献给爱米丽的一朵玫瑰花：短篇小说集

by （美国）威廉·福克纳

The story begins with the death of Emily who was regarded as ""a symbol of traditional"" in the small town. All the people came to pay tribute to her and the story was unveiled in this way. People were whispering with each other about Emilys love, her life experiences and the appalling secret hidden in her spacious mansion in a weird atmosphere.........This book contains dozens of the most classical short novels with different features.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, Horror, Gothic, School, Read For School

354 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 30, 1930

Reviews

[Meghhnaa (On a Review-Writing Break!) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A Rose for Emily”, a gothic story, opens with the townspeople reacting in awe over Miss Emily Grierson's death, post which the story travels in flashback. The entire story is narrated from the townspeople point of view and not in Emily’s purview.
Emily, a burden for the people, was send a notice for the due taxes. She sends a note in an old handwriting/archaic shape, mentioning, that she doesn’t go out anywhere anymore! Emily is domineering and menacing.

The town calls for a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen, to figure out what to do with the lady not paying her taxes. She downrightly and sternly refuses to take the ownership of the due taxes, and sends them back. The people had issue with her smell, they complained about it to the leaders, but not wanting to argue with the intimidating Emily, they take care of the smell on their own, by sprinkling lime in the house.

Emily had a very protective controlling father (like father, like daughter! 😊), and he would drive away all the probable suitors for Emily, with a whip. In short, her father never allowed a life for her! Her father had taken away all the chances of her having a better life.

When he dies, she refuses to acknowledge his death for three days. After the townspeople intervene and bury her father, Emily is further isolated by a mysterious illness, possibly a mental breakdown.

“After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.”

The town is shown to move towards industrialisation:-

“The construction company came with niggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee”


Finally, Homer becomes her sweetheart. Town was happy that finally she would have someone in her life, as father is not there to drive him away!

Finally, the scene shifts to a drugstore, where she is buying poison/arsenic.
The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag. “Why, of course,” the druggist said. “If that’s what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for.”

But, “Miss Emily just stares at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up.”

Scares him away! She is controlling, from not paying taxes, to not accepting father’s death, she has constructed a world of her own.

The news of her buying poison, spreads like wildfire, townspeople are surprised with her idea of a suicide, when she has a sweetheart (Homer) along!

“Then we said, “She will persuade him yet,” because Homer himself had remarked — he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club — that he was not a marrying man.”

Maybe Homer was a Homosexual, or wanted to remain a bachelor, and Emily couldn’t persuade her to stay back!
Subsequently, they realise that she has made a big investment, on a man’s toilet set/shaving set in silver and a nightsuit! They assumed, them being married and were glad.

She didn’t appear on the streets for next 6 months, they thought, Homer has left her!
Meanwhile the town is moving forward, they have sidewalks, and getting a post office. She doesn’t let people attach any mailbox to her house, or to even repair her house.

And suddenly, Faulkner shifts the scene, and informs the readers -
And so she died.

The flashback finally ends!

Emily, is representative of the old South that is dying away!

The town waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before opening a room above the stairs, lying untouched for forty years.
The room looked like decorated for a wedding, and what ensues, is gothic, thrilling and totally unexpected (staying away from spoilers)


The story is fairly morbid, following no chronological order. The themes discussed are –
Post-war Southern society, classism, race, marriage, feminism, death, necrophilia, insanity, isolation!

The incompressible nature of the time progression, enforces me to render 3.5 stars. Writing is simple and non-lurid.


Emily as a symbol of Old south, had to die for the town to move forward and grow. She is fatally flawed with mental problems!

NB- The entire story is narrated by “we” (the townspeople) and we don’t get ever a chance to step into Miss Emily’s boots!

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Rose for Emily is one of the central stories by William Faulkner… And it is a Southern Gothic masterpiece…
The rose of the title is Emily’s figurative award for her uncompromised amorous victory…
Emily is an old recluse and she dies in utter poverty…

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant – a combined gardener and cook – had seen in at least ten years.

The atmosphere of the story is enigmatic and doleful… No Gothic tale can exist without some gruesome mystery…
There is not a single character in the tale that isn’t strange… Emily’s dead father was a strange man… Her Negro servant is strange… Her hypothetical fiancé is strange… And Emily is the strangest of them all…  

At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’s toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men’s clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, “They are married.” We were really glad.

Some secrets remain buried forever and some secrets are revealed too late.

