The First Person Plural and Gender/Race Trouble in Willian Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"

The First Person Plural and Gender/Race Trouble in Willian Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"

William Faulkner’s enthralling story “A Rose for Emily” is assuredly one of the first and most widely read work by students of English literature, with its functional value and popularity attested to by its steady inclusion in a number of anthologies. Among other reasons, this relatively short piece by Faulkner offers compelling possibilities in exploring the link between literary form and content, specifically in Faulkner’s deft use of the first person plural ‘we’ narration to represent the voice of the community in the story. In this paper, I build on the insights of scholars who address how the narrative point of view in “A Rose for Emily” impressively shapes the author’s penetrating critique about the insidious workings of social convention and discourses of race, gender, and class in the American antebellum South. In reexamining Faulkner’s story along with the theoretical contributions of narratologists who have written on the first person plural ‘we’ narration both as “flawed” as well as “protean,” I consider how Faulkner also moves beyond critical conversations around the first person plural by employing this technique foremost as a rhetorical device to enhance his theme. In addition, this paper’s concentration on the use of the first person plural in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” will hope to illuminate a curious yet provocative component in “A Rose for Emily,” the perplexing affinities suggested between Emily and the sole African American character in the story, her black manservant Tobe a possibility which has not been raised by scholars thus far. I contend that Faulkner’s critique of gender and class ideologies in his society is furthered through the symbolic conflation between gender and racial marginality, which is made apparent specifically and foremost through the distinct features of the first person plural ‘we’ in the story.