Captive Southern Royalty in A Rose for Emily

There is not a soul in the South who has not known a Miss Emily, Faulkner's now classic character in "A Rose for Emily," especially if they have ever lived in the rural South. However, many readers of this short story have never read a biography of the author and do not know what there might have been in his own life that connected him to the rural South and may have exposed him to prototypes for Emily. Therefore, it is a worthy exercise to examine not only the short story, "A Rose for Emily," but also the life and times of Faulkner himself.

Faulkner was born William Cuthbert Falkner on September 25, 1897, in rural New Albany, Mississippi. He was the oldest of Murry and Maud Butler Falkner's four sons and was named for his great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, often referred to as the "Old Colonel" (Padgett, 2002). This particular great-grandfather provided a larger-than-life ancestor for Falkner whose footsteps would prove impossible to fill. The Old Colonel was a wealthy lawyer, politician, planter, businessman, Civil War colonel, railroad financier, and best-selling writer who was ultimately killed in a duel with a former business partner.

By the time Faulkner was five years of age, his grandfather, called the "Young Colonel," had convinced Faulkner's father to move to Oxford, Mississippi (Padgett, 2002). The Young Colonel sold the railroad and founded the First National Bank of Oxford. Faulkner's father, disappointed that he was no longer heir to a railroad, moved from job to job, most of which were obtained through the influence of his father.

Faulkner's education was an interesting mixture of attending school and daydreaming on his own. He entered first grade in 1905 and skipped to the third grade the next year (Padgett, 2002). By 1911, he was in the eighth grade, but was truant most of the time. The 1914 - 1915 school year found him dropping in and out of the eleventh grade and leaving without a high school diploma. However, it was during his early school years that Faulkner began to write short stories and poetry. After leaving school, Faulkner spent a good deal of time on the campus of the University of Mississippi, even though it would be after the war before he actually enrolled in classes. In any case, Faulkner never graduated from either high school or college.

Faulkner, like his father, seemed to be adrift in life, never able to hold a job for any significant length of time. He tried to join the Air Force, but was turned down because he was too short (Padgett, 2002), so he joined the R.A.F. in Canada. Although he never rose above the rank of cadet, Faulkner often passed himself off as an officer and told many tales of his exploits and war wounds. In fact, he was so successful at playing the wounded veteran that he was able to enroll in the University of Mississippi on a special program for war veterans. All the while, he continued to write poetry and short stories.

Eventually, Faulkner's childhood friend, Estelle Oldham Franklin, obtained a divorce from her husband. The two were married in 1929 and began a family (Padgett, 2002). Faulkner struggled to support his family as a novelist. Ultimately, Faulkner became a successful, award-winning author, and even served on the faculty of the University of Virginia for the last two years of his life. William Faulkner died of a heart attack in 1962, just two months after being presented with the Gold Medal for Fiction by the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

There were many facets of Faulkner's own life that had the potential to affect his writing, especially the story-line in "A Rose for Emily." Having been born in rural Mississippi just thirty years after the end of the Civil War was enough to provide him with a view of the South to which many later authors would never be privy (Williamson, 1993). Then, of course, there were the members of his own family, available always to provide the framework for characters in fiction. The Old Colonel could be reconstituted in any of the roles he played in life. He could be a wealthy Southern lawyer, politician, planter, businessman, Civil War colonel, or railroad financier and, of course, dying as the result of a duel with a former business partner always makes for a wonderful end to a Southern yarn. The Young Colonel, living in the shadow of a larger-than-life legend, selling the family industry, founding his own successful business, and fathering a less than successful son, was certainly a role model for story-lines and characters. Then, of course, there was Faulkner's father, bitter at knowing he would not be given a position he felt he deserved in life and wandering from job to job because he had never prepared himself for anything other than inheriting. Williamson (1993) examines each of these men and their influence on Faulkner's later development of characters in his works.