[Adina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faulkner. Hearing the name sends shivers of panic through my spine. Ok, I am exaggerating but I have been avoiding him for years due to his reputation as a writer of difficult prose. What it did not get through my head until now is that his work might require a bit of grey matter but it is also brilliant. This short story stands proof to that. Had I not read it with my Short Story Club, I would probably have continued circumvented the guy for a few more years. What an excellent example of a creepy Southern Gothic tale. It’s about Emily, yes.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a Rose for Emily stan first and a human being second.

This book has EVERYTHING: a creepy elderly woman terrorizing a town, gossip, anti-tax propaganda, collective narrators, nosiness, economic inequality, a spooky twist, writing you can really sink your teeth into, a ragtag group of vigilante politicians dedicated only to making themselves look better, mystery smells, poison, agoraphobia.

What more could you need? That's a hell of a lot for a million year old short story.

Bottom line: May uncreative teachers continue assigning this forever!!!

------------------
pre-review

the tragedy here is that i desperately want to make a joke about this story but i can't do it without spoiling it and i want everyone to read it and be surprised.

my life is so hard.

review to come / 4.5 stars

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tbr review

declaring it halloween just so i have an excuse to reread my favorite spooky short story

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Rose for Emily is classic Faulkner, and truly Faulkner at his finest. His recurring theme of the slow death of the old South, its isolation and its antiquated class divisions, is at the heart of this tale, where death is everywhere. At the outset of the story we learn that Miss Emily is dead; while relating the details of her life, we learn that her father dies and leaves her alone to navigate a world in which she has barely learned to live; she withdraws into herself only to be reawakened by her "lover", who uses her and then discards her, and whose death is her dark secret that keeps her further isolated from the world outside her home. And, I think it is significant that the only person who shares her secret is her Negro servant.

Faulkner has a way of making you feel the dusty rooms, see the sunlight rays breaking through the tattered curtains, smell the decay and must and mold. The house itself is like a funeral home or perhaps a tomb. The reality of death, and a death-like state for the living, is everywhere. Emily has not lived, she has wasted away, with her arms around a dream that has itself long since died. What a metaphor for the South Faulkner lived in...a world with one foot still in the past, which it has glamorized, and one foot in the unsettling reality that has followed.

In regard to the glamorization of the past, one cannot help seeing the parallels there. This man Emily has preserved and whose bones she has slept with for all these years, never loved her or intended to marry her. He was just the embodiment of a dream that was ugly and sour beneath its surface. After he was gone, she obviously nurtured the idea of him and refashioned him to meet her need to validate her own existence.

In the end she is just a spectacle for the town. Nothing of her feelings or the truth of her character was ever understood by anyone of them. And yet, she was accepted as being one of them and a part of their own greater history while she lived.

A haunting and sad tale, told with so little drama that it makes the ending all the more shocking. Worthy, as Faulkner always is, of a revisit from time to time.

[Duane Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faulkner's classic short story was first published in 1930 in The Forum, his first story to be published in a national magazine. At the time it didn't bring him much commercial success, nor did his now famous novels, The Sound and the Fury (1929), and As I Lay Dying (1930). That success would come later in his career with two Pulitzer Prize winning novels, A Fable (1954), and The Reivers (1962), along with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.

A Rose for Emily is the tragic story of Miss Emily Grierson, who is Faulkner's symbol for the dying, decaying traditions and prejudices of the old South. It's a dark tale of parental domination, societal isolation, and mental illness. With a surprising and shocking ending, it's William Faulkner at his best.

4.5 stars

[Connie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Rose for Emily" is a Southern Gothic short story set in William Faulkner's fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi. In a series of flashbacks, the narrator tells the reader about Emily's life. Emily was alone in the world because her father had driven away all her suitors. There were few roles open to women other than being a wife and mother in the late 19th Century. She later meets a Northerner, but "he was not a marrying man," and he disappeared. We see the world move on as the reclusive Emily remains stuck in the traditional ways of the "Old South" in a changing Southern town. After her death, the townspeople learn about her hidden life.

Faulkner used many Gothic elements in this short story--an old dusty mansion, death, the smell of decay, and an eccentric woman with a mental illness. The last sentence is shocking--a perfect ending to the story.

This was originally read in 2014 for the "On the Southern Literary Trail" group. The reread is for the "Short Story Club" in 2022.

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This opens:
“When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant - a combined gardener and cook - had seen in at least ten years.”
Grammar mavens might get their red pens out, and yet it captures the character of the deceased and of the town.

