A rose for Emily

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William Faulkner (1954), photo by Carl Van Vechten

A Rose for Emily (English original title: A Rose for Emily , German translation by Elisabeth Schnack ) is a short story by the American writer and later Nobel Prize winner for literature William Faulkner , which was written in autumn 1929. It was first published in The Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia, 1930) and appeared in Forum magazine on April 30, 1930 , making it Faulkner's first story in a major magazine. The story was then included in the thesis 13 collection in 1931 and has been anthologized many times since then. According to the unanimous view of the critics, it is not only one of Faulkner's most famous, but also structurally probably most elegant short stories.

The story is about the spinster Miss Emily Grierson, her standing in the fictional city of Jefferson, Mississippi , and her reluctance to change.

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The short story takes place in Jefferson, the capital of Faulkner's fictional narrative landscape Yoknapatawpha County in the southern United States. A rose for Emily begins with the announcement that Miss Emily Grierson has died and the whole city has come to her funeral, the men out of respect for a fallen monument, the women out of curiosity to see the inside of their house, especially since no one but theirs veteran black employees for the past ten years. Her home is in a shabby, once glamorous part of Jefferson.

In Emily Grierson's youth, the father chased away all men who applied for his daughter. After his death, Miss Emily initially refuses to surrender his body and only gives in when the city authorities intervene. Emily is now around thirty, and she threatens to become an "old maid". But she begins a relationship with working-class Northerners Homer Barron; Rumors arise in the village and there is speculation about what it will be. However, the relationship breaks down because of Homer Barron's infidelity; after a short time he is no longer seen. A foul smell begins to emanate from Emily Grierson's house, one wonders in town whether she poisoned rats, after all they saw her buy arsenic in the pharmacy. You file a complaint with the judge, who does not want to take legal action against Miss Emily. After men secretly scatter quicklime on the property, the smell disappears.

Time goes by, the city gets a new government. Miss Emily is suddenly supposed to pay taxes, although she received the privilege of not having to pay taxes from old mayor Colonel Sartoris after the death of her father, who had died without much fortune. Sartrois justified her tax exemption in an untrustworthy way with the fact that her father had granted the city a generous loan. Miss Emily refuses to pay taxes. When a city delegation turns up at her place, she has to leave without having achieved anything. Miss Emily is getting old and gray, like her only servant who maintains sparse contact with the outside world.

When Miss Emily died lonely in her home at the age of 74, residents of the town invaded her home. They break into a locked room and find the decayed corpse of Homer Barron in his wedding clothes in bed. Next to his head is another pillow with the imprint of a head and long iron-gray hair.

subjects

One theme of the story is the contrast between “new” and “old”, “healthy” and “sick”, the conflict between the adherents of lore and traditions on the one hand and progressive and dynamic population groups of a city on the other. The decay of the formerly noble district in which the protagonist's house is located is symbolic of the refusal to accept any change and the clinging to the old. Miss Emily embodies the type of person who is attached to the past and only wants to live in the past. It is a living monument that the other citizens of the city respect, but at the same time take offense at their eccentricity .

A second theme of the short story is the power of death. The story begins with Miss Emily's death, her father has died, and instead of her beginning to live, her groom is violently killed. Emily completely ignores the fact that these deaths could change her life. She clings to the privileges of her deceased father and buys wedding dresses and a wedding ring for the murdered groom and lives on in her closed world as if nothing had happened.

The third motif echoed in the story is absolute loneliness. She is the only child; the father is ruthless and strict and prevents her from finding fulfillment in love and marriage. Her first lover, Homer Barron, is unfaithful, the relationship ends fatally, and she is left alone for life. As an eccentric, she lives in isolation in her community and gradually breaks off all relationships with the outside world. She surrenders to loneliness. Meanwhile, Emily arouses admiration as the main character and is raised above the life of her fellow citizens ("an idol") precisely because she tries to defy the laws of the time, with the result that she is in complete solitude and impoverished for the rest of her life spends misunderstood,

Creation and publication

Faulkner wrote Eine Rose for Emily in the spring of 1930. It was written in the same creative frenzy as the novel When I Was Dying , which was written in just six weeks. As early as 1929 Faulkner had published Schall und Wahn, a novel that was groundbreaking for literary modernism , but only became popular in 1931, when Faulkner's first commercial success was with the novel Die Freistatt .

The short story A Rose for Emily came about before a decisive turning point. Critics later called it the trademark of a new voice . After the success of Freistatt in 1931, Thesis 13 was a collection of thirteen short stories by Faulkner. A Rose for Emily was featured in this anthology along with other popular short stories such as Dürrer September . Faulkner originally intended A Rose for Emily as the cover story of his first short story collection, as he particularly valued this short story, but the anthology was probably published under the title Thesis 13 at the request of the publisher . Today, A Rose for Emily is one of Faulkner's best-known short stories and the genre itself; the story is also available in various German translations and has been published several times in various collections and editions.

