WILLIAM FAULKNER AND THE SOUTHERN GOTHIC
FICTION: A ROSE FOR EMILY
Biography Questions
http://www.biography.com/people/william-faulkner-9292252#synopsis
1. When was William Faulkner born? Where?
2. What did he use to reflect in his novels?
3. What was his first novel?
4. Why is it so difficult to read Faulkner’s book?
5. Mention two more novels written by Faulkner.
6. When did he win the Nobel Prize of Literature?
7. What other job did he have? Why did he do it?
8. What other prize did he win?
9. How did he die and when? How old was he?
SOUTHERN GOTHIC FICTION
Pre-Watching exercise (warming-up)
Before watching the video on Southern Gothic Fiction (one of the genres that W.
Faulkner cultivated) try to answer these questions to check how much you remember
from previous years….
1. The Gothic novel rose to popularity in which century?
a- 16th
c . c- 18th
c.
b- 15th
c. d- 19th
c.
2. Mention three main features you remember about Gothic fiction
3. Mention one American author and one British author of Gothic fiction.
AFTER-WATCHING EXERCISE
Watch the video on the main features of Southern Gothic fiction and answer the
questions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG_3mTB731c
1. When does Gothic literature date back to?
2. What does Southern Gothic literature depict?
3. Mention some famous American Southern Gothic authors
4. What are the main characteristics of Southern Gothic fiction? (Explain them in
detail)
5. What are the settings like?
6. What do religion, marriage and education stand for in Southern Gothic literature?
7. What happens to the characters in Southern Gothic literature?
A ROSE FOR EMILY
When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral. The men went
out of respect for the loss of someone who, while living, had represented the proud
history of the town. The women went mostly because they wanted to see the inside of
her house, which no one but an old man-servant – who was both gardener and cook –
had seen in at least ten years.
It was a big, square shaped wooden house that had once been white. Its outside was
decorated with fancy features in the overly carefree building style of the seventies. It
was set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton factories
had come into the neighborhood and replaced the homes of even the most important
names. Only Miss Emily’s house was left, teasingly rising above the cotton wagons and
the petrol pumps. Although falling apart from great age, it refused to fall down; an
ugly thing among other ugly things. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the
representatives of those honored names where they lay lost in the crowded trees
among the named and unnamed graves of the Northern and Southern soldiers who
fell at the battle of Jefferson.
Alive, Miss Emily was a tradition, a duty, and a care. The town had a responsibility to
her that had been handed down from the past. This dated from that day in 1894 when
Colonel Sartoris, the mayor – he who fathered the law that no Negro woman should
appear on the streets without an apron – told her that she no longer had to pay city
taxes. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted such a kindness for free. Colonel
Sartoris made up a long story to the effect that Miss Emily’s father had lent money to
the town. He told her that the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of
paying the money back. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and way of
thinking could have come up with such a story. And only a woman could have believed
it.
When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, came into local government,
this arrangement created some little unhappiness. On the first of the year they mailed
her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her an official
letter, asking her to call at the sheriff’s office when it suited her. A week later the
mayor wrote to her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her. He received in
reply a note on old fashioned paper in thin, beautifully flowing writing. The note, in
faded ink, was to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was
returned with it, without comment.
They called a special meeting of the Town Council, and a group of Councilors was
selected visit her. They knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since
she stopped giving chinaware painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were
admitted by the old Negro into a dark hall from which a stairway climbed into still
more shadow. It smelled of dust and never being used – an unpleasant, cool, slightly
wet smell. The Negro led them into the living room. It was furnished in heavy, leather-
covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see
that the leather was cracked. When they sat down, a light dust rose slowly about their
legs, each tiny bit slowly circling round and round in the small area of sunlight. On a
tarnished gold painted stand in front of the fireplace, stood a crayon drawing of Miss
Emily’s father.
They rose when she entered – a small, fat woman in black, leaning on a black walking
stick with a tarnished gold head. A thin gold chain hung from her dress and
disappeared into her belt. They could see that her skeleton was small and thin.
Perhaps that was why what would have been only slight fatness in another made her
look very fat. She looked bloated and colorless, like a drowned body that had been
under water for a long time. Her eyes, lost in the fatty flesh of her face, looked like two
small pieces of coal pressed into a ball of dough as they moved from one face to
another while the one of the visitors stated their business.
She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the
speaker came to an uncertain stop. Then they could hear the hidden watch ticking at
the end of the gold chain.
Her voice was dry and cold. “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it
to me. Perhaps one of you can get someone to show you the city records and satisfy
yourselves.”
“But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn’t you get a notice from the
sheriff, signed by him?”
“I received a paper, yes,” Miss Emily said. “Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff… I
have no taxes in Jefferson.”
“But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see. We must go by the…”
“See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.”
“But, Miss Emily…”
“See Colonel Sartoris, (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) I have no
taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!” The Negro appeared. “Show these gentlemen out.”
PART TWO
So she won, beating all of them, just as she had won against their fathers thirty years
before about the smell. That was two years after her father’s death and a short time
after her man friend – the one we believed would marry her – had deserted her. After
her father’s death she went out very little; after her boyfriend went away, people
hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the nerve to call, but she would not see
them. The only sign of life about the place was the Negro man – a young man then –
going in and out with a market basket.
