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| Rose for Emily --- chivalry is being courteous towards women (opening doors, pulling out chairs…etc…) it is an old southern idea--- the Glass Menagerie , Amanda’s idea of courting, and how Tom has to provide for the family--- Yellow Wallpaper |
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| A Rose for Emily --- old southern idea (think Gone with the Wind’s Scarlet) Both Emily and Amanda are southern belles. These women are generally beautiful, charming, wealthy, and concentrate on more domestic things (cooking, running a household, sewing, etc). Amanda is very out of touch with reality and still behaves in this old manner. Evidence of Emily being a southern belle is shown in the way the town respects her from afar and how she is not forced to pay the taxes or evicted. Emily is a southern belle, which is portrayed in the way the town respects her from afar and how she is neither forced to pay taxes nor evicted; we find this, however, to be contradicted by her grotesque attempts at finding a permanent lover. Even after she commits her heinous act, Faulkner still portrays her more as a victim of the circumstances |
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| a man who romances the women; the male equivalent to the southern belle |
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| Reconstruction is the period after the Civil War in which the South was “reformed and rebuilt.” Evidence of this is visible in A Rose for Emily, The Glass Menagerie, The Yellow Wallpaper, A Rose for Emily, and Invisible Man. A Rose for Emily --- she lives in that era with the ideals of the old South (see Southern belle and chivalry).--- The Glass Menagerie --- Amanda is still stuck in the past, it is around this era still (again see southern belle and chivalry). --- The Yellow Wallpaper --- The woman is definitely trapped by her gender in this story. Again these are some of the older ideas still present in that era. --- Invisible Man --- reconstruction of black identity, black culture (see Harlem Renaissance) |
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| the Emily in “A Rose for Emily”, she sleeps with the dead Homer Barron, is a very crazy lady, she killed him because she did not want to lose him, (see Homer Barron) |
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| Homer Barron is the Yankee construction foreman who becomes Emily Grierson's first real male companion. His relationship with Emily is considered scandalous because he is a Northerner and because it doesn't appear as if they will ever be married, as he has remarked that he is not a marrying man. Emily purchases arsenic, a monogrammed toilet set with the initials H.B., and men's clothing, which imply that she is preparing for marriage. Homer is seen entering her home and is never seen alive again. However, what is presumably his corpse is discovered in a ghastly bridal suite on the top floor of the Grierson house after Emily's funeral. She had lost her father and, therefore, attempted to keep Homer with her even after his death. the man who courted Emily Grierson. A foreman for a construction company. “A big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face.” Him and Emily drove together on Sunday afternoon. “He liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club – that he was not a marrying man.” Emily bought a man’s toilet set in silver with HB on them and a complete outfit of men’s clothing, nightshirt and all and it was said that “They are married.” She asked for arsenic and killed him to keep her there; she had lost her father and could not bear to lose the other man in her life. She needed something to cling to, and since her father had driven away all of her other suitors, the only man she had left was Homer. |
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| “The Board of Alderman” – After Emily ignored the tax notice; they met to decide what to do. The men went to her house to ask, and she dismissed them with the claim that she had no taxes in Jefferson, and to see Colonel Sartoris. She “vanquished them” and there was never any question about it. Members of the Board of Alderman met to decide what to do when Emily ignored the tax notice. The men went to her house to ask, and she dismissed them with the claim that she had no taxes in Jefferson, and to see Colonel Sartoris, the former mayor, who had remitted Emily’s taxes dating from her father’s death. By the time the representatives of the Board of Aldermen waited on her concerning her delinquent taxes, she had already completely retreated to her world of the past. She declared that she had no taxes in Jefferson, basing her belief on a verbal agreement made with Colonel Sartoris, who had been dead for ten years. Just as Emily refused to acknowledge the death of her father, she now refused to recognize the death of Colonel Sartoris. He had given his word and according to the traditional view, his word knew no death. It is the past pitted against the present--the past with its social decorum, the present with everything set down in "the books." |
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| The chorus was used in Greek plays to serve as the conscience or the omniscient deity in a play. The townspeople/society are like the chorus in this play, with phrases like ”She will kill herself” and “They are married” appearing randomly to illustrate society’s views on her and her life. |
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| This is the technique that Faulkner uses to tell the story. Not everything is in order; the reader must put together the pieces of this story and decipher it for themselves. This makes you have to think more about what’s going on, not only in the plot but in the undercurrents of the story. The plot starts with Emily’s funeral and flashes back to a meeting of the Board of Alderman, where she denied having any taxes to pay. It moves on to the townspeople complaining of a smell emanating from the Grierson house after the death of Emily’s father. Then, Faulkner describes Emily’s sickness and purchase of poison. In the next section, Homer Barron disappears. The narrator returns to the scene of Emily’s funeral where Homer Barron’s body was discovered. The scrambled storyline acts primarily to create suspense. |
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| At the end of the story, on the bed next to Homer’s corpse, there was “a long strand of iron-gray hair.” This was undoubtedly Emily’s; there was an indention in the pillow of a head. Whether Emily was a necrophiliac or not is up for debate, but it was obvious that she poisoned him and kept him there for her to cling to until she died. “Grey hair” refers to Emily’s graying hair during her sickness, which was “like the hair of an active man.” When Homer Barron’s corpse was discovered, there was “a long strand of iron-gray hair” on a pillow with an indentation of a head, strongly suggesting that Emily had committed acts of necrophilia. |
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| Emily went to the druggist and tried to buy arsenic. When he questioned what it was for, as was his job, she denied him an answer but just stared at him until he went to get it and when she received it later, it had “For Rats” written on the top. Emily goes to the druggist to buy arsenic, but the druggist requires that she give him a reason for purchasing the poison. She merely looks him in the eye to convince him to give her the arsenic. This is evidence of Emily’s social power, which she has obtained from her past. |
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| When Emily had killed Homer there was a stench around the house. But they couldn’t “accuse a woman of smelling bad to her face” so some men from town snuck in at night and scattered lime around the house to get rid of the smell. This all refers back to her being a Southern Belle and the way society conforms to it. Men from town scattered lime around the Grierson house in attempt to get rid of the mysterious stench. This is an example of the classic “southern Belle,” to which society conforms. |
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| He was the mayor that took away Emily’s taxes. He “invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily’s father had loaned money to then town…only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have prevented it, and only a woman could have believed it.” He represented the past, and Emily again displays her conflict between her past and the present when she denies her possession of taxes. |
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| They realized the invalidity of her arrangement with Colonel Sartoris and tried to get her to pay her taxes. “On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff’s office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.” See the council men above to finish this. She again refuses to let go of the past and Colonel Sartoris’s death |
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| Emily gave them before she closed the house. “…the painting pupils grew up and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good.” |
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| “…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 but the backflung front door.” He drove away all of her suitors, and when he died she didn’t let them take the body because “she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.” Emily’s father left Emily alone, causing her to cling onto what she had left (Homer) |
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| “So the next day we all said, ‘She will kill herself;’ and we said it was the best thing.” |
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| The townspeople said this after she bought arsenic. They viewed Emily with pity, and they said it was the best thing because she had been sick, and she was lonely, and there was no point to her existence. Her family had fallen from their high status and she was an old maid with no father or husband to care for her, This shows the mirror image of how she looks down on society…they also look down on her. |
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| “…this room decked and furnished as for a bridal.” A wedding night, a honeymoon type setting that Emily had the room where she slept with Homer’s corpse arranged. |
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| A Rose for Emily – a frozen scene – portrait in Emily’s house of her far back behind her father --- represents her father’s power over her |
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