A Rose for Emily 1930 Emily seen from

A Rose for Emily (1930) Emily seen from different perspectives Emily on Trial & Emily Empathized

Outline 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Your Q & A A quick summary of online lecture Emily Seen from various perspectives Emily on Trial Your decision: Emily—Guilty or not? Emily Empathized

Your Q&A: Tobe and Other Men n n Tobe and Racial Discrimination Q: Three people tended to avoid seeing Miss Emil y again. They were the druggist, the Baptist min ister and her servant Tobe respectively. Why did they act like this?

Tobe n n Frequent sign: Tobe “going in and out with the market basket” Smell “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. Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, “He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse. ”

Your Q&A: Rose* n n Roses are usually seen as a symbol of love. …Moreover, the thorns of the rose represent Emily. Since her father always obstructed all the young men who wanted to get closing to her, she might have difficulty getting along with her lover which makes her be like thorns. The rose is often thought of as a symbol for love which I think in the story it indicates Homer is the "rose" for Emily's father thought no man was good enough for her, so she never actually experience the passion of love until she met Homer is her "rose" whom she wished to cherish and kept to herself even after his body corrupted.

Your Q&A: Emily n n Emily’s house; necrophilia*, whether she loves HB, the strand of hair ( it ”symbolizes” Emily)? What is symbolic of Emily? The house, the room Images put together to be symbolic of Emily’s personalities: iron gray hair, gold chain, ebony cane, black coal eyes, …

Your Q&A: Narrator n n The narrator‘s use of “we” –objective? Repetition of "Poor Emily” – “they just want to gloat over her family, which is in straitened circumstances. ” Yes, but more than this.

“A Rose for Emily”– Online Lecture Setting B. Plot –Gaps and Suspense (the ending as an example) C. Different Images of Emily D. The Narrators’ contradictory views 1. of the present 2. of the previous generations gossips and intervention A.

Setting – Emily’s House and the Historical Background

Setting: Emily’s House and its Background Cupolas, spires, scrolls, the heavily lightsome style Reference Southern Belle Gasoline pump Mail box tax

Setting (1): The Grierson House n n [Emily’s funeral; people haven’t been inside her house for 10 years] (par 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 stubborn and coquettish ( 嬌媚) 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 anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson

Setting (2): Historical Changes n n n Time: 1862(? ) 1936 From Old South to New South*—the Civil War + Industrialism Clues in the text: q q q 1894 –tax remittance; “no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron”; Death of the Father; tax exempted; 1896 – Homer Barron from the North 1897/1898 – the smell More changes: painting lessons stop; tax; postal service 1936 Emily, dead

Plot (back and forth)Plot GAPS Story Sec 1 Present: Emily’s Death 1. Emily a lady guarded by her father • The tax episode (2 nd Generation) (tax remitted in 1894 by Colonel Sartoris) 2. 1894 The father’s death, which Emily denies Sec 2 • (vanquished the town people) 30 years before, the smell episode The father’s death 3. Emily changed, goes out with HB (1 year later; 2 years after her father’s death ) Sec 3 • Homer Baron episode: Emily, a changed person with H. Barron; (wants touch of earthiness) Poison 4. The two cousins’ intervention // poison; HB returns, no longer seen Sec 4 Homer Baron episode: Relatives’ intervention Time passes (30 yrs), she grows fatter and older; teaches china painting at age 40 Emily, isolated, turns down the postal service death 6 months out of sight grey & fat 5. Smell Emily retreats from public life no mail box – 30 years later Sec 5 Present: The house opened, secret revealed. (age 74) Tax: Emily old and fat

Emily Grierson: Images & Rumors --the mad woman, -- or a lady trying to love and to survive?

Emily: Different Images (1) Slender • Controll Young ed Emily (5)Motionless • Smell like an idol (6)Fat, like a (2)Deprived • The Father’s Emily, a death Pauper (3)Short Haired, tragic & serene bloated • Tax corpse • Goes out with HB (4) Proud • Gets arsenic Emily • Joins the (7) Dead army of soldiers

(1) Young Emily n n The decline of the Gierson family: old Lady Wyatt mad, two cousins away, only her father and her left. (1) Her Father’s control q “We had long thought of them as a tableau; Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled (跨坐) silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back flung front door. ” (par 25)

The Young Emily: isolated, trying to adjust n After her father’s death 2) isolated, she refuses to accept it “no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead” “she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will. ” 3) Trying to adjust With an angelic look as a girl, she is proud but trying to adjust (at the age of 32? ) n "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" (par 29)

(4) Emily: Going for Arsenic n n n (par 34) 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 eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse keeper’s face ought to look. “I want some poison, ” she said. 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. ” Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went

(5) Emily: Smell Episode n (par 24) a window that had been dark was lighted n 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

(6) The Old Emily: Tax Episode n (par 6) 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) Emily & The Elderly 3. (par 55) The funeral – Emily underneath the “bought” flowers, q the father’s “crayon face” above, q the elderly “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 bottle neck of the most recent decade of years” the past is forever present; other meanings? q n 4. The room upstairs with its rose decoration…

Two Concepts of Time Chronological Time Mathmatic Progression Decay + progress Winterless Meadow

Images of Love and Death See here Many others here, too.

