A Rose for Emily

26

I

1 When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the

men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women

mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an

old manservant—a combined gardener and cook—had seen in at least ten

years.

2 It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated

with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome

style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But

garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august

names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its

2UNIT

William Faulkner

A Rose for Emily

27

stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline

pumps—an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to

join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-

bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and

Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

3 Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary

obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel

Sartoris, the mayor—he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should

appear on the streets without an apron—remitted her taxes, the dispensation

dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily

would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to

the effect that Miss Emily’s father had loaned money to the town, which the

town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of

Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it, and only a

woman could have believed it.

4 When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and

aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of

the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply.

They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff’s office at her

convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to

send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape,

in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer

went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.

5 They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited

upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since

she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were

admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted

into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank smell. The

Negro led them into the parlor. 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; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose

sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray.

On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss

Emily’s father.

2UNIT

28

6 They rose when she entered—a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold

chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an

ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare;

perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another

was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in

motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of

her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as

they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.

7 She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly

until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the

invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.

8 Her voice was dry and cold. “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris

explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and

satisfy yourselves.”

9 “But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn’t you get a notice

from the sheriff, signed by him?”

10 “I received a paper, yes,” Miss Emily said. “Perhaps he considers himself the

sheriff… I have no taxes in Jefferson.”

11 “But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see we must go by the—”

12 “See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.”

13 “But, Miss Emily—”

14 “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.”

II

15 So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their

fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after her

father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart—the one we believed

would marry her—had deserted her. After her father’s death she went out

very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few

of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and the only sign

2UNIT Contemporary College English

29

of life about the place was the Negro man—a young man then—going in and

out with a market basket.

16 “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 gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.

17 A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years

old.

18 “But what will you have me do about it, madam?” he said.

19 “Why, send her word to stop it,” the woman said. “Isn’t there a law?”

20 “I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Judge Stevens said. “It’s probably just a

snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I’ll speak to him about it.”

21 The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came

in diffident deprecation. “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 Board of Aldermen met—three graybeards and

one younger man, a member of the rising generation.

22 “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…”

23 “Dammit, sir,” Judge Stevens said, “will you accuse a lady to her face of

smelling bad?”

24 So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and

slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork

and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing

motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open

the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they

re-crossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily

sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an

idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the locusts

that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.

25 That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our

town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely


30

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 tableau, Miss Emily a

slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in

the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them

framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was

still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity

in the family she wouldn’t have turned down all of her chances if they had

really materialized.

26 When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her;

and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left

alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know

the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.

27 The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer

condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door,

dressed as usual and with no trace of grief 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 persuade her to let them dispose of the body.

Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they

buried her father quickly.

28 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 cling to that which had robbed her,

as people will.

III

29 She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short,

making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in

colored church windows sort of tragic and serene.

30 The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the

summer after her father’s death they began the work. The construction

company came with niggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named

Homer Barron, a Yankee—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 cuss


31

the niggers, and the niggers 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. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons

driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the

livery stable.

31 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 grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige—without

calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should

come to her.” She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had

fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and

there was no communication between the two families. They had not even

been represented at the funeral.

32 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; rustling of craned silk and satin

behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift

clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: “Poor Emily.”

33 She carried her head high enough—even when we believed that she was

fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her

dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness

to reaffirm her imperviousness. 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.

34 “I want some poison,” she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still

a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in

a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eye-

sockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper’s face ought to look. “I want some

poison,” she said.

35 “Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I’d recom—”


32

36 “I want the best you have. I don’t care what kind.”

37 The druggist named several. “They’ll kill anything up to an elephant. But

what you want is—”

38 “Arsenic,” Miss Emily said. “Is that a good one?”

39 “Is… arsenic? Yes, ma’am. But what you want—”

40 “I want arsenic.”

41 The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like

a strained flag. “Why, of course,” the druggist said. “If that’s what you want.

But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for.”

42 Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye

for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it

up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn’t come

back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box,

under the skull and bones: “For rats.”

