Yujing Liu - Analysis of William Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily' Essay

This essay provides a detailed analysis of William Faulkner's short story, "A Rose for Emily." The essay focuses on the complex narrative structure, the Southern grotesque and gothic elements, and the character of Miss Emily Grierson. The author explores the themes of tradition, social class, death, and the narrator's perspective. The essay examines Miss Emily's character as an outcast, her relationship with the townspeople, and her actions, including the discovery of Homer Barron's body. The author also analyzes the use of the collective narrator, the symbolism of Emily's house, and the themes of change versus tradition. The essay concludes by discussing the impact of death and the struggle to maintain tradition in the face of change.

Running head: A ROSE FOR EMILY
Yujing Liu
Professor Kenneth Rose
English 112
24 March 2018

1A ROSE FOR EMILY
Analysis of Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
Thesis statement:
Emily’s character has been trapped in a delusionary world where she was far from the
reality and controlled others to know her true personality portraying a gloomy tone
throughout the story.
“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is a popular and successful short story
due to the fact that it has an intricately complex chronology. This short story tends to
evoke the Southern grotesque and gothic terms, where the general tone is terror,
gloom and inconspicuous violence. This story is also contains incredibly dark images
like a corpse, decaying mansion, a mystifying servant Tobe, who disappears, a murder
and a sense of necrophilia1. Besides this, the story has a unique narrative perspective
while telling the story. Initially, the readers can find that it is the voice of the narrator
himself who is speaking for the people of the entire town to be impressionable, young
male but a close analysis alters this realization (Gale). The reader gradually realizes
that the narrator can never be clearly identified as a young male or female. The
perspective of the narrator can be better assumed by the close examination of the tone
where the narrator uses first person ‘we’. At some points, this narrator changes his or
1 Moore, Aaron Lee. "A Survey Comparison of Faulkner Studies in China and the
West." Comparative Literature: East & West1.2 (2017): 216-227.

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her perspective about the main character Miss Emily in the narration. The narrator
also deepens the unedifying mystery of how much he or she knows about what
happened exactly, especially when Homer’s body has been discovered by the town
people. By using the pronoun ‘we’ the narrator makes the conflict more mysterious2.
Shifting to ‘they’ from ‘we’ here is a significant and major shift. Until now, the
narrator was thought to be a group of town people who have accepted the deeds and
thoughts of community, but here the narrator has distanced himself from breaking
down the door like others. This subtle and quick shift gives a major clue regarding
narrator’s personality. So it may be assumed that the narrator of this story is not a
single person but different people from whose point of view the character of Miss
Emily becomes implicit to the readers. However, it may also be assumed that whoever
the narrator was, he or she was concerned for Emily, despite the character’s desperate
and horrible acts and eccentricities in her behavior.
The story begins with the town people attending the funeral of Miss Emily, when
the men of the town Jefferson had termed her death to be a great fall. They compare
Miss Emily with a monument “alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, duty, and a
care; a sort of hereditary obligation of the town” (Faulkner 309). This description
raises several questions regarding the reputation as proper respectability of Miss
2 Gale, Cengage Learning. A Study Guide for William Faulkner's" Rose for Emily".
Gale, Cengage Learning, 2016.

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Emily in the town. However, the narrator demonstrates sympathy to Miss Emily by
never convicting her actions. Often unabashedly, often grudgingly, the first person
narrator esteems her capability to practice her aristocratic bearings to subjugate the
people of the city council as well as to buy poison. The character of Emily is the
traditional outcast who has been limiting and controlling others access to her actual
personality remaining hidden for years. Her house, dusty, shuttered and dark,
symbolizes a shield which helped Emily to be distant from the town people. However,
it is her aristocratic aloofness that attracts the people of the town more, and she
remains in their talks all the time
However, the omniscient narrator of this short story takes an empathetic voice to
criticize Miss Emily for not paying the tax as well as her increasing association with
the low-class people (Matta). The narrator is neither care-giver of Miss Emily nor a
well-wisher but demonstrates her fall from a high-class aristocrat woman to love a
Yankee. She has also exhibited the stereotypical qualities of a southern eccentric
character: excessively tragic, subjected to strange behavior and entirely unbalanced.
Ironically, the narrator admires her act of distancing from the vulgar, gross and cynic
world of the town members and love Homer Barron. Therefore, it can be said that the
narrator though a part of the town members can openly criticize his own ideology and
point of view. At the moment when Miss Emily commits one of the most repulsive
acts of desperation that leads to necrophilia but does not have much effect on the
reader as the narrator has buffered it. The narrator has portrayed Emily’s character as

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a shrine, but simultaneously he has also been pitied, even often considered to be a
demanding and irritating woman who is living her life on her own conditions3. Even
the town people have speculated and gossiped about her love life and her equation
with Homer as she has accepted his attention and love without any future plans, she
did not bother4. Her actions were speculated in a completely different way; however
her mental instability has led her to an unusual direction all together.
By mentioning death at the very beginning of the story, the narrator keeps the
power of death hanging over throughout. In every situation, death has prevailed over
all the attempts to master it. Her charms have declined just like the obsolete
sensibilities represented by Griersons5. The death of social order will be succeeded,
even if some of the town people attempt to stay true to the conventional ways. Emily’s
disturbing relationship with dead bodies has attempted to fuse death and life, but
death has triumphed in the end.
3 Xiaoyu, H. E., and T. A. N. G. Lingying. "A Comparative Analysis of Violence in A
Rose for Emily and in Lord of the Flies." Studies in Literature and Language 12.3
(2016): 17-20.
4 Long, R. E. N. "A New Study on the Narrator in A Rose for Emily." Journal of
Qiqihar University (Philosophy & Social Science Edition) 4 (2015): 035.
5 Liu, Li. "A Stylistics Analysis of A Rose for Emily." Studies in Literature and
Language 10.4 (2015): 76.