The town has eyes

The omniscient narrator is plural (“we” and “our”), conjuring a feeling of Miss Emily being watched by a hive mind. No wonder she hides away. No wonder they watch and assume.

There was a reclusive old spinster in the village I grew up in. She lived in a big house with a high hedge. She had reputedly lost her love in the Great War and never wanted another. She had a mysterious nickname, The Wizz. We children were fascinated and a little bit fearful. Any sighting fuelled our curiosity and myth-making. But somehow, my mother got to know her and she, my brother, and I were invited to tea. We went a few times. She taught us card games. Nevertheless, she retained an aura of mystery. That later fed into my experience of characters like Miss Havisham and now Miss Emily. And Bluebeard.


Image: “A big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies.” I’m not sure how well the picture fits Faulkner’s description, and I think it’s the Adams House, in White Springs, Florida. (Source)

The backdrop

Miss Emily had tragedy in her life and madness in her family. When her father died, she was in denial for three days, was sick for a while, and became a recluse. Change is hard; denial seems easier.

The mayor who had “fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron” also invented a story that excused Miss Emily from town taxes in perpetuity. The narrator makes the casually misogynistic observation, “only a woman could have believed it”. And she did, feistily turning away officials who ask her to pay.

Nevertheless, people in the town came to feel sorry for her. Curious, too. There was gossip and speculation. Not without cause.

The writing and telling

Despite the plural narrator and twisting timelines, this story is much easier to follow than my only other Faulkner, Barn Burning, which I reviewed HERE.

As well as “Negro”, the n-word is used several times, as an ordinary descriptor rather than a term of abuse. Three times in one paragraph was startling.

There is no obvious meaning to the title: the only roses in the story are the colour of curtains and the pattern of light shades.


Image: A single rose on a coffin (Source)

Quotes
Bold is mine, not Faulkner’s.

• “And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.”

• “When they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray.”

• “She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.”

• “Cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper’s face ought to look.”

Colonel Sartoris

The mayor in this has the same name as the boy in Barn Burning. This story was written in 1930 and Colonel Sartoris was mayor about 30 years after the civil war. Barn Burning was written in 1939, and that Colonel Sartoris, known as Sarty, was a boy of ten, about 30 years after the civil war. The boy was named after a war hero.

Short story club

I read this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.

You can read this story here.

You can join the group here.

[AiK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Этот почти детективный рассказ, на самом деле олицетворяет прощание со старым Югом. Смерть Эмили, жившей затворницей, не признававшей новых властей, пытавшихся заставить ее платить налоги, и отсылавшей их представителей к умершему десять лет назад Сарторису, всколыхнула город. В этом непризнании новых времен, новых порядков слышится бунтарское начало.
На то, что Фолкнер задумал образ Эмили, как символ нежелания признавать смерть, падение, прекращение существования архаичного Юга после поражения в Гражданской войне, указывает вся ее жизнь. Она три дня не расставалась с телом умершего отца, не признавая его умершим, хотя он разрушил ее жизнь.
Она отчаянно цепляется за прошлое, не принимая никаких перемен. Ее дом покрылся толстым слоем пыли, потому что ни одна вещь не передвигалась, не выбрасывалась и новое (за исключением, подарков для жениха) не покупалось. Она спала с трупом бывшего возлюбленного, северянином.
Бедная Эмили!

[Mark André · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cool story. Faulkner seems to have no sympathy for his audience. He always seems to be exorcising some demon when writing his stories down.

[Helga · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches...

This fascinating and shocking story is about the strange and introvert Emily Grierson, who lives alone in an inherited house, has no friend and no prospects.
The unknown narrator, presumably one of the townspeople, begins the story by Emily’s funeral, recounting anecdotes about Emily, her uncanny behavior, several odd events in her life and her death. The story ends with a shocking revelation.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4★
“When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.”

These words are the opening of this Faulkner short story. I enjoyed it, but because it was written so long ago, 1930 (pushing a century ago now!), there are few surprises as Miss Emily’s life is revealed. That is not to say it isn’t a good read. It’s just a comment on the fact that when we read older works, we forget that they may be what inspired so many of the new stories and books and films we’re currently reading and watching.

It is obviously dated when we read about her Negro servant who is generally referred to by what we now refer to as “the N-word”. It appears often throughout, so if you are sensitive about that, avoid the story.

Because of her father’s status, Miss Emily was exempted from city taxes. After he had died and the politicians had changed, the townsfolk amended their opinion of her privileged status.

“At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.”

