A Rose for Emily

William Faulkner

About the Author

• William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897

• Faulkner belonged to a once-wealthy family of former plantation owners

• He was a high school dropout • He later signed on with the Royal

Canadian Air Force (RCAF) to train as a pilot, but the war ended before he saw any combat.

• Faulkner used pieces of his own life and family history in his fiction

• His great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, served as the inspiration for Colonel Sartoris

• Faulkner based part of the character of Emily on a cousin, Mary Louise Neilson, who had married a Yankee street paver named Jack Barron

• Faulkner published almost twenty novels, several volumes of short fiction, and two volumes of poetry.

• He wrote many screenplays, essays, and articles for magazines and newspapers.

• He won two Pulitzer Prizes, a National Book Award, and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

• Faulkner died on July 6, 1962, the same day his great-grandfather, the Old Colonel, had been born on 137 years earlier.

What was the Old South Like?

• Before the Civil War, Southern society was composed of landed gentry, merchants, tenant farmers, and slaves.

• The aristocratic men of this period had an unspoken code of chivalry, and women were the innocent, pure guardians of morality.

• However, post-Civil War society in the South was radically different. At one time, the Grierson home was in one of the finest neighborhoods in Jefferson; by the time of Emily’s death, it was one of the most run-down.

• The generation that follows is not swayed by the old Southern code of honor.

• Emily’s china-painting lessons also show the change in Southern society. Her pupils are the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris’ contemporaries. However, the narrator notes that “. . .the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines.”

• Finally, Emily’s dark secret might serve as a metaphor for the general decadence of the Old South

Themes Death The Decline of the Old South Community vs. Isolation

Characters

Miss Emily The main character The story starts at her death, then loops

back around and tells you her life, starting from the death of her father

Miss Emily is from a very wealthy southern family, and she is snobby and very proper

Characters

Homer Barron A Yankee (Northerner) brought to town to

fix the sidewalks. His relationship with Miss Emily is not

approved of because he has no intention of marrying her.

He is a typical man: loves to hang out with the guys and drink.

Characters

Colonel Sartoris Emily’s father After his death, Emily will not let the

townspeople take his dead body from her home for three days.

Characters

Toby Emily’s slave, who appears to have

covered Emily’s secret