A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner - Ruth Sullivan (essay date 1971)
Ruth Sullivan (essay date 1971)
SOURCE: “The Narrator in ‘A Rose for Emily,’” in The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 1, No. 3, September, 1971, pp. 159–78.
[In the following essay, Sullivan argues that the narrator of “A Rose for Emily” is more important to the meaning of the story than most critics believe.]
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Faulkner's well-read “A Rose for Emily” has been variously interpreted as a mere horror story about necrophilia and madness, as a story about the Old South contending with the New Order of the Post-Civil War era, as a tragic tale of a woman's noble but doomed effort to resist the forces of time, change, and death, and as a tale of the catastrophe that can result when someone allows illusion to become confused with reality.
Published criticism of this story shares two assumptions: that Miss Emily is its only important character and that she is somehow objectively presented; that is, that she...
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