A Rose for Emily

Opening Statement: How I Met My Husband takes place after World War II in a small farming community that is just beginning to get "modernized". Edie, who has failed her first year of high school miserably (a score of 37% as published in the local newspaper), quits school to work for the Peebles as a live in maid. The Peebles are one of the new families that has bought a farm to live on, not necessarily work on. Edie is a fairly naive country girl and, in the middle of becoming accustomed to the more modern way the Peebles do things, is going through adolescence. One day a pilot lands his plane on the Peebles' land and starts giving people plane rides to make some money. He changes Edie's life forever.

This is a coming of age story about Edie's encounter with this man who changes her life as she grows up, grows strong, and meets the man that she is going to marry. As she tells this story as an adult looking back on her life, the reader understands that she has no regrets about the turn that her life has taken.

(1) Edie is not considered very bright, is bewildered by the more modern mind set of the Peebles, and actually appears to be pretty naive at the beginning of the story, yet through fumbling about and self-discovery she is able to come to some fairly adult conclusions by the end of the story.

Example: At fifteen, Edie is shy, naive, considered dull, and has only been exposed to her family's farming as a way of

457). In a sense, she was learning how to be professional. (2) Into this world of country gossip flies Chris Watters, a war pilot who now makes a living by going from town to town to give people rides in his plane. Because of this meeting, Edie starts on the road to adulthood. Example: When the pilot, Chris, catches Edie alone and playing dress up in Mrs. Peebles' clothes, he jokes about it, while asking if he could use the water pump. Being shy, Edie, "didn't know how to joke back then. I was too embarrassed" (p. 457). She expects him to change his attitude toward her when she tells him that she is the hired girl. Instead he compliments her; "I just wanted to tell you . . . you looked so nice and beautiful" (p. 457). This is her first adult compliment and Edie "wasn't old enough to realize how out of common it is, for a man to say something like that to a woman" (p. 457). She is so shy she just wants him to go away. Example: "I had to do it" (p. 457). Edie is so concerned that Chris might mention that she was wearing Mrs. Peebles' dress that she overcomes her shyness enough to run over to the plane after putting the children to bed to ask him not to tell. Chris is kind enough to understand how shy she is and offers