IV

43 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 persuade him yet,”

because Homer himself had remarked—he liked men, and it was known

that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club—that he was not

a marrying man. Later we said, “Poor Emily” behind the jalousies as they

passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head

high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins

and whip in a yellow glove.

44 Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and

a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere,

but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister—Miss Emily’s people were

Episcopal—to call upon her. He would never divulge 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.


33

45 So she had blood-kin 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 been to the jeweler’s

and 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 outfit 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.

46 So we were not surprised when Homer Barron—the streets had been finished

some time since—was gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not

a public blowing-off, but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss

Emily’s coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that

time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily’s allies to help circumvent

the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. 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 at dusk one

evening.

47 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 sprinkled the lime, but for

almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this

was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted

her woman’s life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.

48 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 attained an

even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her

death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an

active man.

49 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

china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where

the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartori’s contemporaries were


34

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.

Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.

50 Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town,

and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children

to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and 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 fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a

mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.

51 Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped,

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, unclaimed.

Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows—she had

evidently shut up the top floor of the house—like the carven torso of an idol

in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus

she passed from generation to generation—dear, inescapable, impervious,

tranquil, and perverse.

52 And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only

a doddering 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 harsh and

rusty, as if from disuse.

53 She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a

curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and

lack of sunlight.

V

54 The Negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with

their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he

disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was

not seen again.

55 The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second

day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought


35

flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the

bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men—some in

their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking

of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that

they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, 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.

56 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. They

waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.

57 The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with

pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere

upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance

curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing

table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed

with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured.

Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which,

lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the

suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.

58 The man himself lay in the bed.

59 For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and

fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an

embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the

grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath

what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in

which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even

coating of the patient and biding dust.

60 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.


36

When we talk about William Faulkner’s life, the most important fact is that he was born

and brought up in the American South and lived there almost all his life. Faulkner was born on

September 25, 1897 to a distinguished Southern family. He spent his youth in Oxford, a small

town in Mississippi, listening to all sorts of stories from and about the people in his hometown.

The stories his black nanny told him and the gossip he heard from the townspeople resting

and chatting in the small downtown square immersed Faulkner in an oral storytelling tradition

that formed an important part of his education.

During World War I, Faulkner served in the Royal Canadian Air Force. After the armistice in

1918, he returned to Oxford, and for some time he led a rather directionless life. He attended

the University of Mississippi but left the university within a year; he tried his hand at poetry

but without much success; he went north to the cosmopolitan city of New York, but was soon

driven back home by loneliness. He became a postmaster, but in less than three years he

resigned. All this time, Faulkner had been reading, first whatever interested him and, later, the

great poets and novelists. In New York, Faulkner met Sherwood Anderson, a famous writer,

and, in 1925, having traveled to New Orleans, he gained entry into this cultural center through

Anderson. Inspired by Anderson, Faulkner began to write novels.

In his lifetime, Faulkner wrote 19 novels and nearly a hundred short stories. The setting

of 15 novels and the majority of the short fiction is the American South. In them, the

author tells stories about people from a small region in Mississippi, a fictional place he calls

Yoknapatawpha County. His major works include novels The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I

Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner is regarded

as a regional writer, but the word “regional” is misleading because Faulkner deals with major

universal themes in literature so profoundly that he is read and recognized nationally and

internationally. As far as writing techniques are concerned, Faulkner is among a handful of

remarkable experimentalists writing novels in the 20th century. His effective use of stream

of consciousness, multiple points of view, symbolism and imagery, places him among the

greatest of modern writers along with James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. In 1949, Faulkner

received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Introduction


The author

37

Published in 1930, “A Rose for Emily” is one of the best known of Faulkner’s short stories,

frequently anthologized and widely used in American classrooms. It takes place in a mythical

town that Faulkner calls Jefferson, Mississippi during the late 19th and early 20th centuries

when the town was learning to live with the South’s defeat in the Civil War of 1861–1865 and

the consequent dismantling of the slavery-based society that had preceded it. The end of

slavery, however, did not end white supremacy, nor in particular the social dominance of the

prominent white families who, though small in number, had owned the largest plantations

and the greatest numbers of slaves. The prestige of those families persisted, even in their

unaccustomed poverty. One of their long-standing social problems was to find suitable

marriage partners for their offspring since so few outside the family were deemed worthy to

join it. The status of upper class white womanhood—of whom Miss Emily is an example—in

Southern slavery-based society was both superior and limited. The wife and daughters of the

plantation owner were raised above ordinary women and treated with a chivalrous deference.

