A Feminine Rose for Macho Emily:The Cure and the Curse

College of Foreign Languages and Cultures,Sichuan University,Chengdu,China Email:1986055849@qq.com

[Abstract]This paper decodes the Faulkner masterpiece“A Rose for Emily”by analyzing the paradoxical rose,which appears exclusively in the title.Through investigating the usual tropes of rose in literature history and closely reading the text,this paper argues that there is a contrasting structure of feminine rose and macho Emily,and the rose,as a metaphor of both cure and curse,foretells Emily’s finding her solace in searching for femininity and being doomed by it.In this way,the title is like an allegory predestining Emily’s tragedy.

[Keywords]A Rose for Emily;William Faulkner;femininity;macho

In“Beauty and the Beast”,a rose carrying both the curse and bless drives the beast/prince crazy.The merciless prince was cursed and as well left a chance to get rid of the monstrous transformation by it.Romantic while dangerous,with its enchanting petals and thorns,a rose is naturally and immanently taken as a symbol or tattoo to deliver such cure/curse paradox in literature; for example,in“A Rose for Emily”,even though there’s no rose in the short story except for that in the title,serving as a tattoo,a rose,which is usually related to feminine beauty,is sharply contrasted with the actually“macho”Emily.In this way,the“rose”in the title implies the paradox structure,and metaphorically heralds the tragedy of Emily:she will find her solace in searching for femininity,an element that eludes her because of her family,but at the same time be doomed by it,due to the feminine Homer Barron failing her.

Usual Tropes of Rose in Literature History

Shakespeare claimed inRomeo and Juliet,“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other word would smell as sweet”(2003,p.107).What he’s trying to say is vividly demonstrated by William Faulkner’s“A Rose for Emily”,whose no-rose-at-all intrigues people and keeps them wondering about the real meaning of the“rose”in the title.Some scholars hold that it means Emily deserves a rose for“having attempted to triumph over time and place in her quest for love”(Going,1958,p.27);some believe that it shows a nostalgia to the Confederate South,which Grierson family stands for(He,2010); some,straightforwardly,from the perspective of deconstruction,think there’s no meaning about the“rose”at all(McDermott,2007).Real or metaphor or myth,without doubt,the rose is one of the keys to dissect the story.If we apply Shakespeare’s insight into the decoding,however,we will find that it’s OK for the“rose”disappearing,because what we need to catch to help us better understand the text is not the word itself but the things Faulkner tries to convey behind it,and I think that are the feminine symbol and paradox nature of roses.

The“rose”as a flower in the title doesn’t exist in the story,yet the word as an adjective does—in the bridal suite full of“dust”and“man’s toilet things”,there are“curtains of faded rose color”and“rose-shaded lights”(Faulkner,1970,p.236),which as a color contrasting the grey dust and silver man things shows a feminine tint.From not only the specific use of color in the story,but also the implication of roses in literary tradition,we can arrive at the conjecture that the rose is a symbol of femininity.

When we speak of rose,first things coming to our mind are elements like romance,intense love,burning emotion,beauty—elements in convention we tend to relate to female.The same goes for literature.

The tradition that uses rose as core imagery in literature can be traced back to the Middle Ages when allegory poems embrace rose as their“riddle”waiting for readers to find the message behind it.The anonymous“Al Nist by te Rose”written around the 13th to 14th century,for instance,is such a poem that depicts the narrator’s sexual desire through the image,rose.Another example is the long poem written by old French,“Le Roman de la Rose”,which illustrates rose as the fine lady,sacred romance,and the seductive female body the narrator pursues.Apart from serving as the tattoo of female,love and beauty,rose in this period conveys religious meanings as well.Quite a lot religious meanings are related to female,such as virgin or Virgin Mary implied by white rose.

After the Middle Ages,rose appeared more frequently in different kinds of literature other than in allegory poems.Shakespeare might be the first well-known writer to use rose as a core imagery in writing in the Renaissance.In his sonnets,he used a lot of roses and“rose”in capitalized and italic style.In the latter case,rose is used as the name of the person who attracts the narrator.Despite that some sonnets are written for the“dark lady”and some for a young man,they are all described as feminine people.Another famous Shakespeare work featuring rose isHenry VI,in which the“game of throne”between House of Lancaster and House of York is referred to as“Wars of the Roses”by Shakespeare.Red rose(Rosa gallica)and white rose(Rosa×alba)are the family crests of the two houses; hence the title.