“Just as if a man – any man – could keep a kitchen properly,” the ladies said. So they
were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the real
world and the high-and-mighty Griersons.
A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.
“But what will you have me do about it?” he said.
“Why, send her word to stop it,” the woman said. “Isn’t there a law?”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Judge Stevens said. “It’s probably just a snake or a
rat that Negro of hers killed in the yard. I’ll speak to him about it.”
The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in and said
weakly, “We really must do something about it, Judge. I’d be the last one in the world
to bother Miss Emily, but we’ve got to do something.”
That night the Town Council met – three older men and one young one, a member of
the rising generation. “It’s simple enough,” he said. “Send her word to have her place
cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don’t…”
“Dammit, sir,” Judge Stevens said, “will you tell a lady to her face that her house
smells bad?”
So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s yard and moved
quietly about the outside of the house like robbers. They smelled the ground all
around while one of them spread lime from a bag hanging on his shoulder. They threw
it everywhere there might be a dead animal; around and under the house, and in all
the outside buildings. As they crossed the yard again, a light came on in a window that
had been dark. They saw Miss Emily sitting in the room, the light behind her, her
straight body as motionless as that of an idol. They hurried quietly across the grass
and into the shadow of the trees that lined the street. After a week or two the smell
went away.
That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town,
remembering how old lady Wyatt, her father’s aunt, had gone completely crazy at last,
believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were.
None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such.
We had long thought of them as a scene from a painting, Miss Emily a thin figure in
white behind the shadow of her father. He standing with legs apart, his back to her
and holding a horse whip. The two of them in front of the open front door.
So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but
knew that we had been right. Even with madness in the family she wouldn’t have
turned down all of her chances if there had really been any.
When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her. In a way,
people were glad. At last they could feel sad for Miss Emily. Being left alone, and poor,
she had become more human in their eyes. Now she too would know the old
excitement and the old hopelessness of a penny more or less.
The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house to say how sorry
they were and offer help, as is normal in the town. Miss Emily met them at the door,
dressed as usual and with no sign of sadness on her face. She told them that her father
was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the
doctors, trying to get her to let them take the body away. Just as they were about to
call the sheriff and use force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.
We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered
all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she
would have to hold on tightly to that which had robbed her, as people will.
PART THREE
She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making
her look like a girl. She looked a little like those angels in colored church windows –
very sad and peaceful.
The town had just let the contracts to pave the sidewalks, and in the summer after her
father’s death they began the work. The paving company came with its Negro work
team and equipment. The man in charge of the team was named Homer Barron. He
was a Northerner – a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his
face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him shouting rude words at the
Negros to get them to work harder, and the Negros singing in time to the rise and fall
of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of
laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the
group.
Soon we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sundays driving in a yellow-wheeled
carriage and matched team of reddish-brown horses he had rented for the afternoon.
At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all
said, “Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.”
But there were still others, older people, who said that even great sadness could not
cause a real lady to forget the duty of those of high position in society to act correctly.
They just said, “Poor Emily. Her family should come to her.” She had some relatives in
Alabama. But years ago her father had fallen out with them over the property of the
crazy woman, old lady Wyatt, after she died. There was no communication between
the two families. They had not even been represented at the funeral.
And as soon as the old people said, “Poor Emily,” the whispering began. “Do you
suppose it’s really so?” they said to one another. “Of course it is. What else could…”
This behind their hands as they stretched to look at her out of windows closed to the
Sunday afternoon sun as the thin clop-clop-clop of the matched team quickly passed:
“Poor Emily.”
She carried her head high enough; even when we believed that she was fallen. It was
as if she demanded more than ever the respect due to her position as the last Grierson.
As if being seen with Homer Barron proved that she could still do as she wanted in the
town. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they
had begun to say “Poor Emily,” and while the two female cousins were visiting her.
“I want some poison,” she said to the chemist. She was over thirty then, still a slight
woman, though thinner than usual. You could see in her cold, black eyes that she still
believed herself better than other people. On her face however was a look of loneliness
and emptiness. “I want some poison,” she said.
“Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I’d recommend…”
“I want the best you have. I don’t care what kind.”
The chemist named several. “They’ll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you
want is…”
“Arsenic,” Miss Emily said. “Is that a good one?”
“Is… arsenic? Yes, Miss Emily. But what you want…”
“I want arsenic…”
The chemist looked down at her. She looked back at him, standing straight, her face
proud and unmoving. “Why, of course,” the chemist said. “If that’s what you want. But
the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for.”
Miss Emily looked at him without speaking; her head up in order to look him eye for
eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic. The Negro delivery boy
brought her the package; the chemist didn’t come back. When she opened the package
at home there was written on the box, under the poison sign: “For rats.”
PART FOUR
So the next day we all said, “She will kill herself”; and we said it would be the best
thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, “She will
marry him.” Then we said, “She will win him yet,” because Homer himself had
remarked that he was not the kind of man who wants to marry. He liked men, and it
was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club. Later we said, “Poor
Emily” behind closed windows as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the shining
carriage. Miss Emily with her head high. Homer Barron with his hat to one side, a
cigar in his teeth, and reins and whip in a yellow glove.
