INTRODUCTION
In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily Grierson is a lonely spinster, living on the fringes of the small town of Jackson, whose inhabitants constantly judge her for her loneliness. As a result, she begins to become somewhat eccentric, exacting her own brand of reality in her own home. After clearly becoming infatuated with a new man in town who spends a lot of time with her, the townspeople continue to gossip and scrutinize her every action, which become increasingly strange as time passes. Finally unlocking Emily’s home after her death, the town is faced with a brutal, horrifying truth that had long been hidden from them.
The fractured chronology in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” in addition to the skewed perspective that comes from having the townspeople as a whole become the narrators of the short story, lends the short story an air of mystery and suspense that adds to the Gothic horror atmosphere Faulkner has created. Constantly giving the audience clues as to the eventual twist at the end of the story keeps the audience reading, and the lack of information the rest of the townsfolk have allows the audience to be just as much in the dark of the situation until the very end.
THE CHRONOLOGY
The story is split into five sections, each developing a different time period in Emily’s life and the town. In section one, Faulkner starts us at the end of Emily’s life; we see her funeral, which “the whole town” attended (Faulkner, 1970). We are told that, unlike the expected response one would give to a dead person in your town, people attended the funeral out of curiosity, due to her being out of the public eye for about a decade. This is an early indicator of the distance that existed between the townspeople and Emily; Faulkner lets the audience know early on that Emily had no love lost for the townspeople, and that was also true for them as well.
Faulker, using this unanchored chronology, takes us through a thematically significant (if not chronologically accurate) journey through the highlights of Emily’s life. By starting the audience at the funeral, it is clear that Emily will die – also, they just may get to see how by the end of the story. Then, in 1894, the audience sees the defining moment of Emily’s life – it is the point when she believes she does not need to interact with society anymore. Emily puts her foot down and says “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me” (Faulkner, 1970). Her stubbornness (far from becoming of a lady of the time period) leads her to become isolated from the rest of Jackson, her only other significant communication with the townsfolk being the annual tax bill, which is always ignored.
In the very first section, the audience is introduced to just what kind of story is being told. Emily’s life is revealed through flashbacks, from end to beginning, and this informs the audience of the impending doom that will befall Emily. Throughout the rest of the story, the audience is left in suspense as to when it will happen, or how, or why exactly the townspeople are so curious about her. This is a hallmark of Gothic storytelling, as the audience knows something horrific is about to happen, but is not aware of exactly what it is until it is too late (Hartwell, 1987).
The beginning of section two flashes forward to near the end of the story and Emily’s life; already, the sense of suspense is built with the mention of a mysterious smell within the first sentence. There is also mention of a potential suitor mysteriously deserting her, after potentially being the sort to stick around and marry her. Already, this sets off alarm bells in the audience’s mind, as they are aware of the implication of a dead body in Emily’s house. The questions remain, however – who or what is it that is causing the smell? This is the reason why Faulkner uses this particular device of fractured chronology in this piece. The audience is made aware of the possibility of something going terribly wrong, but they are now left to fill in the blanks in the rest of the text (Harris, 2007).
The other sections move by, and Emily’s life is viewed in snippets – an appearance here, a shop visit there – but the next big clue to something dreadful happening occurs near the end of section three (Morton, 2005). In this scene, Emily asks for arsenic, despite the constant questions and requests for clarification from the druggist. Due to the secretive and shifty nature of her request, and the significance given to the lie she gives the druggist – she wants to use it ‘for rats’ – it is clear she will use it for something more sinister. Given the previous clues of Emily’s death and the smell, the audience begins to put even more pieces together, but still nothing is definitively known. This keeps the audience invested in the story, if for no other reason than to reveal the mystery at the heart of Emily’s life at this point.
Nothing is fully discovered until the very last section, which is revealed to take place after the first (being the very last event to be found in the chronology of the story). By doing this, Faulkner debunks the theory that Emily wished to kill herself by taking the arsenic on her own, as he reveals there is more to the story after Emily’s funeral. With this, the audience’s tension is heightened, as the true secret will finally be revealed, in true Gothic horror fashion, with openings of doors and dead bodies left to decompose in locked rooms (Stone, 1960).
Faulkner’s views on timelines are not unlike his description of a pair of old men sharing stories about the good old days - “confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, 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 bottleneck of the most recent decade of years” (Faulkner, 1970). By indicating a preference for nonlinear (open field) over linear (diminishing road) timelines, Faulkner prepares the audience for the open nature of the story that is being told to them.