Then,in romantic period,rose became more and more popular.In a sense,rose can be regarded as the logo of romantic period when poets tent to use rose to express their individual feelings,emotions,and thoughts about the world.For example,William Blake’s“The Sick Rose”talks about how a natural and innocent love can be contaminated and ruined by“worm”,i.e.the industrialized society and torrid craving for sex.Rose in the poem is usually taken as a symbol of female and innocence,and the“flies”the male and the mundane experience.The poem expresses a feeling of lost innocence and longing for a natural state of human beings,and that’s why it is included inSongs of Experience.In the 19th century,many romantic poets and writers influenced by romantic traditions wrote abundant works about rose or featuring rose.Some of them are Percy Bysshe Shelley’s“Love’s Rose”;William Wordsworth’s“Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known”;William Butler Yeats’s“The Secret Rose”,“The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart”;Oscar Wilde’sThe Nightingale and the Rose;Nathaniel Hawthorne’sThe Scarlet Letter.The most important piece of work about rose that sets the tune for rose in the 19th century probably goes to Robert Burns’classic masterpiece“A Red,Red Rose”.In this poem,Burns compared his lover to a red rose.By resorting to rose to frankly express his candid love to the girl,this poem creates an honest and genuine atmosphere which is totally different from the severe atmosphere in neoclassical poetry.Since then,the“red rose”is like an orthodox structure of female beauty and love,dominating literature in romantic era until it encounters another paradigm of rose put forward by Gertrude Stein,who wrote the iconic sentence,“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”,to praise the genuineness and pulchritude of a female Rose,in her poem“Sacred Emily”.Above all,we can see rose as an imagery literally“l(fā)iving”in literature through the history.Even though in different works it may refer to different things or meanings,female,femininity,innocence,authenticity are always the core meanings it implies.And such pattern is still being followed in literature.For instance,Siegfried Sassoon’s iconic phrase“In me the tiger sniffs the rose”in his poem“In me,past,present,future”talks both the masculinity and femininity in human nature.In this poem,Sassoon treats tiger as the symbol of masculinity and rose the symbol of femininity.With that being said,there is no shock for Faulkner using rose as the symbol of femininity.

Like Gertrude Stein,Faulkner also uses“rose”and“Emily”in the short story“A Rose for Emily”,except that Stein makes a poem of rose laud for Emily who doesn’t show up in that poem,while,interestingly,Faulkner uses pages of description of Emily to build a latent contrast between her and the rose that appears only in the title,a contrast between the rose which stands for femininity and the actual macho Emily.

A Contrasting Structure of Feminine Rose and Macho Emily

As David Vanderwerken(1997,p.106)suggests,“stable,loving,and nurturing extended families,[are]a scarce commodity in Faulkner’s world”,very few of Faulkner’s characters have happy childhood,and Emily is one among them.It’s not difficult to find that Emily lives in a patriarchal family where femininity is missing.The most significant proof is the missing of her mother.There’s not even a clue or vague reference about Emily’s mother in the short story,let alone a description.How could her mother not jump to the front to give us her narrative about anything from Emily’s twenties to her death when even Emily’s crazy great-aunt,Lady Wyatt,and two female cousins are set in the story?Maybe her mother has already been dead before the timeline of the narrative,or maybe Faulkner just omits her mother on purpose,but missing the mother and at the same time stressing the father gives readers a signal that Emily’s characters have a lot to do with her father.

Different from the mother,Faulkner depicts Mr.Grierson in details.In local fellows’memory he is always a“tableau”with a“spraddled silhouette”and a“horsewhip”to keep Emily staying away from others,like a faint background(Faulkner,1970,p.232).Mr.Grierson treats his daughter like his own treasure,imagining that“none of the young men were quite good enough for[her]”(Faulkner,1970,p.232),letting her turn down all the courting,and having never really materialized her marriage.That’s why Emily remains single when she is thirty.Her marriage is nothing but a decoration to fit the Grierson’s“high position”.

