发布时间 : 星期四 文章《献给艾米丽的玫瑰花》人物简要分析更新完毕开始阅读
thirty years’ life in the tower made her never being able to develop any real relationship with anyone else, of course, no love, and she was already did not know how to make friends with others. She was extremely lonely and sad, she needed someone to love her. Barron’s appearance for her was what the spring to the thirsty, and the rain for the dry fields. However, she was such a dominant figure the townspeople had put her on a pedestal and were very judgmental of her actions, and she was “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town”.[12] She could not get married with a northern guy, Emily did not get any support from the society, as the writer said, “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such.”[13] Though her father died, Emily was not free, but she wanted to fight for her rights, she would never let Barron leave, no matter what she had to pay for it, she chose to fight back to the society.
2.2.2 Emily—The rose struggling in the storm
Emily Grierson came from an \
her father for thirty years, she had no chance to saw anybody else, when the restraint of her father was cut, Emily found her new freedom, and she set out to fulfill her desires of finding love and living her own life. However, her status forced her to act as a noble and dignity lady. In Homer Barron a laborer from the north, Emily founded love, but there were many difficulties she had to conquer to marry.
When she felt in love with Homer Barron, she tried to persuade him to stay with her, but she failed. So she killed Homer with arsenic then sleeping with his dead body every night until her death. What she did was so senseless, and was unacceptable for common, we considered her as crazy and sick. However, in my opinion, it was the only thing she can do that situation. Emily was living in such a special period, the influence of the Civil War was so great that she can not face and burden but had to escape. She was not a weak woman, she wanted to pursuit her own right, but what she had to face was not only her father, but the whole society. When her father refused everyone who wanted to meet Miss Emily, she used to reject her father, but failed. When she wanted to get married with Barron, the townspeople disagreed. Elder, she locked herself in her house, and refused to pay the taxes, ignored the postman, and companied with Barron, though he was died, because he would never leave her, hurt
her, and never changed. What she wanted was just the peace, or in the other words, she hoped to living a life as before. Now, we can see that, Emily was not herself but a symbol of the whole southern people, her thought was the reflection of the southern people, and whatever she did was the struggle of the southern people. The industrialization destroyed their lives, their comfort, and their satisfaction. The elder were on her side to protect her, and dismissed her taxes, for them, “Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town”,[14] their regarded her as their ideal, their hope, and their consolation. When Emily died, they knew that the age of southern has gone.
Emily was not a weak woman, she did what she can do to catch her own rights, to pursuit the happiness, however, her father did not give it to her, neither Homer Barron nor the society. She was struggling in the world by herself, and she had to show the town that even though she was the last Grierson, she was going to keep her head up high and act like a true noble woman. She lived a hard live in her whole lifetime, maybe, her happiest time in her life was when she lived with the dead body.
2.2.3 The inventible tragedy of Emily
Emily’s tragedy was not only her own destiny, but was the inventible
consequence of the society progress. As the author mentioned before, Emily was the symbol of the southern American, her destiny was the reflection of the southern American’s fate. William Faulkner was a southern writer, and he knew the truth clearly that the age for southern American was no longer existed, it was the time for capitalism and the bourgeois. But he had a mixed feeling of this. On the one hand, he realized that it was a progress of society, the slavery should be abolished, and the country should on the way to industrialization and modernize. On the other hand, as a southern American, he felt pity and sympathetic. “A Rose for Emily” showed this kind of mixed feeling. Emily was the last of a long line of the southern “aristocrats”. Obstinate, asocial, out of step with the tenor of modern life, she lingers, when alive, she was the “monument” to a glory gone with the wind, never return. With the end of the Civil War, the democracy and freedom will finally substitute the slavery.
In this situation, the symbol of the southern American—Emily, still held her head up high, worked to make a living and not lived by the support of another.
However, much did she try she was still considered as \fellow townsmen. With her growing interests in Homer Barron, she heard the comments of his “lower classes” but she didn’t care. She was going to live her life the way in which she wanted to. Clearly she knew that her didn’t want to commit, of course not at first, but later there was another catalyst in changing Emily; when “Poor Emily” knew previously that Homer Barron was not intending to stay with her, she finally went to the drug store demanding in the most noble and dignified manner “I want arsenic”.[15] At this point it appeared that Emily was fighting against the town and Homer Barron, and indicated her own destiny.
3 Conclusion
In my point of view, Emily was not a sick or twisted woman, she was a woman
who want to keep her dignity and to pursuit and grasp her own happiness. Her story was not only a story of a noble woman’s life, but indicated the social situation at that time, and indicated those who wanted to stay in the stage of the history longer but finally displaced by the new power. After the Civil War, the life in America was completely changed. And a new government was built, and the old one should be dismissed, no matter how unwilling you are.
Notes
[1]；[2];[3];[4] William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily [5] Chang Yaoxin, A Survey of American Literature
[6] Metaphorical interpretation of A Rose for Emily Xiang Erlan School of Foreign Languages, WUT Wuhan 430070 Hubei China [7];[8]William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily [9] Critical analysis A Rose for Emily
[10];[11];[12];[13];[14];[15] William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
Bibliography
[1] William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
[2] Critical analysis A Rose for Emily
[3]Metaphorical interpretation of A Rose for Emily Xiang Erlan School of Foreign Languages, WUT Wuhan 430070 Hubei China [4]The Character of Emily
[5]Chang Yaoxin, A Survey of American Literature