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A Rose For Emily

title section:

Faulkner described his reasoning for the title "A Rose For Emily," as an allegorical title; this woman had undergone great tragedy, for this Faulkner pitied her. And as a salute, she handed her a rose.

summary:

The story opens with a brief first-person account of the funeral of Emily Grierson, an elderly Southern woman whom is the obligation of their small town. It then proceeds in a nonlinear fashion to the narrator's recollections of Emily's archaic and increasingly strange behavior throughout the years. Emily is a member of a family of the antebellum Southern aristocracy. After the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times. She and her father, the last two of the clan, continue to live as if in the past; Emily’s father refuses for her to marry. Her father dies when Emily is about the age of 30, and takes her by surprise. She refused to give up his corpse, and the townspeople wrote it off as her grieving process.

After her acceptance of her father's death, Emily somewhat revives; she becomes friendly with Homer Barron, a black Northern laborer who comes to town shortly after Mr. Grierson’s death. The connection surprises some of the community while others are glad she is taking an interest. But Homer claims that he is not a marrying man--a bachelor. Emily shortly buys arsenic from a druggist in town, which convinces the townspeople she was to poison herself with it. Emily’s distant cousins are called into town by the minister’s wife to supervise Miss Emily and Homer Barron. Homer leaves town for some time, reputedly to give Emily a chance to get rid of her cousins, and returns three days later after the cousins have left. Homer is never seen again.

Despite these turnabouts in her social status, Emily continues to behave haughtily, as she had before her father died. Her reputation is such that the city council finds themselves unable to confront her about a strong smell that has begun to emanate from the house. Instead, they decide to send men to her house under the cover of darkness to sprinkle lime around the house, after which the smell dissipates. The mayor of the town, Colonel Sartoris, made a gentleman's agreement to overlook her taxes as an act of charity, though it was done under a pretense of repayment towards her father to assuage Emily's pride after her father had died. Years later, when the next generation has come to power, Emily insists on this informal arrangement, flatly refusing that she owes any taxes; the council declines to press the issue. Emily has become a recluse: she is never seen out of the house, and only rarely accepts people into it. The community comes to view her as a "hereditary obligation" on the town, who must be humored and tolerated.

The funeral is a large affair; Emily had become an institution, so her death sparks a great deal of curiosity about her reclusive nature and what remains of her house. After she is buried, a group of townsfolk enters her house to see what remains of her life there. The door to her upstairs bedroom is locked; some of the townsfolk kick in the door to see what has been hidden for so long. Inside, among the possessions that Emily had bought for Homer, lies the decomposed corpse of Homer Barron on the bed; on the pillow beside him is the indentation of a head and a single strand of Emily's gray hair.

You are inspiring me in the way that you approach this assignment. ----