Though these white women gave birth to the only legitimate heirs, they were powerless to

control the behavior of their men. What they did acquire was social power, to the point where

a whole community might feel bound to accede to their wishes. The older such a woman

became, the harder it was for anyone of lower status to say no to her.

Faulkner’s work is noted for its complexity partly because he deliberately places a

considerable burden upon the reader. Instead of telling a simple straightforward story,

he often exploits vague references, ambiguities, symbolism, experimental points of view,

jumbled time sequences, avoidance of clear transitions, withholding of vital information to

compel the reader to join in the writer’s search for truth. Some of these techniques are used in

“A Rose for Emily.”

Thematically, this short story is not as simple as it seems: The conflicts in the story can

be interpreted on different levels. On a superficial level, it is a murder story with elements of

Gothic literature—an eccentric woman living in isolation, an old decaying mysterious house

that other people had not been in for decades, and, of course, a dead body in the house,

finally discovered after so many years. Similarly, also superficially, the story can be read as a

conflict between the South and the North, with Emily representing the declining South and

Homer Barron representing the North. Yet to read the story in either of these ways is to miss

the most important things the author is trying to convey. On a deeper level, the story explores

the inner world of a human being, the inner struggle in the human heart. Short as it is, the

story contains many of the characteristics to be found in Faulkner’s longer fiction. Here as

The text


38

elsewhere Faulkner celebrates in detail the workings of the complex social world of a small

Southern town. He views it with fondness but in no way idealizes its quirks or its hypocrisies.

For these reasons, “A Rose for Emily” is a good introduction to Faulkner’s works.

The theme of the story is universal, transcending the boundaries of time and space. Like

many other works of great literature, it is concerned with love, death, honor, pride, change,

and loss. In it, we can see how the author tells a good story skillfully; how he creates the

atmosphere he needs for telling his story; how he keeps the suspense and unfolds the conflict

bit by bit; and how he digs deep into the social world of his characters. Utilizing his skills as

a writer, Faulkner invites his readers to participate in the process of seeking the truths of the

inner lives of the townspeople as they cope with Miss Emily, and of Miss Emily herself. Like a

puzzle, once we begin to understand, the story becomes more and more fascinating.

The 1949 Nobel Prize presentation speech calls Faulkner the “unrivaled master of all living

British and American novelists.” He is regarded as a “deep psychologist.” “A Rose for Emily” lives

up to that high praise.


39

Notes

1. decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies (Para. 2): �ese are details showing architectural characteristics of the Gothic revival style. A cupola is a small dome-like structure on the roof of a house. A spire is a roof that rises steeply to a point on top of a tower, especially on a church or other building. A scrolled balcony is an extended ledge on a building decorated with elaborate wood scrollwork, common in architecture of this style and sometimes referred to as “gingerbread.”

2. Union and Confederate soldiers (Para. 2): Here the word “Union” refers to the North in the Civil War, namely those states supporting the Federal Union. A Confederate is a Southern supporter of the Confederacy, the league of the Southern States that seceded from the United States in 1860 and 1861, o�cially called the Confederate States of America.

3. Jefferson (Para. 2): a �ctional place created and named by the author, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha and the center of his mythical world. Creating this imaginary setting allowed Faulkner to capture the spirit of his region more deeply than mere facts would allow.

4. Colonel Sartoris (Para. 3): �e inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha are divided into four social levels: the aristocrats, the ordinary townspeople, the poor white farmers and the black inhabitants. �e �rst group is made up of pioneers and plantation owners and their descendants. Sartoris is one of the aristocratic names in Je�erson. Of the Sartorises, the most famous is Colonel John Sartoris (1823–1876), who earns the title colonel by commanding the town’s Confederate troops in the Civil War. The Colonel Sartoris of “A Rose for Emily” is Bayard Sartoris, the son of the old colonel, sometimes known as the Young Colonel. This unearned title is an inheritance from Colonel John, his father. The Young Colonel is the mayor who gives Miss Emily the privilege of not paying taxes in Je�erson. Many of the inhabitants of the county appear in more than one of Faulkner’s works. �e Young Colonel, who is brie�y mentioned but whose in�uence is important in “A Rose for Emily,” is one of the main characters of Faulkner’s novel Sartoris (1929).


