Writer’s Notes

This MLA-style essay, "A Personal Interpretation of "A Rose For Emily" by William Faulkner," provides a brief summary of the subject story as well as this writer’s interpretation, which may or may not reflect that of the client’s, but will serve as a useful framework in which to express alternatives views and thoughts. A works cited page shell is provided for the client’s use in citing whichever edition of the story is used; the story is available online at

http://www.online-library.org/fictions/emily.html

A. West, May 28, 2001. A_ROSE_ FOR_EMILY1.0.

I. Introduction.

There may be a fine line between genteel and eccentric, but Emily Grierson was just plain nuts. Whether she went crazy as a result of her overly strict father, her heredity, a failed romance or as the result of the powerful social changes affecting the Old South, is unimportant. What is important is what Faulkner was telling us about human nature. Here we have another in the line of stories written by Faulkner about the powerful Colonel Sartoris and his place in the order of things in the Old South. Certainly many things have changed in the souther U.S. since Faulkner wrote this story, but many things have not changed enough. There remains an underlying current of racial tension which frequently breaks through to surface in the headlines and on our televisions, and it is clear that as a nation, America still has a long way to go before the color of a person’s skin is truly unimportant. Having said that, though, Faulkner captures the flavor of the times in this story by his skillful allusions to the racial stereotypes and less attractives qualities of human nature which were common for the day, and indeed which continue to plague the country today. This paper will provide a brief summary of William Faulkner’s "A Rose for Emily" to identify some of the social forces which existed in the Old South which compelled the people of Jefferson to bow down to the Great and Powerful Emily "up to the day of her death at seventy-four." The summary will be followed by a personal interpretation of these social forces as they impacted the country then and today.

II. Summary.

The writers of the old "Andy Griffith Show" stole this idea for one of their episodes back in the 60s. They wrote about an old man who is identified as owing back taxes, who discovers among his meager possessions a Civil War era bond which would bankrupt the town of Mayberry to redeem. The fact that the bond was later discovered to be worthless was unimportant; the fact remained that the town had established a sense of responsibility for this old worthy citizen, which continued after the influence of the bond was gone. Likewise, when Emily Grierson’s father died, the town inherited her because Colonel Sartoris:

However, when the Old Guard died off and the New Guard arrived, the tax rolls were not in order and something had to be done. Ms. Emily’s actions are viewed in varying degrees of bemusement, concern and contempt by the people of the town, but no one is willing to take her on one-to-one. Her invocation of the name of Colonel Sartoris, together with the downright eerie quality of the lady, were enough to send even the sternest deputation running. Her father had managed to scare away all of her suitors, and by and large everyone felt some degree of pity for her -- after all, insanity ran in her family and time was running out for her to find a husband before the crazy genes kicked in. When Old Man Grierson finally died off, Emily had a chance to sow her wild oats within the limitations of polite society, and when she is courted by a construction crew foreman, everyone in town was genuinely happy that the old maid would have one last shot at happiness, even though no one particularly liked her. Faulkner writes, "When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less." Even though Miss Emily refused to acknowledge her father’s death for several days, she finally relents and allows the authorities to quickly bury him. The narrator notes that even then, despite the rumors of insanity in her family, no one thought she was particularly crazy. In fact, because she had been humanized in the townspeople’s eyes, they were actually happy that she had found Homer Barron. "The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face." Because she was not pitiable, the citizens of Jefferson were at first "glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, ‘Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.’"

The resulting events between Barron and Miss Emily create a scandalous level of gossip and intrigue, and while everyone appears to have been shocked by the events which followed, no one seemed particularly surprised. Let’s face it: Emily gets dumped, buys poison, her fickle lover disappears into her house and is never seen again and the townspeople do . . . nothing -- well, they do get rid of the odor. Even suspecting murder most foul, with the stench of death rising all around her home, all the local judiciary can summon the courage to say is, "Damn it, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?" Rather than confront Mad Lady Emily, the townsfolk resort to spreading lime around her house just to keep the peace.

While the smell may have gone away, clearly Homer did not. In a Stephen King-ish type of ending, the townsfolk of course batter down the door to Emily’s love nest to find she had been cavorting with a corpse, or had at least slept in the same bed with her poisoned lover.

III. Personal Interpretation.

The story is about the decline of post-Civil War southern culture and one woman's refusal to accept those changes in society and in her personal life. Miss Emily was so old fashioned that she would not even let them put street address numbers and a mail box on her house. Faulkner describes how Miss Emily tries to hold onto the important things through whatever means necessary. She initially refuses to let the authorities take her father, and manages to simply keep Homer. She refuses to pay her taxes because she does not have to (go talk to Colonel Sartoris). The townspeople clearly recognize what is actually going on behind the mysterious closed doors but there are powerful forces in action in the town and in this society which keep them from actively interfering. These powerful forces consist of the Old Guard mentality which says that white "ladies" are to be dealt with differently than the likes of you and me, and as a society, we will look the other way rather than confront a reality which may embarrass all of us. Indeed, the town owed Emily her dignity and a source of income from this point of view. "She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted."

The Great and Powerful Emily could stare down an overly inquisitive druggist with a single steely glare: "I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eye sockets as you imagine a lighthouse keeper's face ought to look. "I want some poison," she said. . . . "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for." Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home, there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats." Rats named Homer. The Great and Powerful Emily can shoo away a dignified Baptist minister: "The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister--Miss Emily's people were Episcopal--to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again." The Great and Powerful Emily had a voice that was "dry and cold," and by stating authoritatively that "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me" she is able to dismiss with finality the city officials -- the law! -- by invoking the magic words, "See Colonel Sartoris." Faulkner makes it clear that she not only dismissed them, "SHE VANQUISHED them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell."

Works Cited

Note: All numbers, symbols, letters, etc. found within parenthesis are actual page numbers from the hard copy of the source. Numbers following are the electronic page numbers from that source as it prints from the World Wide Web (WWW). If there are no page numbers in parenthesis indicated, then only electronic page numbers are available at the Internet site.