ENG 113
Instructor Risch
“A Rose for Emily”
By William Faulkner
January 10, 2011
Donna Stevens
Journal 2
My initial response to the story was that it was a very morbid story. The setting was in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and a ripe scene for ghost stories. This story was about a woman who desired a normal life with a husband and possibly children. She was denied that life by her father. Her personal oppression was also felt in the attitudes of the southerners of that time. She was not the only person that was miserable and could not realize the dream of a happy life. She had a servant that was in bondage in that house with her. The servant was the only one who knew her secrets. In some ways, he was her only friend because he stayed true to her. He was the only man that her father had not driven away. Yet, he was not a suitable husband. She desired to marry Homer. Homer was a homosexual. Miss Emily had the opportunity to have a happy life with Homer from her perspective, yet Homer could not love her. Because she insisted on keeping that which did not love her, she poisoned Homer and kept his rotting corpse in her bedroom. She was raised to marry someone and not to “take a lover” (Meyer 99). Also, she knew not to murder someone, but since she had already sinned against God when she “took a lover”, she decided to make herself happy and keep this man in her house no matter what (Meyer 99). In this way, she had someone to love. She probably slept with Homer every night except for the night she died. She died in a downstairs bedroom. She probably wanted to keep Homer a secret as long as possible. Or maybe, she did not want to die in “front of him”.
In response to the list of questions, there were not any suitable suitors for Emily because her father kept running everyone away. I think that maybe her father may have abused her in some way so he needed to keep her sequestered as long as possible. Emily responds to being denied suitors by eventually trapping Homer and then poisoning him when he decides to leave. Emily takes up with Homer because he was the only man that she had ever spent any time with. She rode in the buggy with Homer and probably fell in love with him, but of course, he did not feel the same about her. She probably imagined their life together after she convinced him to love her. I’m not sure where Homer went when he left or why he came back. I guess it was to give the cousins time to leave. The cousins probably were talking about his sexual orientation and trying to “fix” him. This probably irritated him, so he left. I think that he came back because he and Emily were friends until she surprised him with the silver toilet seat, and wedding clothes. This was all too much for him, and so she poisoned him. She killed him so that she could keep him as her husband. She had also tried to keep her father in the same way, but the townspeople made her give him up. She was determined to have a husband. This determination was very present when she bought the rat poison from the pharmacist and started him down instead of giving him an answer as to how she would use it. Miss Emily sat and watched the men scatter the lime across the yard. She was going to make sure that they did not get into her house. She felt threatened by their presence because she made sure they saw her watching them, but as long as they did not want to enter her house, she knew she would be fine. Her relationship with Tobe was that of a master and servant. Unfortunately, Tobe was probably the truest friend she had, yet she never acknowledged him as such. How crazy was she? Miss Emily was crazy enough to keep her dead father’s corpse in her house for three days after he died. This man drove away every man that ever came near her. He had kept her from a normal married life, yet she clung to him after his death. She also was crazy enough to buy a homosexual man a silver toilet seat and some clothes and expect him to switch teams. Then, when he refused, she killed him and slept with his corpse until she left gray hair on her pillow. I’d say she had issues. She allows her home inside and out to decay so much so that she does not draw attention to it. If she can keep people away, then she may be able to keep her dead husband a secret and still get to sleep with him every night. The reason the story ends the way that it does is because it gives the reader a sense of a creepy story. The thought of a next door neighbor sleeping with a corpse nightly is not a comforting “I’ll leave the light on” thought. This morbid detail makes the story more entertaining.
