Resistance
to Change
In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner tells the
story of an old and lonely lady stuck in her own timeframe. Her controlling
father died some thirty years ago and she has never quite found her own ground.
Her house has become the most hideous looking home on the once most select
street in the city. Previously elegant and white with scrolled balconies, it
was now encroached with dust and decay. The people in Miss Emily’s city gossip
about her and pity her lost soul. She soon begins dating a young bachelor by
the name of Homer Barron, whom is part of the construction company paving
sidewalks on her street. They begin taking buggy rides together, and
townspeople talk more, and pity Miss Emily more. Things change quickly though,
as Miss Emily is seen less with Homer, and is witnessed purchasing arsenic from
the local drug store. Eventually no more is seen of Homer, and Miss Emily dies
at age seventy-four. After Miss Emily’s death the townspeople breakdown her
upstairs room that had been sealed shut for some forty years. They find Homer’s
dead decaying body, an imprint of another body beside it, and a single grey
strand of hair.
Right the beginning of the story it is clear that it
will be about old versus new. The writer begins by describing Miss Emily’s
house, which was once luxurious, is now old and dusty. “It was a big, squarish
frame house that had once been white. Now an eyesore among eyesores.” The house
itself stands for tradition, it has aged, and instead of moving along with the
rebuilding of the South, it has stayed the same. As the story begins to speak
about Miss Emily’s past, it is clear that her family is well respected in the
town. So much so that when she walks into a room, people are expected to rise
in reverence of her. Miss Emily is the old lady that everyone feels pity for.
Her father, who sheltered her very much so, had once contributed a large sum of
money to the own, exonerating Miss Emily of any future tax payments. Again, the
familiar theme of old versus new arises when Miss Emily is asked to give a tax
payment. She does not only refuse, but she does so in a way that says she
should not have even been asked the question. These “new” authorities should
know better than to ask the “old” Miss Emily for such a thing. “I have no taxes
in Jefferson.” No further information is sought after because they know that
old trumps new. A similar occurrence arises when Miss Emily purchases rat
poisoning; state law says that she must give the reason for her buying it, Miss
Emily doesn’t, she simply pays and leaves. The most dramatic act is Miss Emily
killing her lover. Miss Emily is trying so hard to stay old and live how she
knows how, and this in turn causes her to murder her lover. The only way she
knew how to keep him with her, was to kill him. This was the way she was
raised.
Miss Emily was raised by a controlling father, who did
not let her go out of the house, much less date anyone. When he dies, she does
not know what to do. So much so that she keeps his body for a short time. The
world around her is changing and maturing, but she is not. Faulkner uses a very
peculiar symbol of this in his opening paragraphs. “A small fat women in black,
with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt.”
Time is literally not in eye sight for her. It has “vanished into her belt”,
where she cannot see it. Miss Emily is lost, and the only way she knows how to
act is traditionally. When she meets Homer Baron, he is everything that she
knows that she should not be doing. He is questionably gay, he’s a bachelor of
some sorts, and he is a simple construction worker. In dating him, she is going
against everything she has been taught; either to get back at her father for
sheltering her so much or because she is so unaware of what she should be
doing. As the story unfolds, Homer starts spending less and less time with Miss
Emily, and they break up. Emily is not done with him though, and wants nothing
more than to marry him; she even goes as far as to buy a wedding outfit for
him. However, Homer was not of the marrying type and had no intentions of
marrying her. The only way she knew to keep him with her was to kill him, and
so she did. “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a
head. And on it lay a long strand of iron-gray hair.” She lay next to Homer’s
dead, decaying body until she could no longer do so. She poisoned him, because
for her, this was how she knew to stop time, and in turn she could stay with
Homer for as long as she wanted to.
Looking deeply into the setting of the story we see a
huge transition period for the South in general, which would include Miss Emily
and the townspeople. The time this took place was somewhere between the 1860s
and the 1930s. Slavery had just ended, the middle class was becoming more
prominent. The Grierson family was one of high status, most likely with lots of
money and many slaves. After Miss Emily’s father dies, everything that they had
believed in is turned upside down. Slavery, which was very common, is now
thought of as an evil, an atrocity. The townspeople seem to be transitioning
very well, but Miss Emily, with no one to guide her, is not. “Alive, Miss Emily
had been a tradition, a duty, a care; sort of hereditary obligation upon the
town. Her father dies, the New South emerges, and she is left to figure out
things for her own. This was difficult for her, and added to her madness and
bad sense of judgment. Miss Emily only knew how to follow; she did not know how
to lead. This is clearly seen in her relationship with her father. Her father
clearly controlled her, and this is the way she lives her life. When Homer
comes along, she feels as if she has someone to lead her again, when he decides
to leave her, she has to kill him. She kills him because she needs a male
figure in her life, and for her, this is the only way to keep him around.
William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is filled with
character, plot, and setting symbolism. They all seem to say that Miss Emily is
stuck in time, with no way out. She poisons Homer Barron for many different reasons.
She needs a male in her life to take the lead because her life is being turned
upside down, and she has no one to look to. Was this act out of love or sheer
selfishness? She was clearly mentally unstable, but she also had loads of
pressure on her with every human being around her gossiping and judging her
every move. Maybe she did it for shock factor. Whatever the reason may be, she
certainly got to keep her ‘rose’, Homer Barron, forever.
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