Emilys Rose of Love:

Thematic Implications of Point of View in

Faulkners A Rose for Emily

Unsolved problem of narrative focus/ point of view

General views:
narrator is innocuous, naive, passive citizen of Jefferson
simply records the progress/advance of the attitude of the townsmen
towards Miss Emily
shifting his identity imaginatively
Miss Emilys interpretation: proud, unbending monument of the Old
South (admiration+pity)
Helen E. Nebeker:
Faulkner hides the real theme by deliberate structural ambiguity +
anonymus narrator the truth lies in the identity of the narrator which is
hidden by ambiguous pronoun references, continual shifting of person
Our they we + further complications

Shifting pronoun references

Section I. : Our whole town They (mayors and aldermen after Colonel
Sartoris)

Section II. : Them (they above) Their fathers They (Board of

Aldermen)

3 groups: the general towns people (our), contemporaries of Emily in her

late 50s/early 60s, they of an earlier generation(PostWar+older preCivilWar)
WE ~ our universal, public rumour? no another separated group
is introduced. Possibly a group fo rejected old suitors

 Section III. : Homer Barron Northern Outsider

WE They 1 ( tradition bound)
They 2 (who began to whisper)

The arsenic purchase the druggist must be a member of WE

Lime sowing younger member of the Board of Aldermen, part of
WE
They act to protect Miss Emily seal the room, hide and keep her secret

Predictable Faulknerian Generations

Old Aristocracy Pre-Civil War : proud, indomitable autocracy those to

whom Emily is a duty (e.g. Colonel Sartoris, Emilys father..)

Post-War Generation : Emilys generation those to whom she is a care
1. Aristocratic
2. Less Aristocratic social hiers of the Old South
3. The Narrative WE
4. The Servant
A Newer, Rising Generation : who sent the tax notices, the painting pupils
those to whom Emily is a tradition
A Newer Second Generation : grown up painting pupils, number + mailbox,
bought flowers. In Section IV. they are the majority in the town
Emily is neither duty nor tradition nor care to them
the We, by the becomes a part of this They which merges the overlapping
generations ( post-war, newer 1 + 2)

Time and structure

Helen Nebeker suggests that Faulkner uses unnecessarily
compilcated structure and chronology to hide the narrators
identity and their knowledge
confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old
do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead,
a huge meadow F. reveals his intention

The Rose :
the WE offers this to Miss Emily, keeping and protecting her
secret, as a final tribute (the room must be forced) to keep
untarnished the honor and myth of the Old South
( contrast to bought flowers)

 One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and
invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of
iron-gray hair. red herring?

Postscript:

1894 not his fathers death but the remittion of her taxes
Her death 1928, instead of 1937
Story written and published in 1930 (Section I. indicates that
Emily has died before the time of narration)