Exploring The “Southern Gothic” Genre thorugh William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”.

Southern Gothic literature focuses on the literary works that include, but are not limited to the macabre, themes of death and decay and even ‘broken’ people. That is to say, people who do not fit our general definition of ‘normal’. “Southern Gothic literature is characterized by obsessive preoccupations — with blood, family, and inheritance; racial, gender, and/or class identities; the Christian religion (typically, in its most “fundamentalist” forms); and home” (Bailey 271). It is because of this general definition that I believe the Southern Gothic genre is very much a real part of literature, even if other people do not see it that way. In the following paragraphs, I aim to show you why I believe Southern Gothic is an actual genre within the literary aspect. The goal of this partial in-depth analysis is to show you, the reader, how “A Rose for Emily” has the themes of Gothic Literature woven throughout the story by examining how the town saw Emily as a curiousity and a monument to the old ways, how Emily represents the “Old South” and the way it slowly died, and even how Emily’s father represented the end of the Civil War and the changing times.

Inherently, the townsfolk are accessories to Homer’s murder. They knew something was going on, but chose to treat the symptoms instead of dealing with the problem. The smell from Emily’s house that was so bad, people had to spread lime over her property in order to kill the smell (Faulkner 311). “The townspeople are fond of Miss Emily, they respect her and even stand in awe of her, but they are also repelled and somewhere beneath all these other feelings they harbor powerful aggressive wishes against her” (Sullivan 165). The townsfolk are both fascinated by her, and yet, at the same time they want nothing to do with her. The townsfolk keep Emily at arm’s length, which gives her the space and time that she needs in order to feed Homer the arsenic. “And she commits murder almost under the eyes of a town that [we feel] should have known eventually why she bought that arsenic. She takes human life and no human law stops or punishes her for it” (Sullivan 168). The townsfolk built Emily up into a monument, almost like a job that needed to be done, with no one wanting to take the responsibility. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town…” (Faulkner 309). The townsfolk actively tried to cover up the smell, they saw Emily as a curiousity, and they turned their backs instead of trying to figure out what was going on, because they attributed the smell to her eccentricity. They did not try and stop Emily, they just stood by and watched from afar, as she planned the murder, and even helped hide the evidence of the murder. This point itself leads us to believe that even the towns-folk were hesitant to let the “Old South” die. This leads to them turning a blind eye when Miss Emily murdered Homer.

Emily’s father scared everyone away; as a result, her values and ability to love stagnate, ending up warped and decayed. “We had long thought of them as a tableau; Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip” (Faulkner 311).

If we assume that Emily Grierson represents the “Old South”, this paints the picture that the “Old South” was a more innocent time, almost virgin-like, and her father is trying to protect her virtue and keep those values alive. This means we could assume, because her father is armed and warding off those who he is seeing as would-be defilers of the “old South”, that Emily’s father might just possibly represent the Confederate Army of the South defending against what they see as an attack on their way of life.

When Emily’s father dies, and the post-war south begins to emerge, innocence is lost, new ways start to take hold and this leaves Emily to slowly wither and decay, eventually dying, leaving the townsfolk to clean up her mess after getting over the shock of what they find. “And other critics see time as theme in that Miss Emily…represents the Old Order in conflict with modern times. ‘One pattern that is most evident throughout the story is the analogy bet.’” (Sullivan 167). The “Old South” dies to make way for the Post-War south. Emily Grierson actually represents the “Old South”. Her decline, decay and eventually her death is symbolic of the way the “Old South” died.

It is through all of the above examples that we can clearly see that Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is dark, gruesome and depraved. It definitely qualifies as macabre, and has scores of broken people within, from Emily to the townsfolk. The debate of whether or not Southern Gothic exists does matter for the writer of this literary analysis, as not just this story, but many others all fit the bill. If Southern Gothic doesn’t exist as a genre, where do these short stories fit? It’s definitely within the gothic genre, but that leaves it just kind of floating in nothingness categorical-wise. “A Rose for Emily” is a perfect example of Southern Gothic literature, from Miss Emily’s betrayal and murder of Homer, to the townsfolk being unwilling to do anything about her and fix the problem they are currently faced with. While scholars may debate the existence of Southern Gothic literature as a genre, through the aforementioned points, I find it hard to believe that it is not a genre all of its own.

Sources Cited:

Bailey, Peggy Dunn. “Female Gothic Fiction, Grotesque Realities, and Bastards Out of Carolina: Dorothy Allison Revises The Southern.” Volume 63, Issue ½, Winter/Spring 2010, pp 269–290. Literary Reference Center. http://library.macewan.ca/library-search/detailed-view/lfh/59243138?query=southern+gothic+genre

Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily”.The Norton Introduction to Literature. Edited by Kelly J. Mays, 12th ed., W. W. Norton, 2017, 308–315.

Sullivan, Ruth. “The Narrator in ‘A Rose for Emily’. The Journal of NarrativeTechnique. Volume 1, Number 3. September 1971. Pp 159–178. Published by Journal of Narrative Theory Stable. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/30224976.pdf