Genre and allegorical-symbolic meaning

Like other works by Faulkner, the short story is assigned to the style of Southern Gothic . Southern Gothic is a subgenre of horror literature (English Gothic fiction ) that has only developed in the American South . A generic feature is that macabre, grotesque, and ironic features are embedded in the texts to present the morals and values ​​of the South. An interpretation of the story that Miss Emily and her dilapidated house interprets as a symbol of the old, declining South falls short of the mark , as Cleanth Brooks satirically comments on a number of such approaches that touch the absurd. In return, as Brooks tries to do, it cannot be proven from the text that the narrator and the majority of the fellow citizens are concerned about the welfare of Miss Emily in an almost touching way. At the latest in the fourth section of the story, doubts about such an interpretation of the meaning of the story arise. It is true that the citizens pay strict attention to morality and send a pastor to Miss Emily's house to lead her back on the path of virtue; the essential Christian commandment to love one's neighbor, however, means little to them. For example, they almost breathed a sigh of relief when the rumor spread that they wanted to take their own life. When Miss Emily dares, in disregard of all conventions, to be driven through the streets by her lover, moreover a Northerner who is socially below her, her fellow citizens hide behind their blinds in order to be able to watch and gossip undisturbed. The motif of voyeurism is also taken up a little later in order to expose the community he embodies with the words of the narrator.

In an allegorical interpretation that Miss Emily understands as the rigid, arrogant, sterile and deadly personification of the Old South , the road worker Homer Barron inevitably appears as the symbolic embodiment of the agile but unreliable American North , which brings technical progress to the frozen South. Such an interpretation makes the story appear as a variant of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. in which the old maid kisses the modern prince to death. This interpretation of the short story, represented in different variations, tends, however, to an inappropriate black-and-white painting and fails to recognize Faulkner's skill in designing the main characters of his story as individualized round characters in all social satire.

Equally absurd is the repeated allegation that Miss Emily was guilty of desecrating the corpse. The text as such only allows the statement that Miss Emily must have been in the dead man's room twice: the first time at the time of the crime, the second time. to place a lock of her now gray hair next to the corpse. However, this course of action cannot be used beyond doubt as exclusive evidence of Miss Emily's necrophilic tendencies, but could also have a more obvious function as a motif, which is mostly given little attention in the criticism. John v. In his interpretation of the short story, Hagopian drew attention to the farewell convention in ancient literature as early as 1964. Against such a background, contrary to what is often assumed, the murder would turn out not to be an act of revenge, but paradoxically an act of love.

Form and narrative design

Like the other magazine stories that were very popular at the time , A Rose for Emily contains the surprise ending that is characteristic of this type of story , but which at Faulkner takes on a special form and does not meet the expectations of conventional readers. The motif of the locked room and the murder of Homer Barron as a key event in the life of Miss Emily are not presented in the introductory exposition , as in the classic plot story , but are placed at the end of the narrative. Although the reader receives an answer to the open questions about the disappearance of the lover, the purchase of the arsenic, and the pervasive smell in the closing part of the story, the importance of these questions is downplayed in order to increase the shock effect of the ending. For this reason, a description or description of the murder is dispensed with and the chronology of the sequence of events is reversed and fragmented.

At the beginning of the story is the funeral of Miss Emily; the narrative repeatedly fades back into the distant past and ends in the final section on the temporal level of the more recent past with the violent opening of the room and discovery of the skeleton. In this respect, A Rose for Emily proves to be a cleverly designed frame narrative.

With this undermining of the conventional point technique, Faulkner overrides an essential feature of the magazine story . In order not to endanger this special form of the final punch, the otherwise reliable narrator reports in a rather casual way that Homer Barron left his lover of his own free will ( "her sweetheart [...] had deserted her" ). Faulkner thus does not adhere to another rule of the conventional magazine story , according to which a narrator who is not expressly identified as unreliable may mislead the reader, but must not provide him with clearly incorrect information.

In addition to undermining the traditional point technique, Faulkner overrides another feature of the magazine story . Instead of the popular crescendo technique of increasing tension, he uses the additive compositional principle of a loose anecdotal sequence that contains five numbered sections with an emphatic final accent. He also breaks up the chronological sequence of events in order to additionally emphasize the relative independence of the various narrative units. The story begins immediately with Emily's burial, then jumps back repeatedly into the distant past, and finally ends with the violent opening of the room and the discovery of the skeleton again at the time level of the beginning or the most recent past. This ring closure closes or at least weakens the narrative structure of the story, which at first appears confusing with its chronological fragmentation. Thus, for Emily , Eine Rose ultimately proves to be a tightly composed framework narrative.