40

5. the Board of Aldermen (Para. 5): the elected town o�cials, typically composed of the elite

6. horse and foot (Para. 15): a military idiom from the Civil War, referring to both cavalry and foot soldiers. Here the phrase means “totally, completely.”

7. nigger (Para. 30): Originally simply a dialectal variant of “Negro.” Using the term “nigger” is generally regarded today as taboo. Negro (together with related words such as Negress) has dropped out of favor and now seems out of date or even o�ensive in both British and US English.

8. a Yankee (Para. 30): Homer Barron is a man from the victorious North who, a�er the Civil War, came to the South in the hope of making money. �ough the word does not appear in this text, such men were commonly called “carpetbaggers,” and were objects of scorn or suspicion to most Southerners.

9. noblesse oblige (Para. 31): (French) �e phrase is used to mean that people who belong to a high social class should be generous and behave with honor. The implied meaning of the sentence is: It should be unthinkable for Emily as part of the local “nobility” to consider marrying so far beneath herself.

10. the Elks’ Club (Para. 43): a private men’s club

11. the Baptist minister—Miss Emily’s people were Episcopal (Para. 44): Among the various Protestant denominations in a town of this kind, the highest prestige and class standing belongs to the American branch of the Church of England, known as the Episcopal Church (圣公会). The Baptists（浸礼会成员）have less formal services of worship and are associated with less cultivated versions of Christianity. Miss Emily, we assume, treated the Baptist minister with disdain when he came to express the community’s disapproval of her public courting activities with Homer Barron.


41

12. the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch

and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs

(Para. 55): �ese veterans of the Civil War mistakenly thought of her as someone their own age, born around 1840 or so. From the bits of information revealed by the narrator, we infer that Emily was born in the 1850s, more than ten years later, and therefore she was actually not “a contemporary of theirs.”


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cotton gin (Para. 2) a machine for separating cotton fibers from the seeds 轧棉机

obliterate (Para. 2) to remove all signs of something; to erase 消灭，抹去

coquettish (Para. 2) flirtatious; (of a woman) seeking men’s admiration without serious intentions 卖弄风情的

remit (Para. 3) to free someone from a debt or punishment 免除，赦免（债务、惩罚等）

dispensation (Para. 3) exemption or release from a rule or obligation 特许

into perpetuity (Para. 3) (law) for all future time 永远，永久

sheriff (Para. 4) (AmE) the chief law-enforcement officer of a county （美国）县司法长官，县治安官

dank (Para. 5) unpleasantly wet and cold 阴冷潮湿的

parlor (Para. 5) (old-fashioned) a formal room in a house, used for meeting guests 起居室，客厅

sluggishly (Para. 5) (moving) more slowly than normal 缓慢地

mote (Para. 5) (old-fashioned) a very small speck of dust 尘埃，微粒

tarnish (Para. 5) to dull the luster of something as by exposure to air （使）

失去光泽，（使）暗淡

gilt (Para. 5) covered thinly with gold leaf or gold paint 镀金的，

涂金的

easel (Para. 5) a wooden frame to hold a picture while it is being painted画架

ebony (Para. 6) the hard black wood of the tropical ebony tree 乌木，黑檀

obesity (Para. 6) being very fat, in a way that is not healthy 臃肿，肥胖

pallid (Para. 6) pale, especially because of illness（尤指因疾病而脸色）苍白的，暗淡的

Vocabulary


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temerity (Para. 15) (formal) unreasonable confidence that is likely to offend someone 鲁莽，冒失

torso (Para. 24) the trunk of the human body, not including the head, arms or legs（身体的）躯干

tableau (Para. 25) a striking scene or picture, frozen in time for dramatic effect 舞台造型；定格画面

spraddle (Para. 25) (blend of spread and straddle) to spread the legs in a straddling way 叉开双腿