However, she remained stubborn, and Faulkner describes her thus:

“Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.”

You can read and/or download the story here.
https://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/wf_...

[Jenn "JR" · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short story - not at all a "book" - and I found a version online. Quick read and creepy! It's interesting how people will look the other way when they know something is wrong or someone is up to no good, as a show of "respect." It's also interesting to me how Emily clings to tradition - the structure she has always known - instead of breaking free, into the unknown. She holds onto her father's corpse as a way of resisting changes to her life. She becomes a recluse. She even kills the man she loves to keep him around. In the end - she transforms into her father - controlling, secretive, manipulative. The larger, darker silhouette in the tableau. Analyses of this story are a great rabbit hole - I'm about to jump in!

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

[am · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you, next

[Gorkem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faulkner cidden inanılmaz bir yazar. Öykülerin etkisi biraz üstünden zaman geçtikten sonra tekrardan umuyorum ki daha ayrıntılı bir yorum gireceğim

[Terris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sad story that really gets you in the last paragraph!

[Φώτης Καραμπεσίνης · Rating 4 out of 5]

Τελικά το βρήκα σε μια παλιά συλλογή αμερικανικών διηγημάτων από εκδόσεις Γράμματα.
Πρωτόλειος Φώκνερ, όχι λιγότερο απολαυστικός εντούτοις, σε μια southern gothic ιστορία.

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Short Story Club

What a brilliant short story which deserves to be a novel! I enjoyed Faulkner's writing style and the structure of the text.
It is a true Southern Gothic story about Emily whom nobody really knew in the town where she had lived all her life. Until the day of her burial. Emily is a tragic heroine - she is a victim of noblesse oblige, resistance to change and loneliness. At the same time she is a criminal. And it seems she never received a rose intended for her.

'It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores.(...)'
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'Thus she passed from generation to generation — dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.'
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'They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men — some in their brushed Confederate uniforms — on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.'

[Arman · Rating 5 out of 5]

1.
راوی با انتخاب صحنه "خاکسپاری" به عنوان افتتاحیه داستان، هوشمندی خاصی به خرج داده است:
یکی اینکه مضمون مرگ را به کل داستان تعمیم داده است.
و دوم اینکه باعث می شود خواننده با خیال اینکه پایان داستان را می داند، به سراغ جزئیات روایت می رود؛ و در آخر ناگهان راوی، سورپرايز آخر داستان را در مقابل بهت خواننده رو می کند.

2.
داستان حدودا بیست سال بعد از جنگ داخلی آمریکا اتفاق می افتد، و روایتگر زوال تدریجی خانواده های زمیندار و ارزشهای برده داری و اشرافی مآبانه همراه با آن ست (خانواده میس امیلی دیگر آنقدر احترام ندارد که از او مالیات نخواهند)، و کسانی که به این ارزش ها تعلق داشتند، یا مرده اند (مانند کلنل سارتوريس)، یا مانند میس امیلی خود را منزوی کرده، و آنقدر خودش را در خانه ی (=تابوت) پوسیده و بو گرفته اش محبوس می کنند که پیش از مرگ، به مرده ای می مانند، و بعد از آن در میان گور سربازان(ی که در راه اين ارزش های جنگیده بودند) جای می گیرد.

3.
فاکنر با روایتی موجز و به زیبایی، این تغییر در معیار و ارزش ها را با توصیف جبروت از دست رفته و به گرد و خاک نشسته ی خانه میس امیلی، اعضای جدید شورای شهر (که پیشنهاد می دهند به او بخاطر بوی خانه تذکر دهند، و بعدها از وی تقاضای مالیات می کنند)، سنگفرش کردن خیابان ها، و خاطرات گذشته ای که بوی ماندگی شان کل شهر را برداشته است، نشان می دهد.


پ ن: خوشحالم که توانستم به همراه دوستانم، یگانه و سینا، راجع به این داستان گپ بزنم... و یه تأسف واسه اینکه رویا رو همان اول جلسه، از دست دادیم.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sad, disturbing tale. You want to open all the windows in the house after reading it.

This was my second Faulkner. I don’t enjoy him. I get a bad feeling while I’m reading, a feeling I keep trying to shrug off. But it turns out I can’t, and the story makes itself at home inside my head and refuses to leave. I read "As I Lay Dying" many years ago, and can still hear old Anse muttering. Now Emily and her loved ones are in there too. *shudder*

I guess it’s time for me to give in and accept Faulkner’s greatness and just read more of his works--accept that there are some things you just can’t control.