The narrator of the story is a citizen of the city, neither named nor otherwise individualized, who speaks on behalf of those who knew Miss Emily and her fate. He uses the first person plural throughout and proves himself to be a representative of the city's citizens in his introductory words. From various evidence in the course of the story, the conclusion can be drawn that it is probably an older man who views the behavior of his fellow citizens with benevolence, albeit not entirely without irony . It essentially reflects the view of the community: "We did not say she was crazy then [...]" . This gives the impression that the city of Jefferson, all witnesses to the events, told of the tragic fall of Miss Emily, but whose view of the events remains unknown. With this perspective, Faulkner tries to capture the typical atmosphere of a small southern town, as is often the case in other stories.

In the first section of the story, which tells of the visit by the delegation of the magistrate to the impoverished Miss Emily to collect the taxes that had been waived from her by the long-dead mayor Colonel Sartoris under the transparent pretext of charity, she distances herself the narrator, however, with a slight mockery and understatement of the intrusive behavior of the delegation, characterizing it as "the next generation with its progressive ideas". Here, and especially in the fourth section of the narrative, Faulkner opposes the image of a small-town community, which is to be understood as ideal, as interpreted by various interpreters, but above all with vehement and sarcastic comments by Cleanth Brook.

The grotesque character of Faulkner's short story results primarily from the subtle combination of different narrative forms; In addition to the elements of the magazine story and the anecdotal, fluctuating trickery story , Faulkner also uses the form of the horror story. It gains a new effect from the popular convention of the then extremely popular horror story with its type-defining surprise ending : It moves the central event in Emily's life, the murder, which in the classic plot story would have provided the material for an introductory exposition just like the motif of the locked room at the end of the story. In this way the expectations of the conventional readership are disappointed. The until then open questions about the disappearance of the lover, the purchase of arsenic and the penetrating smell are answered in the final part; yet Faulkner downplays the importance of these aspects in order to increase the shock effect of the conclusion. For this very reason, he refrains from a more precise description of the act of violence. One can therefore assume with good reason that the popularity of the story is not primarily due to its sensational material, but primarily to the compositional skill of the author.

Work history

A rose for Emily was instrumental in Faulkner's literary breakthrough in 1930/1931. It is Faulkner's most frequently printed and anthologized short story worldwide and has been translated into many languages ​​and published in numerous anthologies. It is considered Faulkner's most popular story and for many readers is also one of his best.

In the short story Faulkner takes up numerous echoes from traditional narrative literature, for example from Hawthorne's The White Old Maid , Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher or Dickens ' Great Expectations, as well as from poetry, such as from Ransom's Emily Hardcastle, Spinster . Nevertheless, Faulkner does not prove to be a pure epigone, but falls back on the motifs and form patterns of other authors in order to play out his own talent as a narrator against this background of literary traditions.

Less obvious parallels or similarities between Faulkner's and grotesquely comical outwitting stories can also be found in medieval swans, such as in Boccaccio's Decamerone and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , which also help characterize the protagonist and the urban community. At the beginning of the story, Emily Grierson is introduced as "a fallen monument"; In retrospect, however, she shows herself to be the one who was able to prevail against the majority of her competitors: against the Baptist pastor, the deputies of the city administration, the pharmacist, the hateful cousins, the faithless lover or against the gossipy urban population. This outwitting motif, borrowed from classical literature, gives the series of anecdotes in Faulkner's short story a coherent content; the motif of the stench is subordinate to that in Chaucer's narrative of the bailiff.

The recourse to the motif repertoire of the horror story also provides an atmospheric stimulus and symbolic density. Beyond their superficial significance, the motifs of the old house, the locked room, the portrait of the father and the dust mentioned in all the narrative sections also have a characterizing function with regard to the main character. Emily Grierson's refusal to number her house and equip it with a mailbox also make it clear that she leads an existence beyond the laws of time. The same applies to her efforts to want her relationship with Homer Barron to last through his murder, of all things, with the result that she spends the rest of her life in complete solitude.

The classic momento-mori motif of the dust, which dominates the final section, expresses the contrast between moment and duration and can not only be interpreted as a symbol for the time that has come to a standstill in Miss Emily's house and especially in the locked room, but stands furthermore for the transience of life par excellence. Faulkner does not stop at an abstract description of the main character, who leads her life lonely and misunderstood and, not least for this reason, is admired by her fellow citizens and raised above their lives, but also describes Miss Emily's appearance in detail in the various phases of her life. On the one hand she gains tragic traits in her loneliness and her search for love fulfillment, but on the other hand she also appears as a grotesque character in the sense of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio .

Expenses (selection)

English

  • * William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily. In: William Faulkner: Collected Stories. Vintage (Random House), London 1995, ISBN 009-947921-4 , pp. 119-130.