THE NARRATOR
Instead of having one single narrator, Faulkner relies on the town as a unit to communicate to the audience Emily’s life and mystique. It belies the nature of gossip when, in describing Emily and her quirks, much of it is supposition and guesswork, gleaned from what various townsfolk have seen or heard of her in the past. This makes the townspeople part of a collective, as it does not matter which townsperson is telling the story; it is all a series of links in a chain, a game of telephone that is being written down and published as a short story. The narrator becomes “the spokesman for a living community,” always relaying what the entire town thinks of Emily (Brooks, p. 164).
Emily’s story is part of the collective consciousness of the town, with many eyes looking in on her and reporting back to the others. As a consequence, Emily is by definition not a part of the town – her life is a mystery to be solved, both by the audience and the townspeople (Arensberg and Schyiter, 1987). This lends Emily’s story an element of pity, as she likely does not know, realize or understand the extent to which her sad existence is a part of the town’s social conversation. Due to the town’s disassociation with her, Emily is made to be less of a person in their eyes than an attraction. While this is certainly due to the aforementioned incident with the taxes, making herself into a nuisance (and her own antisocial behavior does not help), the audience cannot help but wonder who is really responsible for her reclusiveness. The townspeople do not often ruminate on the consequences of their gossip and their distance from her, rendering their suppositions all the crueler. The audience, by the end of the story, is left wondering whether or not their judgments and distance led Emily to her strange actions (Dilworth, 1999).
There are elements of sympathy within the town – when Homer Barron, a new foreman in town, starts to spend time with Emily, the narrator states that “we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest” (Faulkner, 1970). The narrator’s collective opinions are split at this point, however – “there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige” (Faulkner, 1970). It is clear that the ultimate narrator of the story thought positively of Emily, due to the use of ‘they’ whenever negativity is spouted regarding Emily. As Emily is a spinster, the narrator(s) hope that she and Homer would be married in order to end her troublesome, lonely life, thought at the time to not be proper for a woman (Curry, 1994).
The primary relationship between the townspeople and Emily was as a living legend of the town - “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner, 1970). Due to her stubborn refusal to pay taxes because of her alleged promise from Col. Sartoris, she is constantly beleaguered by the mayors and aldermen, leading to her status as a bit of a black sheep among the town. Combine that with her constant reclusive nature, and she became a social pariah to the rest of the town. This leads to a decided lack of information on her, and Emily is all too happy to not volunteer any more of it.
Having the narrator be a group of people within the town heightens the mystery of Emily Grierson; an entire town is doing detective work, noticing Emily wherever they can, and eventually going to her house to investigate the strange smell that is coming from it. This contributes to the Gothic horror nature of the piece – the narrator(s) investigating a spooky old house owned by a recluse, with the distinct smell of dead body, is something worthy of Poe.
The two ideas of the gossip narration and the unreliable timeline go hand in hand; the short story reads as though a town gossip is telling it, complete with all the juicy parts told in order of salaciousness. The use of the word ‘we’ in the narration indicates more than one voice, or at least more than one perspective; even though the story is told in a single voice, it is the collective story told by all the people in the town. Using ‘we’ connects the mysterious narrator the audience with the others in the town, those who share those same experiences. Creating a communal perspective for the audience to experience also involves the audience in the tale, especially through the use of that very important plural pronoun.
There are a few instances in which the pronoun changes to something else, and this shift enhances the Gothic horror of the short story. This occurs when the townspeople speak negatively of Emily, and visit Emily’s house at the end, to investigate the smell. The narrator, at these points, is no longer part of the collective consciousness; the ‘older people’ who wish for her to pay her taxes, or who look down on her for being a recluse, exist as a reprehensible ‘they,’ rather than the sympathetic ‘we.’
