Narrating the story in the first-person plural ‘we’, William Faulkner masterly embraces the town’s perspective in his outstanding masterpiece A Rose for Emily. With the rich and varying symbolism prevailing throughout the story, the author grasps three major themes, the Post civil-war South, Tradition vs. Progress, and Patriarchal Authority and Control.
The Post Civil-War South
Prior to the American Civil War, the South’s economy predominantly relied on large farms and plantations owing to the exploitation of black slave workforce by affluent Southern white owner. Beyond economic output, the life in plantation assumed a clear social hierarchy with white farmers as wealthy aristocrats, commoners represented by middle-class whites, and impoverished blacks who were treated more as a property rather than humans. On this background, the quick rise of an aristocratic culture was inevitable. The new cultural tradition cherished chivalric values particular to medieval knights.
William Faulkner set the story in the post Civil War South deprived of plantation life and slavery to deliberately emphasize the contrast and impact on the established Southern culture. Once appeared in economic dire straits, Southerners, nonetheless, strived for maintaining their pre-war cultural traditions and turning their glorious past back. The author uses the fictional town (Jefferson, Mississippi) to feature the Old South through the personage of Colonel Sartoris whose racist law obliged black women put on their aprons in public and that way restore social hierarchy: “no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron” (Faulkner 81). Following the chivalric tradition, after Miss Emily’s father’s death, he excused her from paying taxes to Jefferson.
Faulkner portrays Miss Emily Grierson’s family as rather proud of their aristocratic background, which is a major precondition why Emily’s father prohibits her to have any romantic affairs with someone of a lower social class. The author portrays the dwellers of Jefferson as deeply devoted to their old traditions. After her father’s death, Miss Emily acts as if she is above all her poverty condition. She behaves in a rather haughty manner, though townspeople tolerate her as a living representative of the glorious past. Throughout the story she serves as a living symbol just as the cemetery to the victims of the Civil War or the Grierson’s family house.
Tradition vs. Progress
Faulkner uses the Grierson’s family house to emphasize pre-Civil War tradition as a thing of the past. Now, the rapidly changing reality is far beyond traditional values and ideals. Growing industry is being gradually substituted the conventional agriculture. Less prestigious (though more economically relevant and practical cotton gins) are being constructed to replace grandeur plantation-style houses. The ideals cherished by Jefferson authorities (members of the Board of Aldermen) are being substituted by far more practical governance and progressive ideas. Faulkner symbolizes progressive changes in Jefferson through the Northerner, Homer Barron, who paves the town’s sidewalks to make it more accessible. Through such a witty contrast, Faulkner articulates on democratic changes and technological progress gradually taking place in the conventional South. This way, Faulkner achieves a grand socio-economic reintegration between the progressive North and lacking behind, tradition-bound South. Despite all his attempts to make life in Jefferson more advanced, townspeople, nonetheless, remain ambivalent to all the progressive changes. While they are prepared to accept the changes of industrialization and modernization, they still are not ready to sacrifice their Old South tradition assuming clear social hierarchy as well as cultural tradition emphasizing human dignity and propriety: “Emily carried her head high enough – even when we believed that she was fallen” (Faulkner 125).
Patriarchal Authority and Control
Through the image of the Old South Faulkner alludes to lifetime nostalgia. Female exclusion from conventionally-bound male activities is more than apparent throughout the story. Males are the major governors of the city life. The town authorities are all composed of men. The division in social hierarchy is more than evident. Beyond public domain, men take full control over the private lives of women in Jefferson. For instance, Emily’s father instructs her on her allowed suitors he will approve of: “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such” (Faulkner 123). Thereof, Faulkner raises sub-themes to highlights male dominance, like stiff propriety, social repression, as well as articulation of female virginity all featuring the deeply patriarchal Southern tradition.
William Faulkner’s masterpiece A Rose for Emily provides a symbolic contrast between the downgrading South and the progressive North. To illustrate it, the author highlights the after-Civil War socio-economic transformations, the society’s readiness to accept progress and changes versus the Tradition, and the adversity of the deeply rooted male’s patriarchal authority and dominance over women in both public and private life of Jefferson.