Of course that’s not what Emily would say …

[Vicki Herbert - Vacation until Jan 2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trio of Classics by Three Great Authors

A ROSE FOR EMILY by William Faulkner

No spoilers. 4 1/2 stars. Although I purchased this novella as A ROSE FOR EMILY, it included 2 additional short stories. I rated each story individually...

A ROSE FOR EMILY
By William Faulkner
Miss Emily was the last member of a wealthy family, and when she died, the entire town attended her funeral. In later years, Emily had become a recluse and never left her house, but when she died, a secret she had been hiding came to light...
(5 stars)

HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS
by Ernest Hemingway
The hills across the valley of Ebro were long and white and looked like white elephants. A man and a young woman are sitting at a bar drinking, waiting for a train to Barcelona, and discussing aborting their unborn child...
(4 stars)

WINTER DREAMS
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dexter, a young middle class lad, meets his magical dream woman from the upper class and aspires to better himself so she will want to marry him, but she has many men waiting in line to be her husband. Dexter has a lot of growing up to do...
(5 stars)

I was surprised, but happily so, to get these three stories from three great authors. Even though I was expecting to read only A ROSE FOR EMILY, my favorite of the three was WINTER DREAMS.

If you're looking for an introduction to these three authors, I recommend this little book as a starting point.

[Patrizia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tre racconti costruiti intorno a tre figure di donne, tre vite durissime condizionate da eventi familiari che le trasformano, dopo aver abbattuto ogni sogno, trascinandole nella solitudine.
Zilphia, vittima di una madre abbandonata che, per proteggerla, la isola dal mondo. Conoscerà un momento di libertà, in un matrimonio durato tre giorni, per poi venire risucchiata dalla madre e perpetuarne l’ossessione.
Miss Emily, un padre autoritario che respinge tutti i pretendenti della figlia, una casa prigione da cui uscirà per un breve periodo, ma che diventerà la sua tomba.
Intorno a loro, una comunità che guarda, spettegola, compatisce, disprezza, ma non interviene.
E poi Juliet, protagonista del mio preferito tra i tre racconti - Adolescenza - in cui i temi della solitudine e dell’abbandono, uniti a quello del conflitto generazionale, si fondono alla lotta per una vita diversa da quella che sembra tracciata dal destino. Qui anche i toni si smorzano, la durezza dei primi due racconti è stemperata da una natura amica e solidale, in cui Juliet si rifugia per nuotare, tuffarsi, arrampicarsi sugli alberi, stendersi al sole. In riva a quel “laghetto d’acqua scura” trova anche un amico, Lee, e le sue giornate acquistano nuova luce. Si ritrovano ogni giorno, in una felicità che credono eterna e al riparo da ogni cambiamento, anche se Juliet avverte una strana sensazione:

“Era vagamente turbata e triste, come l’anno che cambia, con la sua suggestione di mortalità e incostanza, quando si apprende che niente è immutabile fuorché il mutamento.”

In una notte il mondo di Juliet viene travolto. Perderà tutto, ma la cosa più difficile da accettare è

“Lee era un’altra faccenda, la sua partenza era più tangibile della morte di cento uomini: era come fosse morta lei. Così rimase seduta nell’oscurità, osservando la fanciullezza che l’abbandonava”.

Si chiude una pagina della sua vita.

“anche lei piangeva apertamente, perché tutto sembrava così effimero e insensato, così futile: che ogni sforzo, ogni impulso verso la conquista della felicità fosse ostacolato dal cieco caso, che persino il suo tentativo di tagliare i ponti con quella famiglia che odiava venisse frustrato da qualcosa dentro di lei. Neppure la morte poteva aiutarla: la morte è solo la condizione in cui vengono gettati coloro che ci si lascia alle spalle.”

C’è però forse un filo di speranza nella tristezza che avvolge Juliet e quel mondo “muto e bellissimo”.

“Si muoveva appena, ed era come se gli alberi nuotassero lentamente fuori dall’oscurità e passassero sopra la sua testa, stendendo i rami più alti nelle acque stellate che si aprivano davanti a loro e si richiudevano quando erano passati, senza mai un’increspatura né un cambiamento.”

[Mohadese · Rating 5 out of 5]

☆ پنج‌ستاره‌ی طلایی درخشان ☆

من داستان سیال ذهن، گوتیک و جنایی‌طور زیاد خوندم. عاشق داستان‌های مریضم،
اما مریضِ تمیز؟
این اولین و بهترین نسخه‌س!
فاکنر اعجوبه‌س!

