In “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner uses a unique narrative technique to tell the story of Miss Emily Grierson. This story is set in the fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, in the early twentieth century. Faulkner’s use of time and setting effects the reader’s understanding of the characters and their motivations.
One important aspect of Faulkner’s use of time is his juxtaposition of past and present. The story is narrated by an unnamed member of the community who looks back on Miss Emily’s life. This framing device allows Faulkner to explore the complex dynamics between Miss Emily and the rest of the townspeople. It also provides insight into why Miss Emily behaves in the ways that she does.
Another important aspect of the story’s setting is the town of Jefferson itself. Faulkner creates a richly detailed portrait of this small Southern town. The reader gets a sense of the close-knit community and the ways in which Miss Emily is both apart from and a part of it. Faulkner’s use of setting helps to create a powerful sense of atmosphere and tension.
In “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner employs the principle of time to develop both the setting and the narrative. By skipping over Miss Emily’s lifetime in chronological order, Faulkner first gives the reader a completed jigsaw puzzle, and then allows him or her to inspect each piece of it one at a time. He complicates the plot by adding two contrasting views on time possessed by the characters.
Faulkner also uses foreshadowing through the use of time to add suspense to the story. The story opens with a brief history of the Grierson family, which helps to establish the setting as a small town in the deep south during the late 1800s/early 1900s. This immediately gives the reader a sense of Miss Emily’s isolation not only within her house, but also within her social class.
Faulkner then employs the use of foreshadowing when he writes, “When Miss Emily 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…” (Faulkner 9). Faulkner’s use of the word “fallen” suggests that Miss Emily’s death will be a fall from grace, both literally and figuratively.
As the story progresses, Faulkner paints a picture of a town that is slowly changing while Miss Emily remains trapped in time. The new generation wants to forget the past (represented by Miss Emily), while Miss Emily wants to cling to the past (represented by her father). In this way, Faulkner uses time as a symbol for change. When Homer Barron comes into town, he represents the future and modernization, which frightens Miss Emily. She even goes so far as to try to buy him with money and gifts, but he breaks away from her.
The first perspective (the world of the present) perceives time as a “mechanical sequence” in which “the past is a narrowing road,” according to which history is divided into two periods: the dimen-sion of recent decades and the vast meadow that no winter ever quite touches, separated from them now by the slenderest passageway of years gone by. According to this view, history was divided into two periods: The dimen-sion of recent decades and
In her mind, the present and the past are one. One of the main themes in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is the clash between the traditional and modern ways of looking at time. The story is narrated from two different perspectives: the perspective of the present, which views time as a “mechanical progression” in which the past is a “diminishing road”, and the perspective of tradition and the past, which views the past as “a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches”.
The older members of the Board of Aldermen and of the confederate soldiers hold this view, while Homer and the modern generation see time as a sequence of isolated moments. Emily represents a bridge between these two perspectives, as she is able to hold on to the past while still living in the present.
The story begins with a description of Emily’s funeral, which is attended by the townspeople. They are not there to mourn her death, but to gossip about her life. The narrator then tells us about Emily’s father, who was a very strict man. He kept her from socializing with the other young people in the town, and she grew up to be a shy and reclusive woman.
When Mr. Grierson died, Emily was left alone in the house. She refused to let anyone enter it, and she became increasingly isolated from the townspeople. The only person who seemed to understand her was Homer Barron, a construction worker who was doing some work on her property. The townspeople were jealous of Homer because he seemed to have a relationship with Emily.
One day, the townspeople saw Homer and Emily loading a mattress into her car. They knew that something was going on, and they were soon gossiping about it. A few weeks later, Homer disappeared, and no one ever saw him again. A few months later, Emily died.
The townspeople were curious about what happened to Homer, so they asked Emily’s lawyer to open her house. Inside, they found that she had been keeping Homer’s body in the upstairs bedroom. They also found that she had been using his money to pay for all of her expenses.
The story concludes with the townspeople’s discussion about Emily’s life. They all have different theories about what happened to Homer, but no one knows for sure. They agree that she was a strange woman, and they are glad that she is finally dead.
With a closer look at Miss Emily’s life, we see the significance of the place in which the narrative is set. The house where she resides remains static and unaltered as her municipality grows. Inside her enclosure, Miss Emily conquers time and growth. In chapter one, Faulkner transports us back to when Miss Emily refused to pay her taxes in 1894. She feels that simply because Colonel Sartoris remitted her taxes in 1894, she is exempt from paying them years later. Time continues to pass; however, Miss Emily has put a stop to it.
In the following chapter, Faulkner takes us to the day of Miss Emily’s death. The only thing that is new in the town is that a “street-lamp at the corner was gasoline and not kerosene” (Faulkner, 108). Even this new light doesn’t shine into Miss Emily’s house. Symbolically speaking, her home remains dark and untouched by time. In an interview with The Paris Review, Faulkner stated: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” This quote reflects the idea that Miss Emily is stuck in time and that her house is a physical embodiment of that state.
Interestingly enough, time does catch up to her in the end. Faulkner writes, “the smell was different now: it was a pungent and acrid smell” (Faulkner, 109). This is the first time that something in her house has changed and it foreshadows Miss Emily’s impending death. The smell becomes stronger and more unbearable as the story goes on, until Miss Emily finally dies inside her own home. In the end, time has won and Miss Emily’s house is no longer a safe haven from the progression of the outside world.
