Second Rough Draft

A Marxist Reading of A Rose for Emily

A Rose for Emily is a short story published in 1930 by American author William Faulkner. Marxist criticism is a type of criticism in which literary works are viewed as the product of work and whose practitioners emphasize the role of class and ideology as they reflect, propagate, and even challenge the prevailing social order. Rather than viewing texts as repositories for hidden meanings, Marxist critics view texts as material products to be understood in broadly historical terms. In short, literary works are views as a product of work (and hence of realm of production and consumption we call economics)” (Murfin and Ray).  Marxist criticism started with Karl Marx and Karl Marx believed that literature shows how that particular society’s economic system is responsible for everything and everything in society. Karl Marx also believed that the history of a society is also a history of class clashes and struggles. Soon this was developed into Marxist Literary Theory. A Rose for Emily is a perfect short story to interrupt using Marxism because the story is pretty much entirely all about class. Just because one’s social and class is high it does not necessarily make them a happy individual. A Rose for Emily proves this because Emily was not what she appeared to be. She was an unhappy woman who was living in the past where she was wealthy, conflicted over her love life, and probably had a mental disorder. William Faulkner weaves all of this into the story without ever hearing Emily's father and barely hearing Emily's point of view. We almost completely hear the story from the town's people’s stories and the narrator.

Emily Grierson used to teach china painting and this represents that Emily is finically well off because only middle and upper class individuals do because china painting is rather consuming and quite expensive, most people would not be spending money of china-painting. ”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” Since Emily has not taught china-painting in about 10 years and she was fine financially then it shows a lot about just how well off Emily and her father were. China also seems to be a representation of Emily herself, china represents that she is wealthy and when Emily stopped teaching china-painting it resembles when Emily stopped going out and being an active part of society.

Emily was treated as a commodity within her town. “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument…”. (Faulkner, 1). “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 1864 when Colonel Sartoris, 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 onto perpetuity. Not that Miss’ Emily would have accepted charity” (Faulkner, 1).This shows that the other town’s people viewed Emily and her father as people who were high and mighty, almost royalty in their town and that Miss Emily viewed herself in the same sort of way when it says she would never have accepted charity from someone. This stresses to the reader that Emily is of higher status. Also, it says that Emily and her father were thought of to be less like regular people and more like town's property because of their high status and Emily's father's attitude. He did not associate himself with regular people, to the extent that he would not even let Emily see someone romantically that was of lower class.

Emily’s father viewed that since they were financially well off and high class that suitors for his daughter would have to be of very high class as well. “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 tableau; Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. 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 id they has really materialized” (Faulkner, 2). Emily’s father would drive away any man that was in any class longer than him and his daughter. “Her father does not appear directly in the whole story, but his influence exists everywhere. “We had long thought of them as a tableau, ground, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door” This is the remark of townspeople about the relationship between Emily and her father, which shows vividly the dominance of the paternalistic father over the silent daughter. The overprotective father manipulates Emily’s everyday life like a despotic king and drives away all her suitors so that she is still single when she gets to be thirty. He does not think that any of the young men are quite good enough for his daughter. Her father is the only man with whom she has a close relationship, so after her father has died, she cannot admit the fact of his death and does not let people dispose of his body until “they were about to resort to law and force”. Emily’s domineering and overprotective father does not allow her to form a normal relationship with any men because he thinks none of them is a good match for his daughter. He is arrogant, proud, and looks down upon these young men courting his daughter. Emily is accustomed to living under this kind of severe and inappropriate paternal protection. There is not any tender and thoughtful maternal love. Therefore, she has no voice in her family and she cannot dare to strive for her own happiness and marriage. The long time of her father’s control suffocates the sentiment of an ordinary girl. Her emotions are suppressed, like a dormant volcano which will not break out unless a spark appears in due conditions. Besides, the overprotection also makes the father and daughter count on each other: the father does not allow his daughter to marry any other man while the daughter also takes her father’s control as a kind of protection and security, so she denies accepting his death and she cannot live in the world with a feeling of being dispossessed and helpless” (Yang, 1851).  You do not actually get to see or hear how Emily feels about her father not letting her see anyone but one can assume from the ending that Emily felt conflicted about it because she seemed to obey her father's wishes but she also slept beside Homer Baron's decomposing corpse.

