A Rose for Emily

WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years. It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson. Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town (). A Rose for Emily represents one of the most powerful and shocking of Faulkners writings. He portrays an exquisite character, the sum of various symbols as the outcast, the outsider, the changed, reversed damsel in distress, the stereotypical southern person, and perhaps she can be seen as that kind of supernatural being untouched by extrinsic will, due to the fact that she so hardly accepts any kind of change in her life, and is seen throughout the story as the unchanged element of the landscape, opposing her to the new-coming generations that are actually disturbed by her refusal to accept change and real life; moreover, she is seen wanting to exercise her influence on her father and her beloved, Homer. The writing in itself may very well be considered exquisite, by combining old Gothic, European influences and the new American style of literature, so well exemplified by Faulkner.

Emilys character can also be seen as a symbol of Tradition, and her acting in life as the resistance tried by tradition in front of Change, represented by society. Also, the story is strongly connected to the historical context of those times, reflecting the current realities in Faulkners special way of understanding and exhibiting it. Emily is the blessing and the burden of her contemporaries, being respected and judged at the same time, as Tradition is. Another representation of the same concept is Emilys house. A monument, a symbol, some other materialization of what Emily is, towards which the society has a strong opinion and a well defined perspective. Its the emblem of a dying world, of the dying Tradition. Everything around the house changes throughout the long period of time during which the story takes place. For Emily, the house is like a cage, or, for her, is her whole Universe, her private and personal space which allows her to express herself and live as she pleases, without the intervention of the society, some kind of locus amoenus of her existence. An important aspect of the story is the representation of necrophilia, specific Gothic element, which makes of the house a space of mental alienation, of abnormality, beyond its symbolism of Tradition and the respecting of the Past. This perspective upon the story is slightly different, highlighting another interpretation of it. Emily hides completely this side of her behavior and personality, making out of her an especially mysterious person, so typical for the Gothic. Having wanted to keep her fathers body, and having killed Homer and kept his corpse is interpreted as her powerful desire to control. However, in spite of Emilys efforts to resist to change gets old, element also reflected in the image and state of her house. Her home is some kind of psychological landscape, actually the whole setting of the story, which gives a powerful contour and creates a strong materialization of Faulkners ideas and views upon history and mechanism of society.

Alexandru Munteanu Filologie, anul III, Polona-Engleza