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Miss Emily is criticized in her every work, but the complaints are softened. After
showing admiration, the narrator pities her. Here the ambiguity becomes clear and the
readers realize that the narrator is not a single person but talks collectively on behalf
of the people of the town. She is so attached with her father; she does not immediately
bury him as she could not accept his death. Similar is the case with her lover, Miss
Emily kills him with poison, but the narrator says that she "carried her head high
enough — even when we believed that she was fallen"(Faulkner 312). By using the
collective first person, the narrator has created a sense of intimacy between readers
and the story. The narrator-as-the-town refers Miss Emily as a fallen monument of
past who is a majestic lady whose charm and respectability has declined through
years, but simultaneously as the lady who always remains above any reproach. She is
too good for the common people of the town and she holds herself aloof. By taking an
objective perspective, Faulkner detaches himself from the whole narrative. He takes
the position of observer by allowing the townspeople to share their views about the
queer character of Miss Emily.
Emily has been a subject of controlling and intense gaze of the residents of the
town. When the town people came to attend her funeral, under the disguise of honor
and respect, they have attended the funeral for satisfying their curiosity about her.
Throughout most parts of the story, she has only been seen from a safe distance. But
this changes during her courtship with Homer as she often left her house. While town
people have spied on her avidly, she has still been a distant character and her secrets

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were only open after her death.
Through the unsolved character of Emily, the writer has conveyed the
stereotypical struggle coming from the continuous try of maintaining a tradition and a
radical change. Emily’s character is a symbol of tradition that is consistently saying at
the same place over many years regardless of the numeral changes within the
community. On one level, she is the living shrine to past and representing the
traditions that are honored and respected by the town people, on the other level; she is
also considered as a duty or burden and completely cut off from the outer world,
nurturing the peculiarities, which others cannot comprehend. Emily has lived in an
eternal vacuum where she made her own world. By refusing putting metallic numbers
to her house, she kept herself completely out of the real world which had threatened
her to burst through her cautiously sealed perimeters6. Even though Jefferson has high
respect for the conventional notions of reputation and honor, the narrator of the story
has seemed to be critical of all the old men who gathered for the funeral in
confederate uniforms7. Here the past has been portrayed as an idealized and
6 Ryu, Da-Young. "The Expression of Sublime in Gothic Novel-William Faulkners A
Rose for Emily." Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society 17.5
(2016): 137-145.
7 Gale, Cengage Learning. A Study Guide for William Faulkner's" Rose for Emily".
Gale, Cengage Learning, 2016.

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ubiquitous realm. Therefore, the bridal chamber of Emily is the ultimate attempt for
stopping time and preventing continuous changes, even though that comes at the
expense of someone’s life.

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References
Ryu, Da-Young. "The Expression of Sublime in Gothic Novel-William Faulkners A
Rose for Emily." Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society 17.5
(2016): 137-145.
Long, R. E. N. "A New Study on the Narrator in A Rose for Emily." Journal of
Qiqihar University (Philosophy & Social Science Edition) 4 (2015): 035.
Gale, Cengage Learning. A Study Guide for William Faulkner's" Rose for Emily".
Gale, Cengage Learning, 2016.
Liu, Li. "A Stylistics Analysis of A Rose for Emily." Studies in Literature and
Language 10.4 (2015): 76.
Moore, Aaron Lee. "A Survey Comparison of Faulkner Studies in China and the
West." Comparative Literature: East & West1.2 (2017): 216-227.
Xiaoyu, H. E., and T. A. N. G. Lingying. "A Comparative Analysis of Violence in A
Rose for Emily and in Lord of the Flies." Studies in Literature and Language 12.3
(2016): 17-20.

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Annotated Bibliography
Gale, Cengage Learning. A Study Guide for William Faulkner's" Rose for Emily".
Gale, Cengage Learning, 2016.
This book demonstrates the importance of perspectives in proper understanding of
action or incident of the story. It helps to realize the proper character of Miss Emily.
This article is authentic hence used to disclose the mysterious character of Miss
Emily.
Matta, May. "The Abyss of the Unknown in the Books “The Fall of the House of
Usher” and “A Rose for Emily”." European Scientific Journal, ESJ 14.2 (2018).
This article demonstrates various themes that can be drawn from the story by
Faulkner ‘A Rose for Emily’. This article presents themes which are resistance to
change, family, death, and alienation of the main character. This article is
academically valid and guide the readers to connect various themes.
Faulkner, William. "A Rose For Emily." The Norton Introduction To Literature,
Portable 12th Edition, Kelly J. Mays, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., pp. 308-316.
This is the primary source for this essay.

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Writing Process Summation
1. I have selected this particular story because it talks about the complete alienation
to a woman who belongs to a high class family.
2. I want to decipher how far the criticism can bend her to subjugate but found that
with her aristocratic behaviour, she conquers all. The townspeople dislike her
superiority and arrogance but fails to curb her.
3. After I wrote the draft, I tried to see the essay from a readers’ point of view and
understood it needed more explanation to convey the difference of perception.
4. In this essay, I have revised and pointed out the difference of perspective which
can help the readers to get more understanding of a character.
5. I want that the readers see the character of Miss Emily differently where the
collective tone criticisms, sympathies and pities with the fate and act of Miss Emily.