silhouette (Para. 25) a dark image, shadow, or shape, seen against a light background 剪影

vindicate (Para. 25) to clear from criticism, blame, guilt, suspicion, etc. 证明

清白，澄清

buggy (Para. 30) a light carriage for one or two people, pulled by a horse 轻便马车

bay (Para. 30) a horse that is of reddish brown color 栗色马，枣红马

jalousie (Para. 32) a shutter consisting of angled, parallel slats 百叶窗（门）

arsenic (Para. 33) a very poisonous chemical element 砷，砒霜

divulge (Para. 44) to make known, to disclose 泄露，透露（秘密）

cabal (Para. 46) (formal) a small group of people who make secret plans 阴谋小集团

circumvent (Para. 46) to avoid restrictions imposed by a rule or law without actually breaking it 设法回避，规避

thwart (Para. 47) (formal) to prevent someone’s plan from being successful 阻挠，使受挫败

virulent (Para. 47) (formal) full of hatred 恶毒的

carven (Para. 51) (archaic) carved 雕刻的


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niche (Para. 51) a recess in a wall, often made to hold a statue 壁龛

sibilant (Para. 54) having or making a hissing sound 发咝咝声的

bier (Para. 55) a platform or portable framework on which a coffin is placed 棺材架

macabre (Para. 55) disturbing and horrifying because of involvement with or depiction of death and injury 可怕的，恐怖的

valance (Para. 57) a short drapery or curtain hanging from the edge of a window, shelf, bed, etc.（有一端挂到窗户、架子或床边

等的）短帷幔，挂帘

monogram (Para. 57) two or more letters, usually the first letters of someone’s names, used to decorate or identify an object（常由私人

姓名首字母组成的）字母交织图案

crescent (Para. 57) a curved shape, wider in the middle and pointed at the ends 新月形，月牙形

grimace (Para. 59) a twisting or distortion of the face, as in expressing pain, contempt, disgust, etc.（因厌恶、痛苦、轻蔑等）怪相，

鬼脸

cuckold (Para. 59) (old-fashioned) the husband of an adulteress, often regarded as an object of derision; to make a ~ of him: to make him a man whose wife has committed adultery 使他

成为妻子有外遇的人（给他戴绿帽子）

inextricable (Para. 59) impossible to get free from, disentangle or undo 无法

摆脱的，无法分开的

indentation (Para. 60) a dent or slight hollow 凹陷，凹痕


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I Look up the following words and phrases and select the meaning that suits the context.

1. select (Para. 2) 2. august (Para. 2) 3. eyesore (Para. 2) 4. to fall (Para. 2) 5. to father (Para. 3) 6. edict (Para. 3) 7. to wait upon (Para. 5) 8. blinds (Para. 5) 9. hue (Para. 6)10. on the books (Para. 11)11. fallen (Para. 33)12. blowing-off (Para. 46)13. collection plate (Para. 49)

II Consider the following questions when doing initial pre-class preparation.

1. When and where did the story take place? 2. Who was Emily? How would you describe her character? 3. Why did she remain single all her life? 4. What was her relationship with the town community? 5. Who did she begin a relationship with after her father’s death? What did

the people in the town think about this relationship? 6. When do we know what happened to the man? What did happen to him?

III Respond to the following questions after a close reading of the text.

On content

1. Why did the whole town attend the funeral when Miss Emily died? Did the men and the women go for the same reason?

2. What were some of the visible changes that took place in Jefferson during Miss Emily’s time? What does this show? What do you know about the historical and social background against which this story takes place?

Exercises


46

3. Why was Emily viewed as “a tradition, a duty, a care and an obligation upon the town”?

4. Was the younger generation happy with the old arrangements regarding Emily? What did new mayors and aldermen do to express their attitude? What was Emily’s response?

5. Thirty years earlier, the judge of the town received some complaints about a bad smell coming from Emily’s house. What did people think caused the smell? And what did they do about it?

6. Why did people feel really sorry for Emily at that time? Why did her father drive away potential suitors?

7. How did Miss Emily behave when her father died? Is this detail related to what happened at the end of the story?

8. Who was Homer Barron? How did the people of the town react to Emily’s relationship with him? Did Emily mind the gossip about her? What does this reveal about her character?

