William Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily"
Commentary by Karen Bernardo

Faulkner’s "A Rose For Emily" is told from the viewpoint of an anonymous resident of Jefferson, Mississippi, where the Grierson family was the closest thing to true aristocracy. The story presents a powerful argument that privilege can sometimes be a prison.

To the outside world, it might have appeared that Miss Emily Grierson grew up in the lap of luxury. However, it was a lonely existence, for her father ruled Emily’s life with an iron fist, turning away every suitor the young girl had; no one was good enough for his daughter. Not surprisingly, the first thing Emily did after her father’s death was to find a boyfriend, and a very unlikely one at that -- a Yankee day laborer named Homer Barron. She went out driving with Homer in a flashy yellow-wheeled buggy, and bought him extremely personal articles -- a silver toilet set, a nightshirt. Today our first assumption would be that he was her lover, but this was the small-town South, and another time. The townspeople assumed she had gotten married -- secretly, of course, because under the circumstances a big society wedding would be in bad taste.

For a while Emily convinced herself that the townspeople still respected her. After all, she never really intended Homer to supplant her father in the eyes of the town. He couldn’t have, because he was neither a Son of the South nor a pillar of the community; Homer’s role was simply that of a consort, filling a vacancy at Emily’s side. But when Emily learned Homer was gay, she realized his presence would cause her to be pitied and laughed at. This she could not abide, so he had to go.

Who else but a Grierson would be able to stroll into the pharmacy, demand arsenic, and refuse to explain what she intended to use it for? How could the townspeople have failed to notice that shortly thereafter, Emily’s lover disappeared, never to be seen again? How could they have failed to connect Homer’s disappearance with the terrible smell that emanated from the Grierson house? The logical conclusion -- that Emily had murdered her lover -- could not be incorporated into the myth that the townspeople had constructed around her. It was unspeakable, so no one spoke of it.

Forty years later, after Emily died, the townspeople cautiously entered the house that few had visited since the death of Mr. Grierson. There they were moved, but not really surprised, to find Homer’s skeletal body on a sumptuous bed in a locked room, Emily’s iron-gray hair lying on the pillow beside his head. In "A Rose for Emily," Faulkner shows the tragedy that results from our adherence to social roles that constrain, rather than liberate, our true selves.

“A Rose for Emily” was originally published in the April 30, 1930, issue of Forum. It was his first short story published in a major magazine. A slightly revised version was published in two collections of his short fiction, These 13 (1931) and Collected Stories (1950). It has been published in dozens of anthologies as well. “A Rose for Emily” is the story of an eccentric spinster, Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the strange circumstances of Emily’s life and her odd relationships with her father, her lover, and the town of Jefferson, and the horrible secret she hides. The story’s subtle complexities continue to inspire critics while casual readers find it one of Faulkner’s most accessible works. The popularity of the story is due in no small part to its gruesome ending.

Faulkner often used short stories to “flesh out” the fictional kingdom of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, for his novels. In fact, he revised some of his short fiction to be used as chapters in those novels. “A Rose for Emily” takes place in Jefferson, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha. Jefferson is a critical setting in much of Faulkner’s fiction. The character of Colonel Sartoris plays a role in the story; he is also an important character in the history of Yoknapatawpha. However, “A Rose for Emily” is a story that stands by itself. Faulkner himself modestly referred to it as a “ghost story,” but many critics recognize it as an extraordinarily versatile work. As Frank A. Littler writes in Notes on Mississippi Writers, ‘‘A Rose for Emily’’ has been ‘‘read variously as a Gothic horror tale, a study in abnormal psychology, an allegory of the relations between North and South, a meditation on the nature of time, and a tragedy with Emily as a sort of tragic heroine.’’

A Rose for Emily Summary

The story, told in five sections, opens in section one with an unnamed narrator describing the funeral of Miss Emily Grierson. (The narrator always refers to himself in collective pronouns; he is perceived as being the voice of the average citizen of the town of Jefferson.) He notes that while the men attend the funeral out of obligation, the women go primarily because no one has been inside Emily’s house for years. The narrator describes what was once a grand house ‘‘set on what had once been our most select street.’’ Emily’s origins are aristocratic, but both her house and the neighborhood it is in have deteriorated. The narrator notes that prior to her death, Emily had been ‘‘a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.’’ This is because Colonel Sartoris, the former mayor of the town, remitted Emily’s taxes dating from the death of her father “on into perpetuity.’’ Apparently, Emily’s father left her with nothing when he died. Colonel Sartoris invented a story explaining the remittance of Emily’s taxes (it is the town’s method of paying back a loan to her father) to save her from the embarrassment of accepting charity.

The narrator uses this opportunity to segue into the first of several flashbacks in the story. The first incident he describes takes place approximately a decade before Emily’s death. A new generation of politicians takes over Jefferson’s government. They are unmoved by Colonel Sartoris’s grand gesture on Emily’s behalf, and they attempt to collect taxes from her. She ignores their notices and letters. Finally, the Board of Aldermen sends a deputation to discuss the situation with her. The men are led into a decrepit parlor by Emily’s black man-servant, Tobe. The first physical description of Emily is unflattering: she is ‘‘a small, fat woman in black” who looks “bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.” After the spokesman awkwardly explains the reason for their visit, Emily repeatedly insists that she has no taxes in Jefferson and tells the men to see Colonel Sartoris. The narrator notes that Colonel Sartoris has been dead at that point for almost ten years. She sends the men away from her house with nothing.