A Rose For Emilys

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

In William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, the narrator often refers itself as "we" and it represents several generations of the town rather than an individual point of view. The narrator is either same age with Miss Emily or older than her because he/she is able to recall the past of Miss Emily.

In general, the narrator seems to admire Miss Emily although she may have summited a murder and necrophilia with a Northerner, someone who is her lover of lower social status. Miss Emily belongs to a wealthy, well known and high class family who lived in one of the best houses which "set on once had been our most select street" (Line 7). Miss Emily was the daughter of Mr. Grierson who was quite influential among the community of Jefferson and was well respected, ever since the town decided to stop billing her for taxes. The narrator also admires her aristocratic aloofness for refusing to pay taxes or associating with lower class people. When the officers pay her a visit and urged her to pay the taxes, "she just stood in the door" (Line 49) and "listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt" (Line 49-50). She treated them in a very cold manner and asked her servant, Tobe to show the men out. Miss Emily is a relic of the old Southern past or Southern aristocracy proud, dignified, naughty, and aloof and she stands apart from the common masses. When she was seen buying arsenic from a druggist, she showed the same haughtiness which she vanquished the officers from her house. When the druggist asked her why she need it and what to use for, she simply starred at him, "her head tilted back at him in order to look him eye for eye" (Line 165) until the druggist himself looked away and wrapped the poison up for her. The values of the narrator who greatly admires Miss Emily’s aristocratic haughtiness have been questioned. This incident also reflects a society during Miss Emily’s period, the member of the nobility was able to dodge the law by using the extent of the authority due to their high positions.

The narrator is critical to the Grierson family, in particular their high and mighty attitude in a way "the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were" (Line 99). The narrator begins to withdraw sympathy for the Griersons by a faint suggestion that insanity was in the family, remembering how her great aunt Wyatt had succumbed to insanity. "None of the young men were quite good enough" (Line 100) for Miss Emily because her father dominated her and drive off many suitors who he claimed that they were not good enough to marry his daughter. The narrator cushions the effects of his criticism: "we had long thought of them as a tableau" (Line 101). By remembering her "slender figure in white" (Line 101), the narrator appears to delight in the fact that Miss Emily was still single by the time she turned thirty with no offer of marriage in sight: "We were not pleased exactly, but vindicated" (Line 104).

  But shortly after that the narrator starts to feel pity and sympathy for Miss Emily, moving from admiring her as a monument when she refused to accept the fact her father was dead. She kept her dead father’s body for three days and struggled with the decision to have the body removed from her home. The narrator’s equivocal feelings towards Miss Emily are shown after her father died: "At last they (we) could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized." (Line 108-109). The townspeople seem glad and satisfied of her new economic status that her once wealthy family was gone in a blink of eye and she was left with nothing but the house. The town viewed Miss Emily as a crazy and depressed woman:" We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would cling to that which had robbed her, as people will" (Line 117-119).

The narrator turns to present the town’s views after the appearance of Homer Barron, a common Yankee day laborer who is in town on a sidewalk-building project. At first the townspeople "were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest" (Line 133). But later some townspeople could not ascertain the relationship between Homer and Miss Emily and said that "even grief could not cause a real lady to forget nobles oblige" (Line 135-136), the nobles should behave with honor and dignity. The townspeople see this relationship as a disgrace and heavily disapproved of the affair. They called upon the Baptist minister to persuade Miss Emily to act in a manner befitting her station and even brought Miss Emily's cousins from Alabama to town and stop the relationship. Miss Emily portrayed herself as a very dignified woman after her father’s death, continued to demand the townspeople’s recognition of her as the last Grierson remaining in the town. However the narrator still asserts Miss Emily with great pride:" She carried her head high enough ---- even when we believed that she was fallen" (Line 146). The narrator is proud of her haughtiness when she faced adversity, for example, the incident of Miss Emily requested to buy arsenic from the druggist.

The townspeople still show some of their respect to Miss Emily maybe because of her status but in fact the town did not really care about her. She was not well liked or known in her town before she died. When she died the narrator describes it as "the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument" (Line 2) and buried her "among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson" (Line 12-13). The women attend her funeral "mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house" (Line 2-3). After the death of Colonel Sartoris, the new town leaders were not satisfied with the arrangement that Miss Emily’s taxes had been remitted. However they still addressed her as "Miss Emily" when the officers came to her house, attempted to resume her payments. They also greatly respected Miss Emily’s privacy until the end. No one enter her house until she was dead and buried. After they break down the sealed upstairs room which had not been opened in forty years and only discovered the remains of Homer. This also shows that the townspeople are not really concern about her. They only interested in disgraceful events in her life.

In this short story, Faulkner use the first person plural "we" from the view of the town to show the gossips and negative thoughts they have about Emily. In my opinion, from this point of view with an unseen town member narrating, Faulkner is able to show the realistic form of gossip as an inhumane and ruthless sign. It is quite ironic despite that how intrusive the townspeople were into Miss Emily’s life, treating her private life as a public document, they still didn’t know anything about her and no one cared about that. For example, regarding the smell emanating from her house, they refused to confront her and just put lime to treat the odor. They did not investigate where the smell came from and the disappearance of Homer inside her house. When Miss Emily went to the druggist and asked for poison, everyone in town believed that she was going to kill herself. They did not help her or try to understand her loneliness but accepted her decision to commit suicide. The town implies that most people in the town would be relieved if she really did: "We said it would be the best thing" (line 170). Faulkner also altered this traditional mystery story by playing around the idea of the detective. The narrator plays the role as a detective, keeps giving the reader speculation, facts and some hearsay. By using the "we" narrator, the reader have to draw some own conclusion and realize what is really happening on Miss Emily herself by putting the puzzle pieces together. The ending of the story allows the reader to understand that the story and leads the reader to the conclusion of the mystery.

In a conclusion, Faulkner did an awesome job in producing a sense of interaction between the readers and his story. Miss Emily, as a person of the Old South, had standards that the townspeople placed her "on a pedestal above everyone else, in the same time they wish to see her dragged down in disgrace." (Roberts, James L, CliffsNotes) , "A Rose for Emily" is a representative for the old south culture, rather than a patriarchy society.