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A Rose For Emily

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393 views8 pages

A Rose For Emily

Uploaded by

berfingucenmez5
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962) rus bore in New Allany, Mississippi, into an old southern family, When he wows a chi, his parents moved tothe isolated {own of Oxford, Mississippi, and except for his service in World Wir Land some time in New Orleans and Hollywood, he spent the rst of his Wife there. “I discovered my ‘ort title postage stamp of native soil us worth writing about, and that T would never live log enough to exhaust it" Fs literary career began in Neto Orlers, ‘where e Hive for six months and wrote newspaper sketches and stories forthe Times Picayune, Fe met Sherwoad Anderson in New Orleans, and Anders helped hime Publish his frst novel, Soldier's Pay, in 1926. Faulkner’ mjor work ons written it the late 1920s and the 1930s, when he created an imaginary county adjacent 10 Oxford, calling i Yoknapataxrpha County and svenicing its history in «series of experimental novels, nciuding The Sound and the Fury (1929), As 1 Lay Dying (4930), Sanctuary (7931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), ‘nd The Hamlet (7940). In these works he showed himself bea writer of gen, although “a wilifuly and perversely chaotic one,” as Jorge Luis Borges note, whose “labyrinthine world” required a no les labyrivthine prose technique to describe i pic marener the disintegration ofthe South through may generations, Faullner was ‘awnrde the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952, Faulkner experimented with wsing a child's point of view in "That Evening Suu," bute rarely included poetic imagery or treant of consciousness narration in his stores, cok he wrote he offen sai, to hes him pay bis rent. His bingrapher Frederic Karl has noted that he used srt fctor “as a means of working through, or toad, larger ides.” Fe tote nearly a hundre! stories, often revising them ater #0 {fits sections into a novel, Four books of his stories were published i his fete, and auoer thought ofeach asa collection possessing a discernible internal organization _He wrote his editor Maleolon Cowiey that “even toa collection of short stares, form, integration, i as important as to a novel —an entity ofits own, single, set for one pitch, contrapuntal in integration, toward one en, ee final.” Although some readers found symbolism in "A Rose for Emily” that suggestet ‘he was innplying a bateeBetceon the white characters in the South (Miss Emily her- sof) and inthe Nort (Homer Barron), Faller denied a schematic interpretation, “He said he hat intended to writea ghost sory, al “I think that the seritr i oo busy trying to create flesh-and-blood people that wil stand up and east shadow to have tne fo be conscious ofall the syraboism tat fe weny pu into what he does or what people may read into it Retarep Comnentas: William Faullner, “The Meaning of ‘A Rose for Entity” page 1490. 493, ee WILLIAM FAULKNER A Rose for Emily 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, whieh no one save an old mancervant —a combined gardener and cook —had seen in at least ten years twas 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 ofthat neighborhood: only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubbom and coguettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps —an eye sore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representa- tives of those august names where they lay in the cecar-bemusedl cemetery ‘among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers ‘who fell at the battle of Jefferson. ‘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 Sastoris, 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 hacl loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only 2 man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation end thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it, ‘Wien the next generation, with its more modem ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some itl 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 sherif's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wmte 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 ata. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment. "They called a special meeting of the Board of Alkermen. 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. Iwas furnished in heavy, leather- covered furniture, When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they a8 ARosefor Emily 485 ‘could see that the leather was cracked and when they sat down, a faint dust ‘ose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes inthe single sun say. On a tamished gilt ensel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of ‘Miss Emily's father ‘They rose when she entered — 2 small, fat woman in black, with a thin {gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing, into her belt, leaning on sm ebony cane with a tamished gold head. Hier skeleton was small andl spare perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in annthe ‘was obesity in her She looked bloated, like abody long subinerged in motion Jess water, and ofthat pallid hue. Her eyes, ost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coat presse! into a Lump of douigh as thes ‘moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand, She did not ask them to sit, She just stood in the door and listen! qu tly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could her lh invisible watch ticking atthe end of the gold chain Her voice was dry and cold. “Ihave no taxes in Jetferson. Colone! Sar- toris explained itto me, Peshaps one of you ean gain access tothe city recone and satisty yourselves.” “But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn’t you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?” “Lreceived a paper, yes,” Miss Emily said, “Perhaps he considers hin= self the sheriff... Thave no taxes in Jefferson.” “But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see, We must gy the “See Colonel Sartori. have no taxes in Jefferson.” “Bat, Miss Emily —" “See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years) “Ihave no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!” The Negro appeared. “Show these zentlemen out.” u ‘So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was twa years afte he 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 atall. few of the ladies had the temerity to call, But were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negeo man—a young man then — going in and out with a market basket “Just as if a man—any man—could keep a kitchen properly” the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. 1 wos another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and miphty Griersons Anneighbor, a woman, complained to tre mayor, fudge Stevens, eighty ‘years old. “But what will you have medo about it madam?" he sai. $86 tion Faulkner “Why, send hee word to stop it," the woman said. "Isnt there a law?" “Tm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stovens said. “I's probably jst a snake or a zat that nigger of hers killed in the yard, Ill speak to him about it “The next day he received two more complaints, one from 2 man who ‘came in dffident 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 todo some= thing,” That night the Board of Alclermen met — three graybeards and one younger man, a member ofthe rising generation. “Is simple enough,” he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to doit in, and ifske don't...” “Dammit, sit" Judge Stevens sad, “will you accuse a lady to her face of smelting bad?” othe next night, ater midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, siffing along the base ofthe brick- ‘work and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sow {ng motion with his hand ost ofa sack slung from his shoulder. They broke ‘open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, alin all the outbuildings. As ‘hey recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Exmily satin 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 steet. Atera week or two the smell went away, “That was when people had begun to fel really sorry for her. People in ‘our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt her great-aunt, had gone com pletely 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 lorg thought of them as a tableau, ‘Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spradalled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of thems framed by the backflung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vinelicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized. ‘When her father died, it got about thatthe house was all that was lft to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being Jeft alone, ane a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less. ‘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 dot, slressed as usual ane with no trace of grief or her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for hee days, with the ministers calling on thet, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let the dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and ‘orce, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly. 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 ARoxefor Emily 487 ‘with nothing left, she would have fo cling 0 that which had robbed her, as people will ot She was sick for a long time, When we saw her again, her hait was cut short, making her look likea girl, with a vagne resemblance to those angels in colored church windows — sort of tragic and serene. ‘The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidesvalks, and in the summer after her father’s death they began the work, The construction com- pany 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 thar his face. The little boys would fallow in groups to hear hira cuss the niggers, andthe 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 any- ‘where about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group, Presently, we began to see him and Miss Emuly on Sunday afternoons driving, in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery: stable. 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 North- femer, a day laborer.” But there were still others oller people, who said that even grief could not cause areal lady to forget noblese oblige — witha eall- ing 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 erazy woman, and there was xno communication between the two families. They had not even been repre- sented atthe funeral ‘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 itis 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

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