by Andrew Dutton

Created on: June 02, 2008   Last Updated: June 03, 2008

"A Rose for Emily" is perhaps the quintessential example of Southern-Gothic literature and an effective allegory of the relations between the north and south during Faulkner's time. The story is one of Faulkner's more accessible works and while it lacks the strange twisting of As I Lay Dying or the inventiveness of The Sound and the Fury (both of which take place in the same fictional county in Mississippi) it is no less of a creative social commentary. Faulkner expresses the many sides, both conscious and perhaps unconscious of this not so foreign society through the southern gothic symbolism and imagery, the portrayal of the townspeople and their reactions to the deranged Emily, and through the anonymous and ambiguous narrator.

Faulkner sets the state for this story perfectly at the beginning when he describes Emily's house. He writes about old symbols of the south and then transposes them against an image of modernization. This causes Emily's house to seem awkward and out of place against the backdrop of the changing town. It's not unlike the image of a witch's home from a movie or even a haunted house. This aura of darkness continues to the inside of the house as, towards the end of the story, we learn about rooms void of natural light and a blanket of dust that seems to cover everything therein. This imagery of the house is not unlike Faulkner's image of the South itself. This story was written immediately after the twenties; a time ripe with social and technological advancement. The south though was still slow to adapt and change which the story implies makes it seem dark and somewhat out of place with the rest of the country.

The townspeople in the story are not only representative to the stereotyped southern society Faulkner saw but for the efforts of change in his times. The end of the story makes this apparent as after Emily's death they open the house allowing light to enter and no doubt disturbing the dust that had settled. This is an effective metaphor to the old south dying out and their children moving in and attempting to modernize their world. As we learn about the history of the town and hoe many of Emily's contemporaries have died out we see that she, like her home, have been irrefutably changed by time. The townspeople are no less than the cause of her change as they are the catalyst for her becoming out dated. In this light we see the townspeople as something of a villain, yet a villain we relate to much more than the title character.

The

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