In “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner, one of the leading writers in the Southern Renaissance, delved into the inner realities of Emily, the last descendant of a Southern aristocratic family. The narrator “we,” in the first person plural form, starts the story with the description of her funeral, develops it in a flashback technique with the cyclic structure of time, and ends with the observation and arresting of the moment, betraying abruptly the insides of her house in a grotesque atmosphere. The narrator, representing the Southern community consciousness, shows its ambivalent attitudes toward Emily in that it values the Old Southern codes of honor but is also ready for ‘more modern ideas,’ now colliding or confronting with, and now denouncing, her. The narrator, at times sympathetic with Emily, seeks to pull the reader into the narrative so as to support Emily’s desperate inner struggle to survive in the transitional South. Emily seems to be in the Oedipal situation, under the Southern patriarchy in which the white masculine culture dominates and orients the consciousness of the Jefferson community that the narrator and the characters belonged to. All the while, Emily tries to recover her repressed sexuality and to revenge, with subversive voices, the Southern patriarchy.
In “A Rose for Emily,” William Faulkner, one of the leading writers in the Southern Renaissance, delved into the inner realities of Emily, the last descendant of a Southern aristocratic family. The narrator “we,” in the first person plural form, starts the story with the description of her funeral, develops it in a flashback technique with the cyclic structure of time, and ends with the observation and arresting of the moment, betraying abruptly the insides of her house in a grotesque atmosphere. The narrator, representing the Southern community consciousness, shows its ambivalent attitudes toward Emily in that it values the Old Southern codes of honor but is also ready for ‘more modern ideas,’ now colliding or confronting with, and now denouncing, her. The narrator, at times sympathetic with Emily, seeks to pull the reader into the narrative so as to support Emily’s desperate inner struggle to survive in the transitional South. Emily seems to be in the Oedipal situation, under the Southern patriarchy in which the white masculine culture dominates and orients the consciousness of the Jefferson community that the narrator and the characters belonged to. All the while, Emily tries to recover her repressed sexuality and to revenge, with subversive voices, the Southern patriarchy.
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