Pay close attention to the description of Emily’s Room … n (par 5) 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.

Pay close attention to the description of Emily’s Room … n n n A contrast to the image of the past as a green meadow (57) The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall (棺材罩布) as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal (bridal chamber 新房): 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.

Pay close attention to the description of Emily’s Room … n n Room – death, decay + rose color + tender and loving care in the arrangement (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.

Narrators: Their Contradictory Views -- Old generations -- Younger generations

Contradictory Views on Emily (1): As History n n A lady and the last Grierson; for the town people q q An object of observation and gossip. A symbol of history: n q “Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town. ” (par 3) A strong personality and an old fashioned lady: “Thus she passed from generation to generation dear, inescapable, impervious (不受影響的), tranquil, and perverse. ” (par 51)

Contradictory Views on Emily (2): As a Lady 1) Finds the Griersons too proud: Emily single at 30 Vindicated (proved right) 2) After the father’s death q We: “people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. ” q Emily’s denial of death ( “dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. ” par 27) Sympathetic: not crazy; “we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will. q 3) “Poor Emily” 4) feel sorry for her.

Contradictory Views on Emily (2): As a Lady n n An object of observation and gossip. (par 25) [smell episode] 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 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, …. 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.

3) Town People’s Intervention & Gossips ”Poor Emily” some glad, some disagreeing: shouldn’t forget about her nobility “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her. ” guessing and gossiping: q q “Poor Emily, ” the whispering began. [Guess…] “Of course it is. What else could. . . ” This behind their hands [secretly]; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies [百葉窗] closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop of the matched team passed: “Poor Emily. ”

Town People’s Intervention & Gossips continued (par 43) 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”. . . intervening: Then the women see it “a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. ” the relatives are fetched.

Town People’s Intervention & Gossips (par 45) Emily bought a toilet set and suit for the wedding “They are married. ” We were really glad (par 43) Arsenic So the next day we all said, “She will kill herself”; and we said it would be the best thing.

Contradictory Views on Emily (3): As a Scandal The Smell Episode n Conflicting View points among the town people: q q The women: the negro—or any “man” cannot do good housekeeping. “another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons. ” The young man—send her a word and ask her to clean up her house and give her a deadline. Judge Stevens: cannot accuse a lady that she smells. All concerned with social propriety—of different kinds, but not her well being.

Contradictory Views on Emily (3): As a Scandal n n To avoid confrontation (par 24) The men sneak there to sprinkle lime (as disinfectant 消毒劑); q n They see Emily: “Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. ” Then they feel really sorry for her. (par 25)

Is Emily a Murderer? Yes No • to love and keep him • to seek revenge against the town people or the cousins • HB had a heart attack • The father’s corpse

Emily on Trial Emily Empathized Group 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12: Is Emily guilty of murdering Homer Barron? Group 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11: Why does she do it? What could have been done to avoid it?

1) Opening statements The prosecution [4] and then the defense [8] make opening statements to the judge or jury. These statements provide an outline of the case that each side expects to prove. 2) Prosecution case-in-chief The prosecution [4] presents its main case through direct examination of prosecution witnesses. (Prosecution calls witnesses from group [10] and [12]. ) 3) Cross-examination. The defense [8] may cross examine the prosecution witnesses. Lawyer asking the witnesses to get direct evidence 4) Defense case-in-chief. The defense [8] presents its main case through direct examination of defense witnesses, including Emily [6] 5) Cross-examination. The prosecutor cross examines the defense witnesses. 6) [2] Judge's questions & 7) Jury's deliberations

Courtroom Vocabulary eviden courtroom a trial sentence Simplified attorney ce a witness Perpetrat or Suspect defendant Plaintiff counsel for the defense counsel for the prosecution; case the deceased the victim Prosecution/ Prosecutor custody lawyer The court is now in session, …. The case before us is that of … I’d like to call my first witness… Thank you, ~. No further questions. Sir, I must protest …

n George: Oh, right, yes, uhhhh, oh. . . Uh, gentlemen, you have heard all the evidence presented here today, but in the end it is up to the conscience of your hearts to decide, and I firmly believe, that like me, you will conclude that Captain Blackadder is in fact, totally and utterly, GUILTY. . . of nothing more than trying to do his duty under difficult circumstances.