▪︎ داستان درباره چیه؟
یه دختر که پدر، برادر و شوهری نداره و تنها تو یه خونه یزرگ و اشرافی تو آمریکای جنوبی قدیمی زندگی می‌کنه‌ تا این که یه روز یه پسر کارگر شمالی میاد به شهر و امیلی یه جورایی عاشقش می‌شه.

▪︎ قصه‌ی امیلی مدام از زمان حال به گذشته‌ و زمان‌های مختلف می‌ره و تیکه تیکه روایت رو برای ما می‌گه تا در نهایت خواننده خودش تیکه‌ها رو کنار هم بذاره و پازل رو تکمیل کنه و امیلی رو قضاوت کنه.

▪︎ داستان یه تم مدرن در فضای گوتیک جنوبی داره.
اولین چیزی که نظرم رو جلب کرد، زاویه دید راوی بود که انگار کل مردم شهر هستن اما وقتی ریز می‌شی می‌بینی یه مرد سنتی سفیدپوست که امیلی رو یه tradition, duty و care می‌بینه.
دقیقا شبیه مرد ایرانی که زن "ناموس" شه...
دومسن نکته جالب توی داستان برای من اسن بود که امیلی با یه پسر آشنا می‌شه و اونو می‌بره خونش، کلی‌ی‌ی‌ شایعه درباره‌ی این دو نفر هست اما راوی از با عنوان Miss Emily یاد می‌کنه، انگار صدای مرد سنتی قالب نمی‌پذیره ناموسش با مردی بدون پیوند ازدواج رابطه داشته باشه.
و این پاک کردن صورت مسئله در همه‌جای داستان دیده می‌شه! چه در مواجهه با زن چه در مقابل سیاه‌پوستان.
و این دقیقا ایران ماست، صدای قالبی که صورت مسئله اقلیت‌ها رو بارها و بارها پاک می‌کنه...
ریسپکت جناب فاکنر،
ریسپکت!

▪︎ یه نظریه هست که از رمان جین ایر اومده:
The mad women in the Attic
ادبیات قدیمی‌تر اغلب زن‌ها رو بی‌دلیل دیوانه نشون میده.
حالا فاکنر یک زن دیوانه افسار گسیخته رو به تصویر می‌کشه و میگه این زن دیوانه‌ست چون دیوانه‌ش کردند!
یه جورایی یادآور اون مثل آمریکاییه که میگه:
Hurt people hurt people
دختری که زیر فشار جامعه و پدر سنت‌گرای ظالمش تبدیل به یه قاتل می‌شه.
آیا واقعا امیلی گناهکاره؟ علت یا معلول؟
قطعا نه می‌شه امیلی رو متهم کرد و نه می‌شه گناهکار دونستش پس چی کار کنیم؟
و حالا این‌جاست که فاکنر میاد یه گل رز در عنوان داستان تقدیم امیلی می‌کنه. (:
شاخه گلی که حق این دختره، درست مثل مردی که می‌خواست ترکش کنه اما امیلی اون رو با منطق و کارای خودش پیش خودش نگه می‌داره... [دارم تلاش می‌کنم اسپویل نکنم!]

خلاصه که اگر تا این‌جا ریویو رو خوندی دمت گرم!
برو داستان هم بخون (:

[Sue K H · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story is sad and macabre but unfortunately timeless and realistic. A town watches the decay caused by mental illness as they are unequipped to provide any real help.

[بَرسا · Rating 3 out of 5]

فاکنر حتی در ده صفحه توانسته قدرت نویسندگی نفس گیر خود را به نمایش بگذارد. نمایش عمارت غم انگیز ، دلسوزی ها و پیش داوری ها و حرف های بی‌معنی مردم شهر کوچک تا قبل از دانستن فاجعه، نمایش نور و فهماندن فاجعه به مخاطب همه و همه از توانمندی قلم اوست.

[Carlo Mascellani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tre racconti brevi, ma sui quali si potrebbe scrivere molto e analizzare altrettanto. Mi piace vederli come un percorso verso la scoperta di sé e verso l'acquisizione della libertà che ne è il naturale complemento. Nel primo racconto, Zilphia ci conduce a scoprire le pene della ribellione mal consumata, nel secondo Emily le pene della ribellione mai consumata. Sono nel terzo, la protagonista, Juliet, sembra tirare i fili di queste esperienze e condurre la sua vita in maniera più consapevole. Chi veramente ne esce sconfitta è la società moralista, perbenista e oppressiva dell'epoca e la figura maschile in particolar modo. Racconti molto. scorrevoli. Per un primo approccio a Faulkner.

