A Rose for Emily Group

Question:

klari
klari
Student
Doctorate

How can I compare and contrast Miss Emily by Faulkner to Blanche in the Streetcar and to Maggie in the Cat by Tennessee Williams?

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Posted by klari on Monday October 27, 2008 at 3:00 PM and tagged with a rose for emily, characters, compare and contrast, emily.


Answers:


  1. ms-mcgregor Teacher
    High School - 12th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    All three characters are products of the Old South and all three have a way of overlooking the reality of situations. Miss Emily fail to acknowledge her father's death and subsequent poverty. She also fails to acknowledge that Homer Barron is gay and does not want to marry her. The same lack of acknowledgement is apparent in Blanche DuBois. She has lost her family home and one of her old beaus was gay but she refuses to acknowledge either reality. Maggie is not poor but she too refuses to acknowledge her husband's affair with his best friend, Skipper. She desperately wants a child and to have some kind of a marriage with her husband. The difference between the women is how they finally react to their situations. Emily takes matters into her own hands, kills Homer and then sleeps with his dead body. Blanche ignores the problems and when her gay beau kills himself, she never seems to admit the reason why he took his own life.Her inability to accept the truth eventually leads to her madness. Maggie simply announces she is pregnant, something that the audience and others question but eventually, like a cat, she gingerly steps over the problem and we are left with the impression that Brick, her husband, will eventually make her pregnant.

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    Posted by ms-mcgregor on Monday October 27, 2008 at 7:14 PM