Then some of the ladies began to say that their driving around like this made the town
look bad and was a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to do
anything about it, but at last the ladies forced the minister from her church to call
upon her. He would never tell anyone what happened during that interview, but he
refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the
following day the minister’s wife wrote to Miss Emily’s relations in Alabama.
So she had family under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments. At
first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned
that Miss Emily had ordered a man’s toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each
piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete set of men’s clothing,
including a nightshirt, and we said, “They are married.” We were really glad. We were
glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had
ever been.
So we were not surprised when Homer Barron – the streets had been finished some
time since – was gone. We were a little disappointed that he did not go publicly, but
we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily’s coming, or to give her a
chance to send the cousins home. (By that time we were all Miss Emily’s supporters in
trying to get rid of the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they left. And, as we
had expected all along, within three days Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor
saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door as it was getting dark one evening.
And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron and of Miss Emily for some time. The
Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained
closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that
night when they spread the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear on the
streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too. It was as if that quality of her
father which had prevented her from having a woman’s life so many times before had
been too bitter and too strong to die.
When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray.
During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it became an even iron-gray,
when it stopped turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that
healthy iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.
From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven
years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in chinaware painting.
She fitted up one of the downstairs rooms. The daughters and granddaughters of
Colonel Sartoris’s time were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same
spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the
collection plate. And all this time she was not paying taxes.
Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town. The
painting students grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with
boxes of color and brushes and boring pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines. The
front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good. When the town got
free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them put the metal numbers
above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.
Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more bent, going in and
out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be
returned by the post office a week later, unopened. She seemed to have shut up the
top floor of the house. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs
windows. She was like an idol in a temple, looking or not looking at us, we could never
tell which. Thus she passed from generation to generation. Dear to the town, always
there, quiet and peaceful, never changing.
And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a weak
old Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick. We had long since
given up trying to get any information from the Negro. He talked to no one, probably
not even to her, for his voice had grown rough and hard to understand, as if from not
being used.
She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a large wooden bed with a curtain around
it, her gray head laying on a pillow yellow and smelling from age and having no
sunlight.
PART FIVE
The Negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their
whispering voices and their quick, curious looks. And then he disappeared; he walked
right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with
the town coming to look at Miss Emily under a mass of bought flowers, with the
crayon face of her father deep in thought above the body and the ladies whispering
unpleasantly. The very old men – some in their brushed Southern Army uniforms –
sat outside, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been of their own age. Many of them
believed that they had danced with her and wanted to marry her perhaps. They were
getting time mixed up as the old do. Those to whom the past is not a road that is
getting smaller but, instead, a huge field which no winter ever quite touches, divided
from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of recent years.
Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one
had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced open. They waited until
Miss Emily was properly in the ground before they went inside.
The violence of breaking down the door caused the air in this room to be filled with
dust. A thin, bitter smelling covering, as of the tomb, seemed to lie everywhere upon
this room decorated and furnished as if for a wedding night. It lie upon the curtains of
faded rose color, upon the rose-colored lampshades, upon the dressing table, upon the
expensive set of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver
so tarnished that the letters written on it were hidden. Among them lay a tie, as if it
had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface its shape in the dust. Upon
a chair was the carefully hung suit. Under it, the two silent shoes and the thrown off
socks.
The man himself lay in the bed.
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the deep and fleshless smile. The
body had apparently once lain as if being held in loving arms. But now the long sleep
that lasts longer than love, that defeats even the pain of love, had taken her from him.
What was left of him, broken down by nature over the years, was under what was left
of the nightshirt. It had become part of the bed in which he lay. And upon him and
upon the pillow beside him lay an even coating of the patient and waiting dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the mark left where a head had once
rested. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, as our noses filled
with the dry and bitter smell of the dust, we saw a long iron-gray hair.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS AND MOCK TRIAL
1. What is the point of view of the story?
2. What does the title of the story suggest about the townspeople’s feelings
toward Miss Emily? Why do they feel this way about her? (Or: What does
she represent to them?) Is there anything ironic about their feelings?
3. Describe and discuss the symbolism of Miss Emily’s house.
4. What is the role of “the smell” incident in the story. What other problems has
Miss Emily caused the local authorities?
5. How do the townspeople know what they know about Miss Emily’s life? What is
the source of their information?
6. Consider the mixed quality of the townspeople’s reactions to Miss Emily’s
“failures.”
7. What is the significance of Miss Emily’s actions after the death of her
father?
8. What role does Homer Barron play in the story? Is there anything ironic
about a match between him and Miss Emily?
9. Look closely at the second paragraph in section five. What does this
paragraph suggest about the nature of people’s memories of the past?
10. What is the horrible revelation about Miss Emily that the story ends with?
How is this related to the overall meaning of the story?
11. What elements of Southern Gothic fiction can you identify in the story?
Mock Trial— A good trial lawyer needs to set up a good case. Assemble the facts
of the crime and prepare to present to the class.
Motive for the Crime:
Witness Testimony:
Physical Evidence:
Accused Actions: