Feminist Critique of A Rose for Emily

The following essay provides a feminist critique of William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, arguing that the narrator in the short story represents the voice of white southern society while Miss Emily's actions amount to a rebellion against those values. The essay reveals Miss Emily's condition as a virtual "prisoner" of the men in her life, a condition that forces her to take matters into her own hands when her beau, Homer Barron, rejects her. Despite arguments that Miss Emily eventual reverts to adhering to southern values by killing Homer, a Yankee, this analysis argues that her murder of Homer represents the ultimate rebellion against southern values because it is her way of forever keeping her relationship with a northern day laborer "alive." There is evidence provided, however, that Homer Barron may have been homosexual and this is why he rejects Miss Emily. Despite her rejection of southern, patriarchal values and forces, Miss Emily's action forces her to become a prisoner once more, locked away forever in her own home. Even so, the town remains complicit in Miss Emily's crime because of its imposed values. A conclusion maintains that despite her rebellion against the patriarchal values of southern society, Miss Emily pays the ultimate price for rebelling against them.

With a protagonist who is the epitome of the values of an ideal southern woman, Faulkner's (1931) short story A Rose for Emily readily lends itself to a feminis

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ng taxes. We are told it is a story that "Only a many of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented, and only a woman could have believed" (Faulkner, 1931, p. 426). We see that Miss Emily has mainly been a prisoner of her father and of the town for years, viewed as a monument of a bygone era. However, at one point in her life Miss Emily completely rebels against the limitations of the values and gender rules imposed on her by her father and the patriarchal social forces in town. She enters into a love affair with Homer Barron, a Yankee laborer that shocks the town. No self-respecting southern woman of Miss Emily's generation would consider dating a northerner much less a day laborer. All of the ladies ignore the affair at first, thinking "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer" (Faulkner, 1931, p. 429). Eventually, social pressures on women's behavior make people refer to her as "poor Emily" because of being with a northern laborer. Miss Emily rebels against the social values of this patriarchal culture. When she is seen with Homer Barron to the townspeople's disdain, she retains pride and dignity as a real lady of the old south would under duress, "It was as if sh

Category: Literature - F