A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner

Hi everyone, I’m Huyen Trang and I’m here to talk to you about one
of the most distinguished short stories of William Faulkner, called “A
Rose for Emily”. In the next 15 minutes, we will go through the tragic
life of a lady named Emily Grierson who reflects the American South
after the Civil War. My presentation is divided into 3 parts. Firstly I
will look at some general information. Then I will briefly summarize
the plot of the story. And finally discuss more about the meaning of
the title.
Now, I’ll start with an overview of “A Rose for Emily”.

1. OVERVIEW OF A ROSE FOR EMILY.

“A Rose for Emily” was first published in the Forum magazine in

1930. In 1950, it was published in The Collected Stories of William
Faulkner, which won the the National Book Award for Fiction 1 year
later.
1.1. Setting:
Place: William Faulkner set “A Rose for Emily” in the fictional town
of ‘Jefferson \ˈje-fər-sən\, Mississippi/ˌmɪs.ɪˈsɪp.i/. Jefferson is not
real, it’s fictional and located in the fictional Yoknapatawpha
(pronounced YOK-na-pa-TAW-fah) County, which is based on his
hometown of Oxford /ˈɑːks.fɚd/, Mississippi. The fictional county
serves as the setting for 15 of Faulkner's novels and more than 50
short stories.

Time: the events in ''A Rose for Emily'' occur mainly after the Civil
War, from the 1890s to around the 1930s. Not long after the
American Civil War, industry had exploded in the North, bringing
with it jobs and an influx /ˈɪn.flʌks/ of money. However, in the South,
slavery was abolished and people tried to uphold traditional manners
and customs.
1.2. Characters:
Main character: Miss Emily Grierson was born during the American
Civil War and died at the age of 74 after leading an isolated life with a
horror secret. She lived and was controlled by her father until his
death. Emily was the last member of a Southerner aristocratic
/ˌær.ɪ.stəˈkræt.ɪk/ family. The townspeople portray her as a
monument, but at the same time she is pitied and often irritated,
demanding to live in her own ways.
Secondary characters:
Homer Barron: A foreman (đốc công) from the North, known by his
sense of humor, came to Jefferson to construct the sidewalks. He met
and was involved in a romantic relationship with Miss Emilly.

Mr. Grierson: Miss Emily's father, prevents Miss Emily from being
courted during her young days.

Colonel /ˈkɝː.nəl/ Sartoris: is the former mayor of Jefferson who

assured/əˈʃʊr/ Miss Emily she wouldn't have to pay taxes after her
father's death. Exempted Emilly from paying taxes

The Board of Aldermen /'ɔ:ldəmən/ represents a new generation

and runs the city of Jefferson.

The townspeople in Jefferson: The narrator is their spokesperson.

1.3. Literary features:

Genre: “A Rose for Emily” participates in the Southern Gothic,

Encyclopedia of Britannica: “Southern gothic, a style of writing
practiced by many writers of the American South whose stories set in
that region are characterized by grotesque, macabre, or fantastic
incidents”.
The story is a non-linear narrative, meaning that the events of the
story are told out of order. (not chronologically /ˌkrɒn.əˈlɑː.dʒɪ.kəl.i/)

A stream of consciousness /ˈkɑːn.ʃəs.nəs/ narration, as my partner

Tam has told you before, this technical writing mimics the flow of a
character’s thoughts.

To fulfill the ups and downs of the story, William Faulkner skillfully
uses many writing techniques. Typically, he often rearranges the
sequence of events in his fiction, using flashbacks to offer a window
into the character's past or dropping hints that foreshadow what is yet
to come.

What’s more, perspective and narrator: "A Rose for Emily" has a
first-person plural narrator who speaks in the collective voice of the
town. (The narrator uses the collective pronoun “we” in order to give
the sense that the entire town is reflecting on Emily’s life.)

Now we’ll move on to…

2. PLOT SUMMARY

"A Rose for Emily" is written in five sections. let's look at a short
summary of its plot points:

In Section I, the story opens with the funeral of Emily Grierson, and
townspeople of Jefferson gather for the funeral. No one has entered
her home in ten years. The huge house, which she inherited from her
father, is representative of a nearly-dead Old South, an eyesore among
eyesores. In the rising action Colonel Sartoris the mayor tells Miss
Emily that she will not have to pay taxes. After that, when receiving a
tax bill, she ignores it, insisting the Board of Aldermen speak with
Colonel Sartoris who has been dead for almost 10 years.
Section II takes place 30 years before Emily's funeral. An odd smell
is coming from her house. This was about two years after her father
died and her lover disappeared. Emily’s father had always run off
men that wanted to marry her because he did not believe anyone was
good enough for her and that prevented her from having a normal life.
When her father died, the women of the town come to check on her,
but Emily says that her father has not died. After three days of denial,
her father's body was finally buried. Back to the smell, after a heated
discussion about how to handle the situation, the Board of Alderman
decides to sneak over to miss Emily's house after dark and spread
lime a kind of powder containing calcium hydroxide /haɪˈdrɑːk.saɪd/
CaCO2 - (vôi tôi) to neutralize the odor.

In Section III, Homer Barron, a Northern foreman comes to Jefferson

to oversee the construction of new sidewalks here. He is the second-
most important character in this short story. Homer and Miss Emily
take buggy rides together every Sunday and seem to be courting,
which hurts her reputation. The townspeople think she is forgetting
her father's pride. They believe as a working-class man, Homer
should be beneath her. Emily eventually goes to a store to buy the
poison arsenic at the drugstore (a solid chemical element that’s
extremely poisonous and was once commonly used to kill rats and
insecticides.)

In Section IV, the town begins to talk about how it is not likely that
Homer and Emily will marry. They worry Emily will kill herself with
the poison. Homer is not seen around town, but Emily buys a man’s
toilet set for Homer. The town begins to believe again that perhaps
they will marry. One night, Homer goes inside Emily's home and
never leaves. Emily lets no one into the home except to give them
china-painting lessons. Miss Emily has seen less and less and finally
passes away at the age of 74.
In Section V, after Emily dies, her servant lets the women of the town
into the house and then he walks out the back door for good. In the
terrifying climax of the story, townspeople break down the door to a
locked upstairs bedroom a few days after Emily’s funeral . The
interior is decorated like a bridal suit but the atmosphere of a
neglected tomb. In the falling action, the townspeople discover on the
bed the decomposed body of Homer Barron in the resolution next to
his corpse on an empty pillow is a single strand of long gray hair.

I have prepared a plot diagram of A Rose for Emily for you. I hope
that it can help you understand more about the story’s plot.

3. MEANING OF THE TITLE: “A ROSE FOR EMILY”

After listening to the plot summary, you may ended up asking

yourself, ''Where is this rose that appears in the title?'' The answer:
nowhere! actual roses never appear anywhere in the story. So, that
begs the question: Why did Faulkner choose to use the idea of a rose
in the title of his story? As with most things, it's always best to go to
the source—Faulkner himself.

In an interview, Faulkner explained it this way: 'Oh, that was an

allegorical /ˌæl.əˈɡɒr.ɪ.kəl/ title: …I pitied her and this was a salute
/səˈluːt/, … to a woman you would hand a rose…' (as cited in Yasui,
1999)

On another occasion, he added " Her father had kept her more or less
locked up and then she had a lover who was about to quit her, she
had to murder him. It was just "A Rose for Emily"-- that's all," (as
cited in Meyer, 1996).

In other words, the rose is a tribute to her life and her death:
 - A respectful gesture to honor a woman who has suffered the
hardships of life losing her father, losing her romantic partner,
and living a life marked by isolation and mental illness. A
victim to a victimizer.

- Express the author’s condolences to Emily’s death. Even though

she is a killer, the author shows sorry and sympathy for Miss
Emily.

- Symbolizes Homer Barron's death - A “rose” that Emily

searches for in her life but till the day she died, she never had
one. So the author gives her one.

Summarize: That’s all about “A Rose for Emily” written by William

Faulkner that I wanna share with you today. Now, just to summarize,
let’s quickly look at 3 main points again.

● Background information:
- In Jefferson, Mississippi, located in the fictional
Yoknapatawpha county from the 1890s to 1930s.
- Characters: Miss Emily Grierson, Homer Barron, Miss
Emily’s father, townspeople and so on.
- Literary features: Southern gothic, non-linear narrative,
stream of consciousness, 1st person plural “we”.
● Plot summary: 5 sections
● The meaning of the title: A tribute to Miss Emily’s life and her
death

On the whole, A Rose for Emily tells what it is like to live in the
American South between the 1890s and the 1930s when the
Southerners had to digest the loss of the war and cope with their
legacy in a changing society. I highly recommend you to read this
story and I’m always willing to discuss more with you about it.