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: