L-Qun

 Analysis of the Changing Portraits in “A Rose for Emily”

by Xie Qun

Important Ideas
 * The creation of portraits enables the reader to have more power over the story, to imagine the facts;
 * Emily’s appearance changes dramatically during the story;
 * The fact that her father is portrayed with his back to her shows his disregard to her emotional welfare;
 * Faulkner’s literary work demonstrate the struggle the southerners had been through after the Civil War;
 * The horsewhip is a symbol of how Emily’s father controlled her life;
 * The dead are present in her life;
 * Emily undergo a radical physical change: from a pretty lady to a gloomy old woman;
 * Emily doesn’t know anything different from living with her father, so he passes she is unable to deal with it;
 * The readers are interested for the story for its suspending plot, special way of narration and complex structure;
 * Three phases: youth: pretty, angelical, pure, virginal; after her father’s death: short hair, starts to get fat; old: really fat, small, lost eyes;
 * Stagnant time. Just the South Emily has stopped in time;
 * In the end Emily herself is portrayed as a living corpse

Important Quotes

“… his [Faulkner´s] literary work captivates the emotional transition faced by southerners as they emerged from an era gone-by to a new, more modern period. The characters he creates exemplify the conflict that was embedded deep within the human spirit of southerners who lived in this changing society.”

“However the father, “a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip”, is a menacing dark image assuming the dominant front position.”

“As any child before the strict and serious father, Emily was very obedient and reserved.”

“… when her father passed away, she was unable to survive.”

“Emily not only clings to her father’s memory, but also becomes the representative of the old moral values that are deeprooted in her mind under her father’s long influence.”

“After she kills Homer Baron, the picture of Emily framed by the upstairs window became an inversion of her youthful portrait: “a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her”. With the light behind her, Emily became the dark silhouette of her father in the dominant foreground.”

“But the images of death emerged most frequently: her pallid complexion: her drowned, bloated body; her lost eyes; and the cold, dry voice of the tomb. Not only had Emily been living with the death literally in the form of Homer’s corpse, but something essential had died within her.”

“She had locked herself away from all change inherent in the passage of time.”

“Perhaps this distortion of time ultimately allowed her to sleep with the corpse of her lover as if she were sleeping with the living man. As seen in this portrait, however, the final effect was that Emily herself became, figuratively, a living corpse.”

“He [Faulkner] exposes the conflicts between generations, classes, race, man and his environment, man and himself. […] Miss Emily is the monument of the South. Her story truly reflects the tragedy of the fallen aristocrats as well as the cruel reality of South after the Civil War.”