In the capital of
Yoknapatawpha is where A Rose for Emily
took place. Emily Grierson and her father were members of a family in the
antebellum Southern aristocracy. After the Civil War, they only had each other.
Emily was a lonely woman, she was her father’s daughter; she only shared her loneliness
with her father who controlled her completely when he was alive, and continued
to control her after he died.
Emily’s father separated
her from the rest of the town. He made sure she didn´t have any friends or
lovers because anyone was enough for him. He forced her to love only him.
Moreover, she was so immerged in such a way of life she became a mysterious woman, dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil,
and perverse as described by the narrator. Her father had brought her up in
a so closed life that was impossible for her to escape and, of course, made her
show progressively insane and weird behavior.
When her father died,
she refused to accept it for three days probably because she had been under his
control over thirty years and this time was, in a way, the first decision she
made over him.
After her father’s
death, she seemed to get her own life control back. Then, she found hope on
Homer Barron, a Northern laborer who came to the town as a contractor to pave
the sidewalks. Nevertheless, he declared he had no intention of getting
married. In despair, she bought arsenic and gave it to her lover as it was the
only way to fulfill her desire to posses him.
She finally gave up
continuing living her tragedy, got older, and it’s not after her death that
Homer’s decomposed corpse was found in her house. Furthermore, beside his head
was found a long strand of iron-gray hair.
That was the way she learned to love, the only
way her father taught her.
“Poor Emily”, people
bemoaned...
William Faulkner
speaks on “A Rose for Emily” in 1955:
I feel sorry for
Emily's tragedy; her tragedy was, she was an only child, an only daughter. At
first when she could have found a husband, could have had a life of her own,
there was probably some one, her father, who said, "No, you must stay here
and take care of me." And then when she found a man, she had had no experience
in people. She picked out probably a bad one, who was about to desert her. And
when she lost him she could see that for her that was the end of life, there
was nothing left, except to grow older, alone, solitary; she had had something
and she wanted to keep it, which is bad—to go to any length to keep something;
but I pity Emily. I don't know whether I would have liked her or not, I might
have been afraid of her. Not of her, but of anyone who had suffered, had been
warped, as her life had been probably warped by a selfish father . . .
[The title] was an allegorical
title; the meaning was, here was a woman who had had a tragedy, an irrevocable
tragedy and nothing could be done about it, and I pitied her and this was a
salute . . . to a woman you would hand a rose.
From Faulkner at Nagano, ed. Robert Jelliffe
(Tokyo: Kenkyusha Ltd., 1956), pp. 70–71
It was really interesting to read Faulkner's word on a character of his own creation. I always wondered why the name of the text but I never found out. At the end, when somebody is so immersed in an environment of this kind, there's nothing that an outsider can do... but to giver her a rose.
ResponderEliminar"A Rose for Emily" belongs to the Souther gothic genre, and it always touches the problem of the time; however, I always thought of it as a representation of the South not wanting to change and looking for the most unbelievable resources to not do so. But now I think that in the past, and in some cases, and still today, there are families, fathers with this thought that the members of the family are his property not allowing them to live their own lifes.
Mainly in cases of older times, there is nothing to do, there will be women who will follow their husbands or fathers will, having no life of their own.