Witnesses n [10] first generation For Prosecutor For Defendant’s Lawyer those who complained about Emily's smell Colonel Sartoris or Judge Stevens (those who respect the Griersons as aristocrats) those who witness her "fall" Those that say “Poor Emily” going out with Homer Barron the druggist that sells arsenic to Emily Those in their brushed Confederate uniforms that remember Emily as young Tobe and the two cousins of Emily's a tradition, a duty, and a care for town people, a sort of hereditary obligation

Witnesses n [12] second generation: q q , those who g o inside the house and find the corpse and other evidence (further divided into men and women) For Prosecutor For Defendant’s Lawyer those who think Emily should pay tax Those taking painting lessons with Emily Those that find her impervious and perverse Those that find her dear, inescapable and tranquil,

Emily Empathized Factors to Consider: Group 1 Emily as the last Grierson Group 3 Emily as a symbol Group 5 The narrators Group 7 Historic setting Group 9 & 11 How to avoid it

Let’s Take … a Break!!! 10: 18 – 10: 38 Discussion 10: 38 – 11: 18 Emily on Trial 11: 20 – 11: 40 Emily Empathized 11: 40 – 12: 00 Peer Response & Conclusion

The Failure of Emily’s Love – Why? n Dating Homer Barron, an “Outsider”: q q q n A Northerner, but sociable (pretty soon he knew everybody in town the center of a group. ) From a different class: A foreman “He likes only men. The town people’s intervention getting the two cousins to come n What could possibly be Emily’s responses? The meanings of her strained look (arsenic scene) Why?

Emily’s Stubbornness: a. strong b. (The Smell) obsessive? 1. Emily as a strong Lady vs. the Town: q q “Dammit, sir, ” Judge Stevens said, “will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad? ” “So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. ” 2. Love and death: The smell (sec II “two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart […] had deserted her”) She refuses to let go.

Emily’s Stubbornness: c. Her “Unmoved” Image = Death n n (par 24) Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. (par 51) 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.

Emily (3): Images of Death vs. Strong Will Death q Her bloating body q Her death. q “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. Strong Will q Her keeping a corpse with her. q Hair pepper and salt iron gray, “like the hair of an active man. “ q On the bed: “a long strand of iron gray hair. “

Note n Old South vs. New South Following the Civil War, prominent Southern whites wanted to portray the New South as a region which no longer embraced the plantation and slave labor mentality of the "Old South. " The New South had the same capability to develop manufacturing and industry as the North. … [However, this] New South creed became more of a slogan for various Southern towns and cities, but it wasn't exactly the public relations miracle many elite Southerners hoped it would be. While many Southern states did start to distance themselves from the prejudices and inequalities of the Old South, there were still a number of issues which continued to tarnish the perception of a truly New South. Segregation between blacks and whites was still an active practice, for example. (source) n noblesse oblige (sec 3) "Noblesse oblige" is generally used to imply that with wealth, power and prestige come responsibilities. (source)

Genre: The Gothic Story n n The Gothic horror tale is a literary form dating back to 1764 with the first novel identified with the genre, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Ontralto. Gothicism features an atmosphere of terror and dread: gloomy castles or mansions, sinister characters, and unexplained phenomena. Gothic novels and stories also often include unnatural combinations of sex and death. Some can be thrilling, and some, profound discovery of human nature (unconsciousness)

“A Rose for Emily” as a southern gothic n n n n 51 “disturbed people doing disturbing things” strange characters macabre occurrences “grotesque” social issues, behavioral codes taboo topics Norton American Gothic

William Faulkner on Emily n From Faulkner at Nagano (1956) Norton [Faulkner]: I feel sorry for Emily’s tragedy; her tragedy was, she was an only child, an only daughter. At the time when she could have found a husband, could have had a life of her own, there was probably some one, her father, who said, “No, you must stay here and take care of me. ” And then when she found a man, she had no experience in people. She picked out probably a bad one, who was about to desert her. And when she lost him she could see that for her that was the end of life, there was nothing left, except to grow older, alone, solitary; she had something and she wanted to keep it, which is bad— to go to any length to keep something; but I pity 52 Emily.

William Faulkner on Emily and the Title n n I don’t know whether I would have liked her or not, I might have been afraid of her. Not of her but of anyone who had suffered, had been warped, as her life had probably been warped by a selfish father. [The title] was an allegorical title; the meaning was, here was a woman who had a tragedy, an irrevocable tragedy and nothing could be done about it, and I pitied her and this was a salute. . . to a woman you would hand a rose. From Faulkner at Nagano, ed. Robert Jelliffe (Tokyo: Kenkyusha Ltd. , 1956), pp. 70– 71.

Introduction to Literature A Rose for Emily - The Zombies

Mid Term Exam 1) 2) 3) Text Analysis Questions (30%) 2 out of 4 Essay Questions (30%) – 2 out of 4 – no overlapping of choice of texts in Part 1) and 2) Comparison Question (40%) 1 out of 2

Mid Term Exam n Essay Questions –choose 2 q q Where does the narrator “show” the environment more than “tell” what happens in “Boys and Girls”? Give two examples and explain the effects. How is Mangan’s Sister described in “Araby” with what images and why? How do you describe Sammy’s language in “A & P”? Analyze at least two features and give examples to each. How do you characterize the narrators in “A Rose for Emily”?