A Rose for Emily

1
A Rose for Emily

• Class Discussion
• Emily seen from Multiple Perspectives

2
Discussion Questions

• 1. One Group Is the ending too sensational?
  Why did Emily Grierson murder her lover? Did she
  really kill him? How would you re-write the
  story?
• 2. Two Groups Performing a Scene Is Emily a
  victim or a heroine?
• 3. One Group How do you characterize the
  narrators? Does it make a difference if they are
  women, or men? Do you have a similar experience
  of being part of an observing/gossipy public?
• 4. Two Groups EmilyGuilty or not?

3
Review (1) Why cant they get married?

• Homer Barron pars 30 42 he liked men.
• The town peoples intervention and their changes
  
• Happy that she has an interest par 31
• Poor Emily par 31 (He is not a good match for
  her nobility.)
• Gossiping ? Disagree with the couple their being
  together, without getting married. Par 32
• Repeated par 43 (She will persuade him ?
  disagrace)
• Sent for the cousins
• (par 46) By that time it was a cabal, and we were
  all Miss Emilys allies to help circumvent the
  cousins.

4
Review (2) Emily in Different Scenes (a)

• Tax payment scene As an old lady, she is noble
  and proud on the one hand, stubborn, lifeless and
  unwilling to adjust to the changes of time on the
  other.
• Writes in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded
  ink (par 4)
• Image (1) "a small, fat woman in black, with a
  thin gold chain descending to her waist and
  vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane
  with a tarnished gold head. (par 6)
• She looked bloated, like a body long submerged
  in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.  Her
  eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face,
  looked like two small pieces of coal pressed
  into a lump of dough .(par 6)
• Image (2, 3) More description of her
  motionlessness as an idol and carven torso (pars
  24,51)

5
Review Emily in Different Scenes (b)Emily as a
young woman

• Image (3) tableau As a young lady controlled?
  stubborn, passionate, with a strong will and --
  refusing to face death or obsessed by the corpses
  (necrophilia)?
• Image (4) Controlled by her father ? like a
  girl after her fathers death.

6
Review Emily in Different Scenes (c)Emily with
Homer Barron

• Image (5) the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the
  matched team passed
• Image (6) lighthouse watcher ? Stubbornness the
  arsenic episode

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Review (3) The Narrators views of Emily?

1. When Emily becomes a spinster par 25 So when
   she got to be thirty and was still single, we
   were not pleased exactly, but vindicated even
   with insanity in the family she wouldn't have
   turned down all of her chances if they had really
   materialized.
2. When she loses her father pars 26, 29 -- We did
   not say she was crazy then.  We believed she had
   to do that. sympathetic
3. discussed already the town peoples
   intervention into a) her love, b) her smell, c)
   her tax, d) the postal service.

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Review (3) Are they Reliable Narrators?

• Judgmental, intervening and sympathetic
• (par47 Emily disappears for 6 months) Then we
  knew that this was to be expected too as if that
  quality of her father which had thwarted her
  womans life so many times had been too virulent
  and too furious to die.? sympathy or wrong
  judgment?
• (par 48) When we next saw Miss Emily, she had
  grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During
  the next few years it grew grayer and grayer
  until it attained an even pepper-and-salt
  iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day
  of her death at seventy-four it was still that
  vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active
  man.

9
Debate Emily Guilty or not?

• Pro killing a person, obsessiveness, etc.
• Con not her fault, no other choice, etc.

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Main Argument

• Although Emilys house, her figure and her action
  of killing for love can be scary, it is actually
  the town peoples intervention that is more
  scary. A more sympathetic view (rose) can be
  given to Emily when we understand the social
  constraints imposed on her.
• Another possible argument?