Why “A Rose for Emily” is a representation of Reconstruction South
Many people reflect on the “Good-Old-Days,” which often are the colorful days of youth. However, many of these reflective citizens become stuck in the glory days and neglect to remember the improvements made to society as they grew into adults. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner reflects the deterioration of the Old South by using Emily Grierson as a symbol for southern views on reconstruction through descriptions of the respect and admiration of Emily, using imagery to contrast her youth and downfall, and descriptions of how modernization affected the south.
The story starts with Emily’s funeral, framing her life with a tragic death. At the funeral, “the men came through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument,” (I, Faulkner). A fallen monument often represents the topping of a society or regime, like fallen Greek temples or smashed statues of Lenin. Describing Emily in this way lets the reader know that Emily Grierson represented the community during times past. By looking at Emily with respect and admiration, they are purposefully overlooking her flawed past and the negative southern values that are within. Similarly, the white population at her funeral likely remembered the pre-civil war American South as an idyllic place. The New York Times article “Not Forgotten,” written by Edward Rothstein, talks about southern views of themselves after the civil war and in the current day. He does so by visiting museums and historical sites. One of the museums he visits is run by “The Daughters of the Confederacy, just as it was at its founding in 1899,” (Rothstein). He describes the obsession of the museum as a “fetishism,” the displays and historical artifacts obsessively idolizing the army who fought to separate from the North. A piece of a bullet pulled from the neck of a union Lt. Corporal is a centerpiece of the museum. This shows how the south is reluctant to let go of its confederate pride. Even though the ideals of the Confederacy have been abolished, they still cling to them as a form of comfort and confidence. The idolization of the Old South today gives a taste of a sentiment that was very prevalent in the post-Civil War South. People of the time remembered how the crops lead to jobs in transportation and manufacturing, and massive improvements of technology like the cotton-gin and improved looms for textile making. Yet, built on the backs of marginalized human slaves, the southern utopia was flawed. With the end of the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves, many previously prosperous southern families deteriorated as their money ran out and their disposable workforce became illegal. This jarring shock of culture was prevalent in Emily’s generation, but started to quickly fade as the “next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen,” (I, Faulkner). As they advanced into this new age, the traditional southern identity fell to the wayside.
Faulkner uses imagery of Emily’s fall from grace to help the reader understand the loss Emily’s generation felt losing their traditional southern identity. Young Emily is described as a “figure in white,” a saintly, pure, and ignorant image, similar to Faulkner’s description of her house as at one time being a white, beautiful reflection of Southern Architecture (II, Faulkner). A Southern-Belle from a well to do family, Emily represented the good of society. She, just like the power of the South, seemed to be untouchable, although the townspeople admitted: “that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were,” (II, Faulkner). This reflects how all things that seem good and idyllic on the exterior can come to a gruesome end. In her life, people generally gave Emily a pass, understanding that she came from a different time. She was always viewed with respect from the outside in, people not being able to see what she was up to behind locked doors. Even though she remains revered as an icon of the past Emily starts to deteriorate in her final years. The narrator tells us that she became “a small, fat woman in black, […], her skeleton was small and spare, […] she looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water,” (I, Faulkner). Even her house, the once grand example of southern architecture is described as an “eyesore among eyesores,” at her funeral (I, Faulkner). Painting old Emily as a fat and ghastly woman foils her younger self, as well as the shoddy shack her grand home had become. The contrast in these descriptions show that she and, through symbolism, the South had not only fallen from sanity, but also as an icon of beauty and perfection. This is significant because in her youth, she was beautiful and respected. As society changes with modernization of legal concepts and ideals, what once was pure is now tainted.
