L-Curry

** Talking to the experts **
Interlocutors and sources in this essay. http://www.letras.ufmg.br/profs/marcel/data1/arquivos/Rose3.txt Author(s): Renee R. Curry Source: The Mississippi Quarterly. 47.3 (Summer 1994): p391. Document Type: Article

Important ideas. > __**//Excerpts//**__//"Gender motivation splits between respect and curiosity, affection for a representation and intention to view the insides of a house. The subordinate object of the sentence is "Miss Emily," the woman who provides the reason to feel "affection" and to "see," and "our whole town" hovers as subject of the sentence. The stylistics of Faulkner's language thus serves to subordinate Emily, ostensibly the subject of the tale, and to elevate the town as the truer subject."// //"The men in the town are portrayed as respectful of Emily, while the women are curious. The narrator is both, and like the townspeople cannot know what goes on in Emily's life."// //"Faulkner designs this narrative position as a reflection of his own stance ////toward patriarchal societal structures and toward classic realist fiction. He ////stands firmly within the constructs, yet by calling attention to this vantage ////point and its inadequacies, by deploying a bisexual narration into the text, and ////by presenting Emily's house both as intimate space for the character as well as // //impregnable barrier to its own author/creator, Faulkner dismantles the structure// //of classic realist fiction. Both narrator and author participate in and attempt// //to render beyond the powerful systems that construct them."//
 * three complex generations of a Southern community;
 * patriarchal Southern community;
 * gender differences;
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">"permanent state of tension" defined by bisexual writing: "it is generated and regenerated by an interaction between the feminine and masculine, between self and other" (Gwin, p. 10)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">gender of the narrator ( remains unclear throughout the story )

//<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">"One of the neighbors (and Faulkner makes a specific point of its being a female neighbor) makes an issue ////<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">of the smell to the judge: A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old. //<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">"But what will you have me do about it madam?" he said. "Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law?" "I'm sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said. //<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">"It's probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. //<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">I'll speak to him about it." The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation. "We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something." That //<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">night the Board of Aldermen met -- three greybeards and one younger man, a //member of the rising generation. "It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give //<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">her a certain time to do it in, and if she don't. . ." //"Dammit, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?" (p. 122) At least three interesting issues arise from this passage. The judge only feels it necessary to act after a man complains, but the fact remains that a woman initiated the idea of the smell. Both the man and the woman think that a "word" would amend the situation. Inside the text, then, rests the thought that a word //<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">exists to facilitate a change regarding Miss Emily's house; the men state it and //<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 10pt;">the women state it. What this word might be goes unsaid, however. And finally, the issue of the smell itself exudes from the house, from an intimate dwelling, and threatens to permeate the text. Faulkner tries to penetrate this house with words, but he cannot find them. Instead he and Judge Stevens send men to cover over the odor from outside the house. Neither proves ready to discover this particular intimacy."