9. When Emily went to the drugstore to buy poison, what did people think she wanted the poison for?

10. Then people began to think Emily was going to get married. What led them to think so? Did Homer Barron intend to marry Emily? How do you know?

11. How did Emily change after Homer’s disappearance?12. In Paragraph 51, the narrator says, “Thus she passed from generation

to generation—dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.” Elaborate on each of the adjectives used to describe Emily.

13. What did people find in a room upstairs in Emily’s house, which no one had seen in forty years?

14. What did they notice about the second pillow?

On structure and style

1. The story is narrated by “we.” Who are “we”? Are “we” omniscient or limited in point of view? Why does the author choose to use this narrative voice?

2. Paragraph 2 describes the outer appearance of Emily’s house and Paragraph 5 gives some details about the inside of the house. In several places the author describes Emily’s appearance or changes in her appearance. How do these descriptions function in terms of characterization and plot development? Illustrate your point with examples.

3. Would you say that Emily’s personality is warped? If so, what did this result from? Is the author sympathetic or unsympathetic toward this character? Give evidence to support your analysis.


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4. What is the narrative structure of this story? Is the story narrated in chronological order? How does the author manage to hold the readers in suspense?

5. Do you find elements of Gothic literature in this story? What are they? Can we read the story as merely a piece of Southern Gothic literature?

IV Discuss the following or any other related questions you would like to propose.

1. What is/are the theme or themes of this story? Is the story capable of different interpretations? What are they?

2. Give examples to illustrate how Faulkner uses the technique “reader participation” (described in the Introduction) in this story? Comment on other techniques Faulkner uses in the story. Provide detailed examples.

3. People often say that great literature can be viewed from many different angles—cultural, sociological, historical, political, psychological, ethical, aesthetic, philosophical, etc. Discuss Faulkner’s story employing two or three of these perspectives.

4. Comment on the following quotation with reference to “A Rose for Emily.”

In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read… It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish. —S. I. Hayakawa

V Explain the following in your own words, bringing out any implied meanings.

1. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood. (Para. 2)

2. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. (Para. 3) 3. “Just as if a man—any man—could keep a kitchen properly,” the ladies

said. (Para. 16) 4. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and

mighty Griersons. (Para. 16) 5. The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came

in diffident deprecation. (Para. 21) 6. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had

gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. (Para. 25)

7. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less. (Para. 26)


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8. But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige—without calling it noblesse oblige. (Para. 31)

9. We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been. (Para. 45)

10. … where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartori’s contemporaries 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. (Para. 49)

VI Translate the following into Chinese.

Phrases

1. an eyesore among eyesores (Para. 2) 2. who fathered the edict (Para. 3) 3. smelled of dust and disuse (Para. 5) 4. with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt

(Para. 6) 5. a big, dark, ready man (Para. 30) 6. the matched team of bays from the livery stable (Para. 30) 7. in the attitude of an embrace (Para. 59)

Sentences

1. When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant—a combined gardener and cook—had seen in at least ten years. (Para. 1)

2. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson. (Para. 2)

3. Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town... (Para. 3)

4. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. (Para. 5)

5. And when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. (Para. 5)


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6. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. (Para. 6)

7. So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. (Para. 24)

8. They had not even been represented at the funeral. (Para. 31) 9. Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye

for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. (Para. 42)

10. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows—she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house—like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. (Para. 51)

VII The following sentences contain figures of speech. Identify the figure of speech in each sentence and explain its meaning in plain, non-figurative language.

1. It smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank smell. (Para. 5) 2. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of

that pallid hue. (Para. 6) 3. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of

coal pressed into a lump of dough… (Para. 6) 4. That night the Board of Aldermen met—three graybeards and one younger

man, a member of the rising generation. (Para. 21) 5. By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily’s allies to help

circumvent the cousins. (Para. 46) 6. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her

father which had thwarted her woman’s life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die. (Para. 47)

7. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows… like the carven torso of an idol in a niche… (Para. 51)

8. … 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. (Para. 55)


A Rose for Emily

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Transcript of A Rose for Emily