold of proper moral decision making in the interest of image rather than emotional fulfillment. It tells of rigidity to embrace change at face value, a lack of ability to give the benefit of the doubt. The town’s people said that, “She will persuade him yet, in spite of his affections for men, he was a manipulator,” as they referred to Emily about how she could persuade Homer. The story focuses on the relationship between Jefferson and Emily, the town treats her in a manner that responds to preconceived ideas and pre-established norms that are expected of an individual in the role of Emily. That is the main problem with the people’s mentality, they do not offer her an opportunity to extend her emotional and social wings fully, and they do not interrogate her by trying to take a look at what brought them about. Mistake after mistake, they go deeper and deeper down the unfortunate path towards completely alienating her from the social fabric. And too late they realize the folly of their mistake. It’s only after her death do they realize that she deserved a little more understanding, a little more pity than they had given her.
Many a critic has speculated that the lack of adequate information on the actions of Emily especially surrounding the purchase of the gift and the poison, gives the reader free reign to speculate on her motives. Some may claim that she loved Homer genuinely, but why buy the poison? Was it for her use? These questions supposedly cannot be answered due to the sheer lack of evidence. But that isn’t conclusive. Emily was broken, her father’s severe restraint broke her mentally, and that is why her social life was a proverbial desert before Homer came along. The mere fact that she selects Homer as a probable choice for wedding and went on to the extent of having a romantic relationship with him shows that Emily had serious underlying issues. Homer was practically a societal outcast, with a vague past and a questionable racial affiliation, something that would have completely dismantled Emily’s reputation as an ideal southern woman. Social non-conformity and rebellion is a clear indicator that Emily had a falling out, a disconnection to the normal developmental flow of maturity from childhood into womanhood. Societal instinct was missing as portrayed in the cadence and flow of her actions and this goes to show that she was a mess mentally, and the town played a key role in pushing her out into the recesses of rebellion and eventually to her demise.
Works cited
Millgate, William.”William Faulkner.” Britannica Library, Encyclopædia Britannica, 9 Jul. 2009. Accessed 24 Nov. 2016.
Argiro, Thomas Robert. “Miss Emily after dark.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 3-4, 2011, p. 445+. Literature Resource Center. Accessed 24 Nov. 2016.
Heller, Terry. “The Telltale Hair:A Critical Study of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.”
Arizona Quarterly 28 (1972). Accessed 24 Nov. 2016.