Motherhood In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

William Faulkner has done a wonderful work in his essay “A Rose for Emily.” Faulkner uses symbols, settings, character development, and other literary devices to express the life of Emily and the behavior of the people of Jefferson town towards her. By reading the essay, the audience cannot really figure out who the narrator is. It seems like the narrator can be the town’s collective voice. The fact that the narrator uses collective pronoun we supports the theory that the narrator is describing the life of “Miss Emily” on behalf of the townspeople. Faulkner has used the flashback device in his essay to make it more interesting. The story begins with the portrayal of Emily’s funeral and it moves to her past and at the end the readers realize that the funeral is a flashback as well. The story starts with the death of Miss Emily when he was seventy-four years old and it takes us back when she is a young and attractive girl.

However, she was the centre of furious gossip in the entire town especially when her relationship with Homer Barron started.

“Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 1). Emily, a member of the town’s elite class, relied upon her father when growing up and after his death, she refused to pay her taxes, stating that her father contributed much to society. But it was evident that she didn’t pay them because of a lack of maturity - financially and socially. When she was younger she pushes herself onto Homer Barron, a Northerner with no interest in marriage. Throughout the story, Emily is conflicted over societal change, and clings to her privileged manner even after finding herself in poverty. Yet, she becomes involved with a man from a lower social class, and a Northerner as well - hinting that he has different beliefs and values. The townspeople, however, believe the relationship it too modern when there is a possibility they are having physical relations despite not being serious about marriage. The community’s inability to commit to progress, contribute to the confused Emily’s decision. In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner uses the symbolism of Emily’s house and her hair to demonstrate her emotional instability and physical deterioration, illustrating the outcome of his story.

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” starts out at Emily’s funeral and then goes onto a story about taxes, which Miss Emily is exempt from paying for life by Colonel Sartoris. During her life, Miss Emily’s father kept her isolated and ran off any potential suitors with a horsewhip. When her father died, Miss Emily refused to acknowledge the fact for three days. Soon after, Miss Emily met and started dating Homer Barron, “a northerner and a day laborer.” The town goes from being happy about the relationship to thinking of it as indecent. Homer seemingly deserted Miss Emily shortly after she bought poison. All is quiet for the next 40 years until Miss Emily’s death when Homer’s corpse is found sealed in an upstairs room (Faulkner 323-327). This paints a picture of a lonely, desperate woman. Miss Emily was isolated with just a butler for company. That does not make her a murder. Emily Grierson is innocent of murder because any evidence is circumstantial or illegally obtained, Tobe cared for Miss Emily enough to kill for her, and Miss Emily is legally insane.

In conclusion, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a short story that is, a tale of the pressures of society and the ways in which they can wear people down. Miss Emily lacked adaptive coping skills to help her maintain stressors, and for this reason, she was starting to have mental

While a “Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor share the common themes of unexpected death and the old south, the murders found in each story are vastly different. Both stories tell of strong female protagonists who don’t cope well with change and both foreshadow death right from the beginning, but the murderers themselves come from completely different worlds.

In the story “ A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner the narrator introduces the reader to Emily Grierson, a sheltered southern woman who while alive struggled immensely with her sanity and the evolving world around her. Emily's father, a very prestigious man is the cause of Emily's senseless behavior. He kept her secluded from the rest of the town “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away...” (Page 3.) If Emily had been allowed to date and socialize with people her own age would she had turned out differently.

There have been many short stories written about life during the Reconstruction era after the civil war. Some stories, even though they are fictitious, are based upon and often mirror actual events that have taken place. The most relevant stories tell of lives and families that have been separated due to war, and how the remnants were left the task of rebuilding. As towns changed, people were somewhat reluctant to let go of past beliefs and what they felt like were entitlements. Promises made to the family of Miss Emily Grierson are only a small part of her life as written about in William Faulkner’s short fictional story “A Rose for Emily” (Faulkner 298). The relationship between Miss

As little girls, women are taught to see their father’s as the only man in their life. The father’s are seen as their knight in shining armor and they want their future husband to have the same characteristics as their father. If their father disapproves of their potential companion, then the man is considered not the perfect guy. In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily,” Emily Grierson has a normal young girl’s aspirations to find love but her decisions are controlled by her father since he sees no man being the right man. Her father drives Emily to become in a torn situation between a woman’s obligations of following their father’s rules or to find true love.

She loved the man so much that killed him and kept his dead, decomposing body. Miss Emily loved a man so much that she killed him and kept him. In William Faulkner’s narrative “A Rose For Emily,” the main character Miss Emily spent part of her life hoarding away the dead body of Homer Barron and Faulkner leaves out the details of her experience with the decomposing body but science shows that she would have experienced the stages of bloat, active decay, and advanced decay.

As any reader can see, " A Rose for Emily" is one of the most authentic short stories by Faulkner. His use of characterization, narration, foreshadowing, and symbolism are four key factors to why Faulkner's work is idealistic to all readers.

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a unique piece of literature. It has a plot which seems somewhat bland, and it is not particularly exciting. However, the ending is quite suprising, and for me it made the story worth reading. I think there are some interesting aspects of this story if you look at it from a feminist point of view. The feminist movement has attempted to elevate the status of the woman to a level equal with men. Feminists have fought for the right of women to be free from the old social restraints which have been in place for so long. A feminist believes a woman should be strong and independent. In some ways the main character, Emily, is this kind of woman, but for the most part she is

During the 20th Century, it is very common for short narratives to be written about young women of its time. With this being said, the story of a young girl give insight into the impact that others may have on women struggling to overcome the power men have over women of this era. In William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily”, examples of feminism can be seen through the death of her lover and through the death of her father. With these two deaths greatly impacting Miss Emily’s life, her actions are inevitably going to affect the outcome of her life in the future.

In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the story of an sad and lonely lady, stuck in her time. Because her father died, she never fully recovered from it and was not able to find herself. Emily’s house was in the past was considered elegant and was built on the best street in town in the 1870’s. Now the house is old and an unattractive building to the neighborhood. People in her town begin to bad mouth her because of her lost soul. Homer Barron, an employee of a construction company, begins to begins to date Emily. The townspeople do not seem ecstatic about this, because they think she is doing it out of being lonely and depressed since her father died. Later on, she