After Emily’s passing at the end of the story, when the time comes to open the door of the upstairs bedroom which had been sealed up (the source of the smell), the narrator suddenly says that “They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.” This is to foreshadow or emphasize the cold horror the audience experiences when they realize that the smell from the room comes from Emily’s former lover, Homer, whom she had killed in order to keep around forever. Her severely damaged mind is revealed all too late (Scherling, 1980). Before this, the narrator had frequently referred to themselves as ‘we,’ but in this instance, the one telling the tale must shy away from the horrific things they find in that bedroom, instead using ‘they’ to remove themselves from the scenario entirely. This reaction provokes a similar one from the audience, as they have also been invested in the narrator’s point of view.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” tells a Southern Gothic horror story in two interesting ways: the uncommon passage of time, and the nebulous, communal author of the entire town which Emily inhabits. The ebb and flow of events permits the audience to be foreshadowed in a naturalistic, yet unsettling way about the unpleasant things that will happen later in the story; then, he permits them to continue reading in order to determine exactly how those events occur. The fact that “the town,” instead of specific townspeople, is telling the story is indicative of the culture of gossip that unites them into one morbidly curious whole, and seeks to alienate Emily from the rest of the town (and the audience), keeping her ultimate mystery a secret until the end of the story. By having an entire group of people looking in on an individual with wonder, the audience is also intrigued, as having such a big secret that no one in an entire town knows is certainly worth investigating.
Works Cited
Arensberg, Mary, and Sara Schyiter. "Hairoglyphics in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"/ Reading the Primal Trace." boundary 2 15.1 (1987): 123-134. Print. This literary criticism discusses the primal text of "Rose for Emily," wherein the catharsis that the audience wishes to feel upon knowing Emily's mystery is delayed. This is performed through our receiving the story through the outside perspective of the townspeople, and not Emily.
Brooks, Cleanth. William Faulkner: toward Yoknapatawpha and beyond. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. Print. Brooks’ book comparing many of Faulkner’s works contains plenty of analysis on “A Rose for Emily,” particularly in the character of Emily herself. I will use it to demonstrate the effectiveness of the communal protagonist/narrator, and the tragic nature of Miss Emily.
Curry, Renee. "Gender and authorial limitation in Faulkner's `A Rose for Emily'." Mississippi Quarterly 47.2 (1994): 391. Print. This literary criticism goes into detail of Emily's beleaguered life, being a woman, as well as the limitations of the narrators' prescience in the story. I will use this to help denote how the unique perspective of the book helps heighten the suspense.
Dilworth, Thomas. "A Romance to Kill for: Homicidal Complicity in Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'." Studies in Short Fiction 36.3 (1999): 251. Print. This review denotes the complicity of Homer and the townspeople in Emily's eventual murder of Homer. I will use this to heighten the Gothic elements of the book and to denote how the ignorance of the townspeople (shown through the book's perspective) makes them complicit in his murder.
Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1970. Print. This is the original text, A Rose for Emily. I will refer back to this in order to find real quotes and instances in the text.
Harris, Paul. "In Search of Dead Time: Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"." KronoScope 7.2 (2007): 169-183. Print. Harris' criticism delves deeply into the nature of time within the short story Rose for Emily. He posits that the reader is forced to look for dead time which has not been outlined in the book. I will use this to find specific instances of unique chronology and their significance in Rose for Emily.
Hartwell, David G.. The Dark descent . New York, N.Y.: T. Doherty Associates, 1987. Print. In Hartwell's introduction to the book, he talks about the significance of Rose for Emily in the canon of horror fiction. I will use this to show how the chronology of the book keeps the reader in chronic suspense, thus adding to its horrific quality.
Morton, Clay. "'A Rose for Emily': Oral Plot, Typographic Story." Storytelling: A Critical Journal of Popular Narrative 5.1 (2005): 1. Print. Morton's criticism of the text touches on the growing madness of Emily, as well as her own skewed sense of time. This will help me look at the problem of chronology from her perspective, not just the townspeople.
Scherling, Jack. "EMILY GRIERSON'S OEDIPUS COMPLEX: MOTIF, MOTIVE, AND MEANING IN FAULKNER'S 'A ROSE FOR EMILY'." Studies in Short Fiction 17.4 (1980): 397. Print. Emily has a very big Oedipus compliex, according to Scherling; her pursuit of Homer and someone to love is very much a desire to maintain a fatherly figure. I will use this to help demonstrate that the skewed chronology is to help demonstrate this growing madness and psychosis.
Stone, Edward. "Usher, Poquelin, and Miss Emily: the Progress of Southern Gothic." Georgia Review 14.4 (1960): 433-443. Print. In this literary criticism, Stone weighs the Gothic elements of "A Rose for Emily," which include Emily's implicit necrophilia. I will use this as another layer of reasoning why the unconventional chronology and perspective is required; it helps the grotesque Gothic elements stand out even more through its ability to keep the reader off balance.