The segregation laws post-Civil War are clear examples of the Reconstruction South’s inability to see the black population as equals. The reader knows that Emily represented a time where a law was put into place that “edict[ed] that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron,” (I, Faulkner). The same mayor agreed that the Griersons did not have to pay taxes due to her family’s status. The narrator lets the reader know that this idea would only be only able to be conjured up by someone of the old generation, referring to the above-the-law nature of those who ran the South in the past. This is significant because even during Reconstruction, affluent white people were finding ways to get ahead and set African Americans and Northerners behind. In Jack Scroggs’ Journal of Southern History (1958), the correspondence between the Southern Radical Republicans and National Radical leaders is examined. He describes the many difficulties that the Southern states were facing politically in the 1870’s, around the time Emily’s father was granted tax-free citizenship and blacks were being put down with discriminating laws. He cites “personal ambition and differences in ideology,” and explains that the previous parties had trouble “adjusting the interests of the previously politically [submerged] class of native whites, the Negros, and the recently [arrived] Northerners,” (409, Scroggs). Scroggs goes on to describe how local governments started taking the law into their own hands, in many cases the Radical political groups that popped up making laws in direct conflict with the constitution by suppressing the rights of newly freed black men and women. This lawlessness, and inability to accept newly freed men and women further shows how the previous generation differed from the new group of leaders, who are attempting to change the course of society through laws and acceptance of Union practices.
The reader sees Emily embody the older, traditional, southern way of thinking when the town starts to modernize its laws and infrastructure. Through her unacceptance of the new standards, Faulkner presents Emily’s attitude as that of a dying culture and people. Homer, a flamboyant, northern laborer, comes to put in sidewalks with his construction company’s “niggers, mules and machinery,” (III, Faulkner). This is timely, happening “a year after [Emily’s] father’s death they began the work,” (III, Faulkner). The northern company moving in after the death of a Civil War leader is a representation of new times and what is an acceptable change. Older society would think if sidewalks were to be put in, they would hire a southern company, and the laborer who ran the show would not have dared been so flashy as Homer. It is a shock to the townsfolk to see Emily entertaining Homer, because of his status as a “Northerner, a day laborer,” (III, Faulkner). Faulkner puts Emily in a very precarious situation, where her general distain for the modern improvements to the town are combated by what they bring along; a potential lover. Which once again, mirrors a happening in post-Civil War South. John Hammond Moore’s article “Getting Uncle Sam’s Dollars: South Carolinians and the Southern Claims Commission,” (1981) describes how Southern States were claiming millions of dollars of damage from the war, and how the North dealt with paying them back. Southern States were able to spend the reconstruction money on new projects, improving the cities they were in, yet still found distain for the people who were sending it. The amount of money the North put into the South caused a depression, yet in the South, the “many claimants who could not prove that they were loyal to the Union,” sought to destroy the reconstruction attempts of the Union (Moore, 251). Emily wanted Homer, but he didn’t want her, so she killed him and kept him in her bedroom. This reflects the relationship between North and South because the North was putting so much into the Reconstruction, yet the South did not accept their work or values and ultimately “killed them” by sending them into economic recession. Unable to improve their own cities, the 1870’s became a dark time for most Northerners, government cutbacks resulted in the halting of many Northern civil projects. This is reflected in how Homer, who is symbolic of northern civil industry, would not be able to continue his life after accepting the contract in the south, and ultimately his deadly affiliation with Emily Grierson, who represented the South during the times of Reconstruction.
When interviewed, Faulkner claimed “A Rose for Emily” did not represent the Northern and Southern relations post-Civil War. Yet, when viewed from that lens, Faulkner creates a convincing representation of Reconstruction South, and how the people were affected by intense cultural change. By personalizing the Old South through characterization of Emily, Faulkner can push the reader over a wall of understanding, allowing someone who might have never experienced the Old South to get a taste of what the citizens from that time period and area felt as their previous society and culture slipped away.
Works Cited
Moore, John Hammond. “GETTING UNCLE SAM’S DOLLARS: SOUTH CAROLINIANS
AND THE SOUTHERN CLAIMS COMMISSION, 1871–1880.” South Carolina
Historical Magazine, July 1981, pp. 248–262.
Scroggs, Jack B. “Southern Reconstruction: A Radical View.” The Journal of Southern History,
vol. 24, no. 4, 1958, pp. 407–429., doi:10.2307/2954670.
Rothstein, Edward. “Not Forgotten.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2011,
www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/arts/design/in-the-south-civil-war-has-not-been-forgotten.
html.