When Emily’s father died, the town’s people view on Emily soured because she was not as financially stable as she had once been and she was in the same class as the rest of the town. “When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At least they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less” (Faulkner, 2). People were happy that Emily no longer had her high class status. Despite their lack of respect toward Emily, they still tried to preserve the illusion of her formerly high status and her perceived greatness. Even when Emily had the corpse of her father in their house and tried to claim to the other town’s people that her father was not dead. The town’s people did not blame her. “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 with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (Faulkner, 3). They tried to reason excuses with themselves to show that she was alright. The town’s people pitied her and they thought it had just been a part of the grief process at the time so they did not assume she was crazy, but in the end when they found the grey strand of hair next to Homer’s decomposing body, they most certainty did. “Emily’s attachment to her father had lasting repercussions: “The Oedipal desires expressed in Emily’s affair with Homer were never recognized by the people of Jefferson, and Emily herself was aware of them only as subconscious longings”. On the contrary, the townspeople are extremely sensitive to Emily’s psychological state. When Emily tries to keep her father’s corpse, they “believed that she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” The fact that certain people in town knew that Homer was in the upstairs room argues a similar recognition of Emily’s need to cling to Homer as she had tried to cling to her father: only, this time, they let her keep the body” (Getty, 231-232). This shows that the town’s people pitied Emily and they turned a blind eye to anything that she had done, although the whole town had known that there was a strange smell emitted from Emily’s house and they knew that Emily had purchased arsenic from the druggist. The town’s officials just sprinkled lime on her property to make the smell disappear and everyone ignored Emily’s purchase of arsenic and Homer Baron’s disappearance. This implies that the town’s officials knew about Emily’s murder of Homer Baron and that she had kept his decaying body in her room for forty years.

People seemed to regard Emily and her father as commodities but in reality Emily lost much of her money when her father died and her house nor her were in the best condition. Everyone seemed to ignore this because Emily and her father still had high statuses from a previous time period where being born into money meant automatic prestige and high status and respect. “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, [1870s] 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 neighbourhood; only Miss Emily's house was left lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps and eyesores among eyesores” (Faulkner, 1). This shows just how in shambles Emily's father's house truly was and how it was decaying. It also mentions how it used to be on the town's most popular, fancy street but now it is among the town's old, decaying past and it's new, modernism. “And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedarbemused cemetery among the ranked and among the ranked and anonymous graves of the Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson” (Faulkner, 1). This shows that Emily was the last person of the old era and after she passed away no one was left who remembered the older era of wealth, respect, and family money. “received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy”(Faulkner, 1). This shows that Emily was outdated. The paper she used was an archaic shape, meaning it was old and no longer used. Emily Grierson was the last of her generation. “…she no longer is part of the old order of aristocratic families, because she is the last Grierson; when her father dies, she is not so much part of the Grierson line but left dangling at the end of a patrilineal lineage” (Harris, 176). She is the death of an old time.

William Falkner wrote A Rose for Emily in 1930 and it has since become a classic short story about gossip, wealth, murder, and a decaying woman. Through the town’s people’s stories Falkner has also talked about how Emily Grierson was an unhappy woman who was living in the past where she was wealthy, conflicted over her love life, and probably had a mental disorder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited Page

 

Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." A Rose for Emily. Web. 13 May 2015.

Getty, Laura J. "Faulkner's a Rose for Emily." The Explicator 63.4 (2005): 230-34. Faulkner's A ROSE FOR EMILY.. Taylor & Francis Ltd. Web. 13 May 2015.

Harris, A. "In Search of Dead Time: Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"" KronoScope 7.2 (2007): 169-83. In Search of Dead Time: Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily". . Brill. Web. 13 May 2015.

Murfin, Ross, and Supryia M. Ray. "DEFINITION OF MARXIST CRITICISM." VirtuaLit: Critical Approaches. Bedford Books, 1998. Web. 13 May 2015.

Yang, Pingping. "A Road to Destruction and Self-destruction: The Same Fate of Emily and Elly." Theory and Practice in Language Studies 3.10 (2013): 1850-854. A Road to Destruction and Self-destruction: The Same Fate of Emily and Elly. Academy Publication. Web. 13 May 2015.