A Rose For Emily Analysis
Annastasia
A Rose for Emily in a feminist critical perspective reveals the grotesque aspects of this story as a result of the expectations produced by the conventions of sexual politics. The ending provides a twist with a hint of necrophilia; more shocking is the fact that it is a woman who provides the hint. The reader does not expect that a woman has murdered the man. The conventions of sexual politics have familiarized the reader with the image of women nobly accepting death at her husband’s hand. To reverse this “natural” pattern inevitably produces the grotesque factor of this story. Faulkner conjures the grotesque with the intentions of bringing light to and defining the authentic nature of the statures on which it depends. A Rose for Emily is a story of the patriarchy North and South, and of the sexual conflict within it. As Faulkner himself once said, “ It is a story of a woman victimized and betrayed by the system of sexual politics, who nevertheless has discovered, within the structures that victimize her, sources of power for herself.” It can also be interpreted as a story on how to murder your man without getting caught. “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral.” The public and cooperative nature of Emily’s funeral, an event that brings the entire town together, clarifies its social relationships and the influence of the past. This indicates her central role in the town of Jefferson. Alive, Emily is town property and a rather popular subject of shared speculation; dead, she is town history and the subject of a legend. It is her highly regarded value as a symbol which holds great significance to Jefferson and to the meaning of its history that compels the narrator to use a communal voice to tell the story. The history the narrator reveals, displays Jefferson’s continuous emotional involvement with Emily. Although, she locks herself up in a house which she rarely leaves and which no one enters, her isolation is in
A Rose for Emily in a feminist critical perspective reveals the grotesque aspects of this story as a result of the expectations produced by the conventions of sexual politics. The ending provides a twist with a hint of necrophilia; more shocking is the fact that it is a woman who provides the hint. The reader does not expect that a woman has murdered the man. The conventions of sexual politics have familiarized the reader with the image of women nobly accepting death at her husband’s hand. To reverse this “natural” pattern inevitably produces the grotesque factor of this story. Faulkner conjures the grotesque with the intentions of bringing light to and defining the authentic nature of the statures on which it depends. A Rose for Emily is a story of the patriarchy North and South, and of the sexual conflict within it. As Faulkner himself once said, “ It is a story of a woman victimized and betrayed by the system of sexual politics, who nevertheless has discovered, within the structures that victimize her, sources of power for herself.” It can also be interpreted as a story on how to murder your man without getting caught. “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral.” The public and cooperative nature of Emily’s funeral, an event that brings the entire town together, clarifies its social relationships and the influence of the past. This indicates her central role in the town of Jefferson. Alive, Emily is town property and a rather popular subject of shared speculation; dead, she is town history and the subject of a legend. It is her highly regarded value as a symbol which holds great significance to Jefferson and to the meaning of its history that compels the narrator to use a communal voice to tell the story. The history the narrator reveals, displays Jefferson’s continuous emotional involvement with Emily. Although, she locks herself up in a house which she rarely leaves and which no one enters, her isolation is in