[leynes · Rating 2 out of 5]

General info: "A Rose for Emily" is a short story by American author William Faulkner, first published in the April 30, 1930, issue of The Forum. The story takes place in Faulkner's fictional city Jefferson, Mississippi, in the fictional southern county of Yoknapatawpha. It was Faulkner's first short story published in a national magazine.

Personal opinion: Mehhh. Kind of wanted to get into Faulkner's short fiction (since I'm going to analyse Murakami's Barn Burning soon!) and A Rose for Emily kept popping up as the most interesting Faulkner story there is. After reading it, I have to say I've never been more disappointed in my life (yes, I'm dramatic, deal with it). This story is sooooo boring, I cannot even deal. I didn't enjoy the writing style, I thought the premise was actually ridiculous and following the life of Emily (from the time she was a young girl to an old widow). The interaction between her and the townspeople didn't make much sense and I can't say I was shocked by the big reveal at the end. Overall, just a disappointment.

About the end: Emily had become an institution, so her death sparks a great deal of curiosity about her reclusive nature and what remains of her house. After she is buried, a group of townsfolk enters her house to see what remains of her life there. Tobe walked out of the house and was never seen again, giving the townspeople access to Miss. Emily's home. The door to her upstairs bedroom is locked, and some of the townsfolk break down the door to see what has been hidden for so long. Inside, among the possessions that Emily had bought for Homer, lies the decomposed corpse of Homer Barron on the bed. On the pillow beside him is the indentation of a head and a single strand of gray hair, indicating that Emily had slept with Homer's corpse. The house is an indicator revealing how Emily struggled to keep everything the same, in a frozen time period, avoiding change.

Interpretation: "A Rose for Emily" discusses many dark themes that characterized the Old South and Southern Gothic fiction. The story explores themes of death and resistance to change. Also, it reflects the decaying of the societal tenets of the South in the 1930s. Emily Grierson had been oppressed by her father for most of her life and hadn't questioned it because that was her way of living. Likewise, the antiquated traditions of the south (often harmful, such as in the treatment of black people) had remained acceptable, as that was their way of living. Once her father had passed, Emily, in denial, refused to give his corpse up for burial—this shows her inability to functionally adapt to change.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A ROSE FOR EMILY" is my first experience with Faulkner, and it was quite a beginning! This short story is darkly atmospheric in its descriptive prose of the dusty, smelly and decaying old mansion in which Emily lives in seclusion, and high on the "ICK" factor by the shocking conclusion.

Poor lonely Emily though.....I felt so sorry for her having a mean old father who turns away all her suitors.....but eventually.....Emily does find..........and forever keeps.....a man of her own.

So glad I noticed GR friend Connie's excellent review today as it drew my attention to this novel! Look forward to reading more of Mr. Faulkner.

[- Jared - ₪ Book Nerd ₪ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary:
A splendid noir and brief tale of the life of an recluse American Southern elderly woman named Emily Grierson who had died. Emily was an eccentric woman who might be characterized as stubborn and who certainly lived her life on her own terms. As a woman in her thirties, she had become estranged from her family and about then her only living housemate, her father, had died leaving her alone. In the past, there had been gossip that she'd marry a man by the name of Homer Barron. Unfortunately for her, he had disappeared from the town some several years back. They thought then that she'd commit suicide over his absence. She never did but instead grew old and later discovered to have died one night in her sleep succumbing to her old age. There is a surprise twist ending awaiting those of whom have not read it. It may leave you, as it did me, with a disrupting feeling.

Readers Note:
Be forewarned that it was written by a southerner in a pre-civil rights era, when and where, racism abounded. You'll see some racial terms present in this work. Though it is lamentable, it is a historical fact, one that should not detract from its reading nor censored in my opinion. If it offends your sensibilities, however, you may want to miss-out on this one. Personally, I say read it and later thank God for our dear Martin Luther King Jr.!

Review and Analysis:
Given the part of the story of her father dying and her denial of his death, her being made estranged from her extended family, and thereby being all alone; Call me naive, but I personally interpret the story as not alluding to sexual kind of Necrophilia, as some other interpretations I've seen allude to, but instead a desperate loneliness. Arguably it is certainly on the spectrum of Necrophilia.

