A Rose for Emily (1930)

Quiz

A Rose for Emily (1930)

Setting

1. Find a good match between the image/detail in the story and its setting?

1. garages and cotton gins agricultural society

2. Men in their Confederate uniforms US civil war

3. cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies the architectural style of the 20th-century South

4. free postal delivery Colonel Sartoris as mayor

Ref. Confederate and Union states in the American Civil War (1861-1865)

http://www.wtv-zone.com/civilwar/map.html

2. Which of the following does NOT show a mismatch between Emily and her Society? 1. Her house

2. Her refusal to pay tax

3. Her offering of china painting lesson at the age of 40

4. Her going out with Homer Barron.

A Rose for Emily (1930)

Plot

3. Which of the following is an adequate description of the story’s plot? 1. It follows a reverse chronological order.

2. It moves back and forth, and has a final disclosure.

3. It begins in the middle.

4. It moves back and forth between the pre- Civil-War time and post-Civil-War time.

4. Which of the following is NOT a major turning point in Emily’s

life? 1. Her father’s death 2. Her going out with Homer Barron3. Her being asked to pay tax 4. Her termination of the china painting lesson.

A Rose for Emily (1930)

Emily

5. Which of the following images do NOT represent Emily?

1. iron-gray hair

2. A carven torso of an idol in a niche

3. two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough

4. a spraddled silhouette in the foreground

Ref. The Old Emily: Contradictory Signs in her Appearance

As an old woman: elegant, classy, but stubborn and refusing to adjust to the changes of time.

Emily’s Response to Taxation:(1) Elegant and old-fashioned: Writes in a thin, flowing

calligraphy in faded ink; (par 4)

(2) Signs of will power and class: "a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane.“(par 6)

(3) Aged and Dying: She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.  Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough.“(par 6)

Ref. Old Emily (2): Images of Death vs. Strong Will

Death Her bloating body Her death. “She died in one of

the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.

Strong Will Her keeping a corpse

with her. Hair -- pepper-and-salt

iron-gray, “like the hair of an active man. “

On the bed: “a long strand of iron-gray hair.“

Ref. Emily’s Family Background The decline of the Gierson family: old Lady

Wyatt mad, two cousins away, only her father and her left.

Her Father’s control “We had long thought of them as a tableau; Miss

Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled (跨坐 ) silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door.” (par 25)

6. Is what way is, or is not, the young Emily a Southern belle?

1. She is one because she is rich and coqettish.

2. She is not, because her father is in the way.

3. She is not, because she smells.

4. She is, because she is sought after, and the older generation treat her genteelly.

7. Which of the following is an example of Emily’s adjustment to the changes in her life?1. Her hair was cut short.

2. After her father’s death, she is “dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face.”

3. In her room, there are “curtains of faded rose color, … the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, …the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver”

4. “I want some poison,“ she said.

A Rose for Emily (1930)

The Narrators

8. Which of the following is NOT an example of the narrators’ “gossip’ about Emily? 1. So the next day we all said, “She will kill

herself.”

2. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men’s clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, “They are married.” We were really glad.

3. “Poor Emily.”

4. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

Ref. The Narrators’ Changing Views of Emily1) Finds the Griersons too proud:

Emily single at 30 Vindicated (proved right)

2) After the father’s death We: “people were glad. At last they could pity Miss

Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized.”

Emily’s denial of death ( “dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face.” par 27) Sympathetic: not crazy; “we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

3) “Poor Emily”

4) feel sorry for her.

Ref. Town People’s Intervention & Gossips--”Poor Emily” “We said”

-- some glad, some disagreeing: shouldn’t forget about her nobility “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her.”

--guessing and gossiping: “Poor Emily,” the whispering began. [Guess…] “Of course it is. What else could . . .”

This behind their hands [secretly]; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies [百葉窗 ] closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: “Poor Emily.”

Ref. Town People’s Gossips-- Gossips continued -- When she had first begun to be seen with Homer

Barron, we had said, “She will marry him.” 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. Later we said, “Poor Emily” . . .

-- intervening: Then the women see it “a disgrace to the town and a

bad example to the young people.” Baptist minister the relatives are fetched. (par 43)

Arsenic -- So the next day we all said, “She will kill herself”; and we said it would be the best thing.

Ref. Emily’s Pride vs. the Gossips1) Amidst gossips: “She carried her head high enough—

even when we believed that she was fallen.” (par 33)2) Arsenic episode: Appearance –”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. (par 34 meaning?)

Confrontation – “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.”

Narrators – moments of sympathy 1. after her father’s death 2. after Homer Barron disappears and Emily

ceases to appear on the street for 6 months.

“Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman’s life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.”

3. in the smell episode – “begun to feel really sorry for her.”

Discussion:

How do we explain each of the following adjectives?

“Thus she passed from generation to generation-dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.” (par 51)

A Rose for Emily (1930)

Themes & Language

9. To whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years … “Whom” refers to

1. Emily

2. The narrators

3. The elderly that attend her funeral

Ref. Pay attention to the change of tone…and the image of dust The violence  of breaking down the door seemed to fill

this room with pervading dust.  A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. “The deed of breaking into other’s secret in mind is often violent and cruel.”

10. For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. Theme?

1.The failure of social control

2.Love and death

3.Self vs. Society