In addition to family members and ancestors, as fodder for later characters, Faulkner experienced the racial differences that were present in Mississippi following the Civil War and up until the Civil Rights Movement. It has been reported that he actually witnessed a lynching as a child (Blotner, 1991), as well as the inequities between all the different levels of Southern society. While Faulkner was never a political activist, with respect to Civil Rights, he did accurately present the relationship between the black and white South, leaving the astute reader to make their own judgments about the injustices inherent in such a social order.

Finally, Faulkner's ability to recreate himself in a favorable light is an interesting facet of his character that also turns up in the characters he creates. Faulkner was not even a high school graduate, yet he ended up on the faculty of a major university (Blotner, 1991). Faulkner never saw combat during his entire tour of duty in the R.A.F., yet he had others believing not only that he had been in combat, but that he had also been wounded and actually had a silver plate in his head (Padgett, 2002). Was his recreation of himself an attempt to return to the glory days of the Faulkner family? Was it an attempt to fool the public, or to fool himself? Did Faulkner feel as if he had fallen short of the accomplishments of the Old Colonel and the Young Colonel and, therefore, was driven to present himself as somehow better than he really was (Coughlan, 1954)? These are all questions that were never answered by Faulkner himself and will continue to remain the source of speculation. However, it does seem that, since he returned again and again to the stereotypical characters found not only in the South, but also in his own family, there is some basis for assuming that Faulkner felt adrift in life and may have told some of his tall tales simply as a means of anchoring his own opinion of himself.

The fingerprints of Faulkner's early life are all over "A Rose for Emily" (Minter, 1980). The mayor of Jefferson, Colonel Sartoris, can be identified as a parallel figure to Faulkner's great-grandfather. A hold-over from the Civil War, he is the patriarch of the town for every generation until his death. Emily's father is much like Faulkner's grandfather. Wealthy and impatient with family members who do not agree with his point of view, he causes a rift between himself and every other member of his family and the community. The geat-aunt mirrors Faulkner's insecurities about his own identity, by suggesting that the Grierson family portrayed itself to be higher on the social scale than it really was. Yet, this was the social norm in the South during the lifetime of Faulkner's ancestors and, indeed, during most of his own lifetime (Williamson, 1993).

Gray (1994) also makes note of the racial issues, along with the presentation of the townspeople, in "A Rose for Emily." It is quite possible that Faulkner did witness a lynching as a child and that the experience had an effect on him for the rest of his life. In "A Rose for Emily," he portrays the modern population of Jefferson as almost nameless and faceless. There are ladies mentioned, as well as children, men, and teenagers. Yet, these seem to be more groups of people than individual characters. Some of the young people are racists, while most of the adults have made their peace with racial issues and allow Emily's man-servant to go about his business unhindered. Emily's reaction to the townspeople is indifferent, at best. She does not know them and has no wish to know them. This is vaguely reminiscent of the life-track of Faulkner himself. He too is part of Southern society as the old Southern culture disintegrates. He has no more clue as to how to go about becoming part of the modern South than does Emily, nor does he ever seem to feel the need to do so. He is the descendant of a grand culture and never mixes with the other classes and levels of individuals in society thus, he is never quite able to fully describe the townspeople, nor tell his readers any specific information about them.

"A Rose for Emily," much like the majority of Faulkner's other works, is evidence that the author never strayed far from his familial roots. This may have been because his work was the way he attempted to understand the world into which he was born. It may be that Faulkner knew the magical key to successful writing, writing about what one knows. In either case, the slow analysis of the life and death of Emily Grierson depicts not a few of the ancestors of William Faulkner and, indeed, even the author himself can be recognized in Miss Emily if the reader is familiar with the life and times of Faulkner in his beloved Mississippi.

Works Cited

Blotner, Joseph. Faulkner: A Biography. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

Coughlan, Robert. The Private World of William Faulkner. New York: Harper, 1954.

Gray, Richard J. The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography. Oxford; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1994.

Minter, David. William Faulkner: His Life and Work. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Morris, Willie. Faulkner's Mississippi. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House, 1990.

Padgett, John B. "William Faulkner." The Mississippi Writer's Page. (2002). Accessed: November 22, 2002.

Williamson, Joel. William Faulkner and Southern History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.