Isolation In A Rose For Emily

“After her father’s death she went out very little, after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (Faulkner 805). Miss Emily was an interesting character that is commonly associated with death and isolation. According to Willow D. Crystal, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" suggests that there is a tension between what is private and what is public. I agree, but I would add that the character of Miss Emily emphasizes the isolation and death themes that Faulkner attempts to achieve.

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are two well written short stories that entail both similarities and differences. Both short stories were written in the late 1800’s early 1900’s and depict the era when women were viewed less important than men. The protagonist in each story is a woman, who is confined in solitary due to the men in their lives. The narrator in “A Rose for Emily” is the mutual voice of the townspeople of Jefferson, while Emily Grierson is the main character in the story that undergoes a sequence of bad events. The unnamed, female narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is also the main character whose journal we read. This difference in tense gives each story a

Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time ” (419). Emily does not want to be left

In fact, the story opens from the first-person plural “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.” (Section 1-1) Instead of using facts through direct observation, personal relationships or hands on experience; gossip, hearsay and rumors are used to tell the story. For example, the townspeople speculate on Emily’s relationship with Homer; “At first we were 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.” (Section 3-31) Another example, is the narrator's portrayal of Homer as a homosexual or an eternal bachelor. “Then we said, "She will persuade him yet," because Homer himself had remarked – 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.” (Section 4-43) There’s also the matter of the poison; “So the next day we all said, “She will kill herself”; and we said it would be the best thing.” (Section 4-43) Then there’s Homer’s disappearance; “And that was the last

In the beginning, the audience gets a glimpse of the house belonging to Miss Emily. The exterior of the house was beautiful, but aging. When it was first built in the post-civil war era, it was lovely. However, after revolution and change, Miss Emily’s home was the last standing house on the block. This is vital to the story because it paints a picture for the reader’s mind. The interior of the house was dusty and unclean after the change. This demonstrates how cooped up Miss Emily truly is. She never

In Faulkner’s story, a sharp contrast is demonstrated between the culture and ideas of both the southern United States and the northern United States. Seeing as the story is written from the point of view of the town located in the south, there is an obvious bias against people from the northern United States. This negative outlook towards northerners is easily seen as Faulkner discusses the arrival of Homer Barron. Faulkner discusses how the ladies from the town say “a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner” which sets in place the rivalry of the north and the south by making someone from the north appear lesser. This idea is progressed further when the townspeople said “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her” which displays

Instead of a first person point of view, Faulkner writes in the third person point of view. In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily does not tell the story. Instead, the town tells the story about Emily’s life. By using an outsider’s point of view, Faulkner gives the reader a different perspective on how isolation causes insanity. He uses third person to effectively illustrate the physical part of insanity.

In American literature, no two authors other than William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway effected the literary scene more since Mark Twain. Both Hemingway and Faulkner were Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize winners, and gammerd the world’s affection. Faulkner’s gem of a story, “A Rose for Emily” and Hemingway’s “Big Two Hearted River” both deal with the theme of isolation, but have different internal mechanisms that advance the story. Faulkner and his use of eloquent word choice, as well as a profound influence of Southern local color gives the effect of a Michelangelo’s painting where detail is so prevalent, the reader has a myriad of options on what individual details to value. He paints a picture in “A Rose for Emily” about a woman who grows

The story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner would be drastically different if it was written from the point of view of Miss Emily. Her intentions and thoughts would be more pronounced, and because of this, the ending of the story may not come as such a shock. In addition, Miss Emily would be less distanced from the audience, and they would be able to understand her character in a way that the townspeople could not. Miss Emily being the narrator would immensely change the reader’s perception of the story’s ending and her character.

According to her father, “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily”. Her father drove away all of Emily’s suitors throughout his life. After her father’s death, Emily meets Homer Barron, a day laborer from the north, after and with hopes of potentially marrying him. The townspeople viewed Emily’s courtship with Homer as part of her downfall into insanity calling her, “Poor Emily”, viewing Homer as beneath her. Faulkner writing, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." Emily’s father would have also disapproved of Homer because he was a workingman and a Northerner and did not come from wealth. Homer was in town to pave the sidewalks and did not think seriously of his courtship with Emily. Homer, “…himself had remarked - 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’

Narration can be used to manipulate a story. The author chooses who and how a story is told. It can manipulate the reader’s views of characters and situations in the story. The point of view that “A Rose for Emily” was written in was third person. It served as a collective town voice and let the reader in on the thoughts and opinions the townspeople had on Miss Emily. This type of narration can be used to detach a reader from the story or characters, but in Faulkner’s case he wrote it in a way that the narrator is slowly pushing us to feel empathy for Miss Emily.

Emily's house is where Emily spent most of her life in isolation after the death of her father. Externally, it is considered to be "an eyesore among eyesores"(716) It is amongst cotton gins and that were put up after homes that previously resided on the street had since been moved out. Her house is basically the picture of decay amongst the newer buildings. This could possibly signify Emily's position in the town, or the town's position in the rest of the world. On one hand, the town is small and isolated, but on the other hand, Emily has isolated herself entirely from the rest of the town and seems to cling to her past even more so than the town itself.

As an image of decrepit grandeur, Miss Emily’s house is used to symbolize Miss Emily’s character herself, the historical setting in which the story takes place, and some of the story’s central themes. Described as “a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorates with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies” (Faulkner 1), the house is ornate and grand in design, even being located on what was once an exclusive street in Jefferson. However, over time, it had become dilapidated and unkempt, with the interior being dark and full of dust, possessing “a close, dank smell” (Faulkner 1). Similarly, Miss Emily was once a young lady of high standing, opulent in her own ways, but slowly aged and lost her grandeur, becoming “a small, fat woman” (Faulkner 1) whose hair was turning grayer as the days went by. Much like her home, Miss Emily was losing her charm over time, showing that her character was stubbornly grasping on to the idea that she still retained an image of splendor she no longer possessed, all while isolating herself from the rest of the town.

In the story “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner makes use of a point of view that is seldom used in literature. He uses first-person plural narration to tell the tale through an unnamed character's point of view. Although the narration comes from the first-person point of view, the narrator often uses pronouns that are usually associated with third-person such as “they”, “she”, and so forth. Also, through an unconventional, yet brilliant manipulation of point of view, Faulkner was able to create a definitive impact on how the readers view and think about Ms. Emily Grierson. The pronouns and diction used by narrator, who collectively is representative of the thoughts of the townspeople, demonstrated the isolative nature surrounding Ms. Grierson,

In “ A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the complex tale of a woman who is battered by time and unable to move through life after the loss of each significant male figure in her life. Unlike Disney Stories, there is no prince charming to rescue fallen princess, and her assumed misery becomes the subject of everyone in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the townspeople gossip about her and develop various scenarios to account for her behaviors and the unknown details of her life, Emily Grierson serves as a scapegoat for the lower classes to validate their lives. In telling this story, Faulkner decides to take an unusual approach; he utilizes a narrator to convey the details of a first-person tale, by examining chronology, the