A Rose For Emily Example #2 Essay Example

and Tobe derives his support from her. In the critique, she is acknowledged as “the town property”(p. 35) Fetterley argues that the shock value in “A Rose for Emily” is neither the murder nor the necrophilia, but the fact that a woman was the one responsible, “It is one thing for Poe to spend his nights in the tomb of Annabel Lee and another thing for Miss Emily Grierson to deposit a strand of hair on the pillow beside the rotted corpse of Homer Barron”(p. 4). Like many critics, she does see Emily as a symbol of the past, “It is her value as a symbol, however obscure and however ambivalent, of something that is of central significance to the identity of Jefferson and to the meaning of its history that compels the narrator to assume a communal voice to tell her story”(p. 35).

According to Lois Tyson, however, she does not believe that Emily is quite as trapped as we were led to believe in Fetterley’s account by calling attention to her behavior after her father’s passing, “Emily may or may not want to go out and mix with the community while her father is alive, but it is clear that, after his death, she doesn’t want to be with anyone except Homer Barron”(p. 37). It is then that we see that she keeps herself prisoner because she gathers as much attention as a side-show freak.

Yet, it is apparent that she cannot escape her situation in any other way except for marriage because she was not bred for anything else, and there would be no one to help her overcome this breeding, given her fixed

nature. While Fetterley argues that Emily is strong for rebelling against the prevailing sexual politics, Tyson sees that she embraces them too well. In dating Homer Barron, she feels the need for a husband now that her father is dead, “Emily conforms to patriarchal gender roles as long as her father is alive, which is roughly the first thirty years of her life.

About a year after Mr. Grierson’s demise, during which time she has been ill, Emily starts keeping company with Homer Barron, in defiance of social tradition and public opinion”(Tyson, 106). As it turns out, Fetterley and Tyson are on the same page regarding the issue of privilege. In Jefferson, the class system is very static. Even though Mr. Grierson lost his fortune, “the town still considers Emily a member of the upper class because, as a Grierson, she can trace her lineage back to one of the big plantations that ruled the South during the Civil War”(Tyson, 70).

There is much textual evidence of her point; in the American South the wealthy were placed in a position of high regard. People very class conscious with owners of large houses and plantations at the top, non-land owning whites in the middle, poor whites at the second lowest rung and all blacks at the bottom. This is especially evident when, “Colonel Sartoris, the mayor-he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity”(239).

The marked contrast between the mayor’s treatment of Emily’s wealthy family with that of black

women—the “lowest” on the social totem pole. Because of race and gender, they are not allowed to appear in public without an apron—being required to show a visible sign of service to the whites of the town. Between the Civil War and the 1930’s, the Southern social structure has not changed very much at all. Such rigid thinking on an institutional level eventually trickles down into the minds of the people that support them. Miss Emily is a prime example of this.

War and the 1930’s, the Southern social structure has not changed very much at all. Such rigid thinking on an institutional level eventually trickles down into the minds of the people that support them. Miss Emily is a prime example of this. While not stated explicitly, Tyson critiques Emily as a real person with real conflicts rather than as a symbol to all. In Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond, Cleanth Brooks cites arguments for Emily’s symbolizing the past, the Old South, and the vise-like grip on tradition that characterized the Georgia/Mississippi region in the 1930s.

Arguing that approaching the story from the angle of cultural necrophilia is an erroneous premise that had been analyzed to death in the work of other literary scholars. Even as it strains common sense, her opposition’s argument can be justified from the text. Nevertheless, Brooks paraphrases her colleague’s interpretation without naming him or her, “The man who narrates the story is said to belong to this group of secret protectors, who unlike Miss Emily are sane, deliberate, knowing. This group stands self-righteously and horribly amid the final debacle, proffering to Emily its loathsome rose of love.

Their motive in helping Emily conceal

her act was to keep untarnished the honor and myth of the South [as Emily is a symbol of the Old South]”(385). There is evidence in the text that could substantiate his colleague’s claim; the men paid homage to her as a “fallen monument”(Faulkner, 239). Only at the end when the wall is smashed down do the good people of Jefferson reveal the truth about Miss Emily. The men do not seem surprised at the scene of the grinning skeleton and the hint of Emily’s presence with it.

