William Falkner is an American novelist who was very popular with his essays, poems, short stories and was known to be one of the best screenwriters. Faulkner was also known for his works which exposed the corruptions and exploitations happening in the Southern America; his works were popular for being so complex and profound as well. In addition, he usually worked on showing the unbridled history and consequently giving a wide range of ideas for the development of exploring the characters of human being. Moreover, Faulkner used grotesque, melodrama, bizarre and even violent imagery especially in sensationalizing the decay and corruption present in the South which eventually made him one of the known pioneers of the genre commonly depicted as the Southern Gothic Literature.
Southern Gothic Literature is a writing style which is very unique with the Americans that is popularized during the 18th century in England. It mainly encompass and use the macabre subject which is also lurid in nature which in contrast employs disturbing elements to explore and expose the social issues and enlighten the people about the south Americans cultural climate. Furthermore, Ellen Glasgow was the one who first used the Southern gothic way back in 1936; Glasgow was a Pulitzer awardee and used the term during her lecture in University of Virginia. This type of literature was also more of grotesque defined to be as an extravagant and irregular in form. Usually, the characters are being exaggerated so that they can effectively depict the disgust and empathy among its readers.
One of Faulkner’s most popular works is the “A Rose for Emily” which is made to reveal the impact of Southern gothic on his way of writing specifically, given that the story has a creepy, forbidding and moody atmosphere situated in an old crumbling mansion and lastly, used the grotesque nature with putrefaction as well as decay. The story has five sections wherein the first was more of an introductory part giving its readers the time where Emily Grierson, the main character, died and picturing the event where all of her neighbors went to her funeral at home; her home was one of the most unvisited place, no one had dared to enter it for at least ten years already. While on the second part, what is described by the narrator was the resistance of Emily to give in with the queries requested by the town’s officials due to a foul odor coming from her house.
With her father’s death and disappearance of her fiancé, they had decided to inspect her property by night time instead and just spray lime all over her property which had helped to at least lessen the odor in her property. Emily had been single until her 30th year on earth since her father was too strict with her suitors. When her father died, Emily was in denial and only after three days that she had decided to bury his father’s body.
For the third section of the story, the focus was on Emily’s illness which was caused by her loneliness and longing after her father’s death. Also, in this part of the story, Emily had an affair with Homer Barron who took her for rides during weekends that led to people to criticize both of them since Homer was only working for a construction company; with this, people are scrutinizing Emily since she is thought to forget the pride they have and made her reputation to decline as their affair continued.
As for the fourth section, it is where the speculations about the suicide attempt about Emily were focused on. People taught that she would do it since her marriage with Homer was far-fetched from happening. Then his fiancé was lost and nowhere to be found which made her gray. And in the last section, the death of Emily was explored where her body was found in a parlor where all the women attended her burial service. The people of the town broke down one of the rooms upstairs where they found the dead body of Homer laid in bed and beside him was a head formation on the pillow where Emily’s gray hair was also found.
One of the first quotations in the story found in the first section was “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town . . .” which can be explained as the main character, Emily, being a lady who is grand in nature and have a reputation and respect that were both highly regarded by the people. And last of the many is the “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.” which ended the story and revealed the secret of Emily which then strengthened her reputation of having an eccentric characteristic. This even revealed that her grotesque act due to her dangerous mental health was able to go beyond what the townspeople have expected from her.
In this specific story, Faulkner was successful in making the character, Emily, a damsel in distress with psychological incapability and necrophilia; this in turn helped in building the heroine of Southern gothic literature. Faulkner also did not use thee linear approach in presenting the motivations and inner life of the characters, rather, he shifts and manipulates the time in extent that he even made it fractured. The story was depicted to happen for decades and flashbacks were used to explore the life of Emily. Just as the first part of the story was about her funeral, it was followed by stating her distant pasts which happened years ago and then at the last part of the story, the funeral was made to appear in another flashback once again. While reading the story, audience can imagine that Emily is a beautiful woman who can attract suitors of different ages, however, his father is that strict and choosy that he shooed away these men because he thinks that they are not good enough for her; this lead to leaving Emily unmarried until she died after seventy four years of existence.
Faulkner was able to show the present and pat lives of the characters as simultaneously happening and exploring the influences and effects of both on one another. By doing so, a multidimensional, complex and layered world was created. He even presented evident in the story two different visions about time. One is subjective vision about time wherein time is an element which continuously moves towards the existence and the accompanying events and memories are alive, unhindered and very active disregarding the changes which happen concurrently. It is opposite to the fact that the memories and events only stay at a distant. Also, it was evident in the story as it came to the end that a person is attached to what is happening in the present however, the fact that something happened in the past made it more colorful since what happened back then inevitably affects a person’s way of thinking and way of responding to the current events.
On the other hand, the other vision is more of objective and has mathematical precision about the reality that indeed, time is moving forward and noting the fact that whatever is made or done is already in the past. What is important is the present because it is what is tangible. It is the reality. It is what can be manipulated, thought of and enjoyed. The past has no role with the present and it can just be ignored since a person can effectively disregard it with his or decisions. Just like with the story of Emily in which Faulkner had successfully made it a subjective vision on the range of time, she have been moving on with time but not disregarding that her past is something to be considered of, making her greatly committed to it.
Works Cited
Thomas, Devin. Southern Gothic literature. Web. <http://engl352.pbworks.com/w/page/18970050/Southern%20Gothic>
Gothic Literature: A Gale Critical Companion: Faulkner, William (1897-1962). Web. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3447300038/faulkner-william-1897-1962.html>
WordPress; A Futile Endeavor. Web. 2009. <https://jaaronf.wordpress.com/essays/the-southern-gothic-tradition-william-faulkners-a-rose-for-emily-and-flannery-oconnors-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find/>