German

Secondary literature (selection)

  • Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , pp. 53-62.
  • John L. Skinner: "A Rose for Emily": Against Interpretation . In: The Journal of Narrative Technique , Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter, 1985), pp. 42-51.
  • Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren : Understanding Fiction . Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 3rd Edition 1979, ISBN 978-0139-36690-1 , pp. 227-231, online as a PDF file at [1] .
  • John V. Hagopian, W. Gordon Cunliffe, Martin Dolch: A Rose for Emily . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch (eds.): Insight I - Analysis of American Literature, Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 42-50.
  • Ruth Sullivan: The Narrator in 'A Rose for Emily'. In: Journal of Narrative Technique 1 (1971), pp. 159-78.
  • Floyd C. Watkins: The Structure of "A Rose for Emily" . In: Modern Language Notes LXIX, 1954, pp. 508-510.
  • James M. Wallace: Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily'. In: The Explicator 50 (Winter 1992), pp. 105-07.
  • Mary Louise Weaks: The Meaning of Miss Emily's Rose. In: Notes of Contemporary Literature 11.5 (1981), pp. 11-12.
  • Ray B. West, Jr .: Atmosphere and Theme in 'A Rose for Emily'. In: Clarice Swisher (Ed.): Readings on William Faulkner. Greenhaven, San Diego 1998, pp. 65-73.

Adaptations

  • A Rose for Emily (1983) - 27-minute short film directed by Lyndon Chubbuck and starring Anjelica Huston as Emily Grierson

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 54. For the first publication in the newspaper "The Saturday Evening Post" (Philadelphia, 1930) cf. u. a. the information on Leixoletti under William Faulkner: Eine Rose für Emily and in CliffsNotes under Summary and Analysis: "A Rose for Emily" Introduction , accessed on February 18, 2018.
  2. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 54. See also John V. Hagopian, W. Gordon Cunliffe, Martin Dolch: A Rose for Emily . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch: Insight I - Analysis of American Literature, Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, p. 43.
  3. ↑ See, for example, the interpretative approach by Floyd C. Watkins: The Structure of “A Rose for Emily” . In: Modern Language Notes LXIX, 1954, pp. 508-510, here p. 509. See also John V. Hagopian, W. Gordon Cunliffe, Martin Dolch: A Rose for Emily . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch: Insight I - Analysis of American Literature, Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 43-46.
  4. ↑ See for example the interpretation of John V. Hagopian, W. Gordon Cunliffe, Martin Dolch: A Rose for Emily . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch: Insight I - Analysis of American Literature, Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, p. 47 f.
  5. ↑ See for example the interpretation of John V. Hagopian, W. Gordon Cunliffe, Martin Dolch: A Rose for Emily . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch: Insight I - Analysis of American Literature, Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, p. 44 f. and Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 57 f. See also Floyd C. Watkins: The Structure of "A Rose for Emily" . In: Modern Language Notes LXIX, 1954, pp. 508-510, here p. 509.
  6. ↑ W.Faulkner made the claimsoft in the introduction to Sanctuary, (Modern Library ed 1,932th) cited A. Nicholas Fargnoli, Robert W. Hamblin, Michael Golay, William Faulkner; A Critical Companion Infobase 2008, p. 44.
  7. ↑ SparkNotes: A Rose for Emily: Context
  8. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 54.
  9. ↑ See for example A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner at goodreads.com or Theo Schumacher (translator), Helga Huisgen (translator), Maria von Schweinitz (translator), Annemarie Horschitz-Horst (translator): A Rose for Emily Eine Rose für Emily: American Short Stories American Short Stories (dtv bilingual) . dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 1997, ISBN 978-3423-09365-1 .
  10. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 55 f.
  11. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 60 f.
  12. ↑ See John V. Hagopian, W. Gordon Cunliffe, Martin Dolch: A Rose for Emily . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch: Insight I - Analysis of American Literature, Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, p. 44 ff. See also Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 61.
  13. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , pp. 55f.
  14. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 55.
  15. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 56. See also in more detail John V. Hagopian, W. Gordon Cunliffe, Martin Dolch: A Rose for Emily . In: John V. Hagopian and Martin Dolch: Insight I - Analysis of American Literature, Hirschgraben Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1971, pp. 44-46 and p. 48
  16. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 58.
  17. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 59.
  18. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 54 f.
  19. ↑ A Rose for Emily Essay - A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner at enotes.com
  20. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 56 f. On the intertextual references to Poe, see also James Stronks: A Poe Source for Faulkner? 'To Helen' and 'A Rose for Emily' . In: Poe Newsletter , April 1968, Vol. I, No. 1, page I, 11
  21. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 57 f.
  22. ↑ See Michael Hanke: William Faulkner: A Rose for Emily . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 58.