It is also possible to argue that they are breathing a collective sigh of relief that the obligation the family imposed on the people of Jefferson. The narrator even goes as far as to characterize her as an institution, “Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care”(Faulkner, 239). This sense of time is captured by the description of the house she lives in, the loss of political favor with the town she refuses to acknowledge by returning every single order to pay taxes, her very appearance when she occasionally emerges from her self-imposed seclusion, and her death when the entire town shows up to mark the passing of an era.

However, there are certain things that remain consistent: the Negro servant that waited upon her year after year, the decor of Miss Emily’s house, the townspeople’s pity for Emily, and her habits. Over the course of years, the townspeople remarked upon her constant predictability even as time made its mark on her, “Thus she passed from generation to generation—dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse”(243). The small Southern town she lives in is characterized more by time

than place.

The story begins with Miss Emily’s death, then snakes backward to her restrictive youth, failed romances, and subsequent seclusion—a prisoner of her own wealth. Over the course of a half-century, the townspeople go from a state of admiring and envying the Griersons to outright pity and contempt for Emily. The very circumstances surrounding her death resembles a train wreck one cannot help but look at, especially once they find out what was hidden in the attic all these years. Unlike Fetterley and Tyson, Brooks believes that Emily’s alienation had the potential to give her an identity rather than diminish her. Miss Emily’s isolation from the community and the consequences of her being cut away from it give substance as well as definition to her story”(Brooks, p. 203). She had the perfect opportunity to search for her own identity after her father’s death, to finally grow up. But she pursued a darker path instead; embracing her inner child and cutting her hair like a girl, regressing to a lost youth (Faulkner, p. 241). In a way, the entire town was affected by her remote existence—ever curious to learn more about the recluse.

The curiosity grew as time passed. Perhaps Brooks’ contention might have been correct had Emily been a more introspective, fleshed out character; however, her neediness got in the way of any self-discovery and she gradually wasted away. The passage of time is an important theme in this story on so many different levels and solidifies the experience of the characters while still conveying a sense of the ethereal. First, the people living in Jefferson are in awe of the Griersons because they owned one

of the largest estates in the county.

As time passed, their esteem fell as Emily grew old and let her legacy fall apart around her. Even though it was uncared for the house still stood as a monument to the old plutocracy. “Only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps—an eyesore among eyesores”(Faulkner, 239). As a young woman, she stared down the druggist until he complied with her demands for arsenic. More than forty years later, when a group of gentlemen arrived to collect the taxes, she intimidated them and effectively threw them out of her house.

So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. ”(Faulkner, 240). Blanche Gelfante, however, argues that the conflict of Emily’s alienation is not pitted against sexism or classism, but is instead a conflict between isolation and intrusion. There is a sense of formal symmetry in terms of this, “The opening invasion by the Board of Aldermen is matched by the final breaking into Emily’s bedroom that discloses the corpse; only in the third, middle section is her isolation left fully intact.

This thematic alteration between isolation and intrusion plays out the contest between Emily and the town to reveal or conceal parts of her life”(p. 256). Unlike Brooks’, she sees Emily as a symbol of the South attributing strength, will, fortitude, and Southern loyalty from her single, iron-gray hair, as gray was the color of Confederate Uniforms. Unlike Tyson, Gelfante views Emily as a much more powerful figure that lives on her own terms. In sum, the critics

all agree that Miss Emily had a problem, though they disagreed on its nature and scope.

From the keen observation of the townspeople, Miss Emily’s father—rather than the woman herself—was to blame for her static thinking. First, he refused to allow her to marry, maintaining that no man was good enough for Emily, a concern bordering on the pathological. While the Negro servant becomes older, greyer, and more stooped, he still completes the same tasks day after day. Even as Miss Emily becomes older and fatter, she still loves up to Homer Barron’s corpse every night.

The house falls into disrepair around her, and her material circumstances decline, but she still carries herself as the great southern lady of the Confederacy she was bred to be. Institutions and social constructs are very powerful forces—particularly in Miss Emily’s town of Jefferson and especially in the 1930’s where state institutions and ideology were gaining power around the world. Between the town she grew up in and the machinations of her father, Miss Emily could not have possibly become a freethinking woman that embraces change and the passage of time with dignity.