Looking at these sentences from the story:
"That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. "..." So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized."
I appreciate the way Faulkner artistically alludes to a foreshadowing of her coming insanity while also setting a melancholy tone of regret and pity for Emily. The narrative suggests to me that she was innocent of her insanity and any wrong doing. It's more like she was a victim of her bad circumstances.

We see Homer leaves then comes back, apparently to his demise as she plans to poison him. Perhaps she planned to kill herself but before she could commit to the act, Home comes back. I think it is more that she doesn't want to be left alone again and be abandoned as she felt that she was when her father died. There is no mention of her mother and it seems that Emily had no example of a woman in her life so this could account for the social peculiarities and possibly one reason why she was unable to foster a successful relationship.
From the Story:
"We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will." ... "Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die."
She was a woman raised by her father. Her father's personality traits lead to their family estrangement, it would seem that she picked up at least some of these. We see examples of this at the beginning when they come to collect taxes. She was an eccentric woman who might be characterized as stubborn and who certainly lived her life on her own terms.

Suffering from the loss of her father, the only person of which she had any kind of relationship with before Homer, she'd prefer the company of a corpse rather than suffer the utter loneliness that she felt was to come of her relationship with Homer. Perhaps Homer was indeed gay as the gossip in the narrative alluded to but he also enjoyed her company. Though it is worth mentioning that the narrative is told as if by small town gossipers that may not be entirely reliable and they may have just had a bigotry towards Northerners. Whatever the case, I think that she wanted more from their relationship than he was willing to give and rather than suffer his absence from time to time, she made sure he'd stick around.

It's very sad when interpreted this way but that is how the story speaks to me and Faulkner tends to have a sort of depressing and melancholy feel in all his writings. I consistently see him enforcing this with his choice of words.

Personal Note:
Re-read this for the first time in years at the time of this review. I originally read this work while in High School, though I was in AP English, it was not an assignment but As I Lay Dying was. I had to take a break from As I Lay Dying because at the time I felt it was hard to get through and very dark and depressing. This book was my break. The book had made a disturbing impact on me and I remember not being able to shake it for quite some time. Oddly enough, I now seem to look back on it fondly. Strange how a piece of literature can have this effect on one, isn't it?

Much later in life, forgetting this book, I had a daughter. Upon deliberating as what to name my unborn child, my wife, mother and I, miraculously and independently of one another suggested the name Emily. Naturally, as you'd imagine, it stuck. Unfortunately within a month of her birth I recalled this tale and begun to have seriously foreboding doubts on the name. Feeling rather silly for my motivations, I kept these doubts to myself. In hindsight, I'm glad I did and I think I like this work over may of his others just because I still can't help but remember it! Now these memories are something I can look back on and laugh to myself about. See what a big part literature can become in one's life!?

[Amaranta · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Gli alberi da frutta sbocciarono in folate di rosa e di bianco, come grappoli di api fragranti attorno ad alveari di case grigie e scolorite e stinti covoni di fieno” .
Tre racconti con donne fuori dall’ordinario. E un Faulkner che brilla ancora una volta nella scelta delle parole, nella regia di storie che hanno un che di folle ma allo stesso tempo qualcosa di perfettamente normale. Donne ferite dalla vita, dagli uomini, dalla famiglia perfettamente descritte in pochi tratti.
Zilphia Gant, non meno bianca del cuscino sul quale poggiava, aveva due occhi che sembravano buchi fatti col pollice in un pezzo di carta assorbente , stanca della vita prima ancora di viverla, per colpa di una madre asfissiante a sua volta ferita; Miss Emily Grierson, gli occhi, che si muovevano da un visitatore all’altro… sembravano due carboni piantati in una pagnotta cruda e la solitudine come unica compagna; e la piccola Juliet una monella sottile come un giunco, scurissima di pelle, con gli occhi stretti, neri e insondabili come quelli di un animale di pezza, e una folta capigliatura nera bruciata dal sole. Cosa è normale in un animo ferito? La caparbietà di donne che bastano a se stesse, forti, sole pur se insieme a qualcuno. La consapevolezza di questa solitudine a renderle ancora più forti, spietate con la vita, pronte a prendersi da essa tutto il possibile.
Una conferma della bellezza della scrittura di Faulkner, che mi aveva già conquistata al primo sguardo con “Mentre morivo” e che adesso ritrovo in questi brevi racconti.
“Così rimase seduta nell’oscurità, osservando la fanciullezza che l’abbandonava… il mondo era questo, sotto di lei e sopra la sua testa, eterno vuoto e sconfinato” .