Even after her father’s death,Emily couldn’t break the“rule”of keeping superiority.Left with only the house of seventies,an“eyesore among eyesores”(Faulkner,1970,p.229),a place her robber robbing her for thirty years,which is like an incantation reminding her of the“hereditary obligation”(Faulkner,1970,p.230),Emily has to“cling to that which had robbed her”(Faulkner,1970,p.232).We can’t be sure that is this kind of morbid but somehow innocent“clinging”to her father making her want to be a person as“macho”as the old Grierson,or is the“macho”feature a conscious adaptation ironically deriving from her revolt to prove that she can be in charge of everything too.Nevertheless,we do know that living under the control of a macho father in a patriarchal family without the presence of her mother,Emily becomes a macho—not in physical way but spiritual way—lady.

Emily is a man-like lady,much like her father.She stubbornly refuses to pay taxes and disarms the“Board of Aldermen”(Faulkner,1970,p.230),the“city authorities”(Faulkner,1970,p.231),by her mere cold presence in front of them.Thirty years ago,she“vanquished”their fathers about the smell thing(Faulkner,1970,p.231).When it comes to the bargain with the druggist,she cuts his speech up for three times,and stares at him straightly in a bossy way until the druggist“[looks]away and[goes]and[gets]the arsenic and[wraps]it up”(Faulkner,1970,p.234).Ulf Kirchdorfer(2017)even considers that Emily’s face which is“l(fā)ike a strained flag”(Faulkner,1970,p.234)in the bargain scene is analogous to a“militaristic imagery”(p.146).On the other hand,from the way those real men deal with Emily we can sense her macho authority too.The mayor tries hard to contact her with notices,letters,a communique,but not a face-to-face communication.Using chivalry as an excuse,the judge refrains himself from“[excusing]a lady to her face of smelling bad”(Faulkner,1970,p.232).Even for the four men breaking into Emily’s house at night,they choose to settle the problem by themselves instead of bothering Emily.Cowardly,after meeting Emily’s eyes,the four males just“crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow”(Faulkner,1970,p.232).What’s more,the Baptist minister“would never divulge what happened during the interview[with Emily]”and refuses to“go back again”(Faulkner,1970,p.234).Dennis Allen takes a step further to illustrate that this macho character of Emily is coupled with phallic worship.He points out that things like“the watch[suspending]from the gold chain that vanishes beneath the belt”(1984,p.686),have a strong sense of“phallic paraphernalia”(1984,p.686).Anyway,there’s no doubt that Emily is actually more tough and macho than the men in the town psychologically.

We don’t know she chooses macho or she is forced to do so,yet like the house is the only thing left to her,she has nothing to do but to embrace such life style,because without it she knows nothing;feels nothing.That’s why she’s thirsty for femininity,which is like a curse to abandon her in the macho world,let her reject all the“courtship”from the normal male,and tempt her to chase the element that eludes her for her whole life.Fortunately,she does find that in Homer Barron.

Although town people at first believe that“of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner,a day laborer”(Faulkner,1970,p.233),which,in other words,means no matter in belief and class,this guy couldn’t match the Grierson’s“high position”,still,for the first time in her life,Emily lays down the superiority she guards for her family for Homer,and the reason is that she can find the alluring femininity she wants in this guy.

Many scholars agree on that Homer is a gay(Fick,2007; Blythe,1989).Obvious evidences can be the common view that“he[likes]men”,“[drinks]with the younger men in the Elks’Club”,and is“not a marrying man”(Faulkner,1970,p.234).Implied evidence goes to his name—Homer may be interpreted as homosexual.Even Homer has a very macho appearance—“a big,dark,ready man”(Faulkner,1970,p.233),but his humor,showy character,the yellow color he prefers(his glove and yellow-wheeled buggy),and the gay implications mentioned above all indicate that deep inside he has a femininity Emily searches for.So the two people become somehow a parallel:Homer has macho outside but femininity inside,while Emily has femininity outside but macho inside.It is these mutual complements that break the curse and let Emily find the one.She finds both her solace and piece of shadow of her“not-appear-in-the-story”mother in the feminine guy.

The Cure/Curse Paradox

As a rose can be a cure melting the curse,and simultaneously be an object casting the spell,the rose in the title serves not only as a symbol of femininity to contrast with macho Emily,but also a miniature of curecurse paradox in Emily herself.Homer with his femininity offers Emily a cure to start a new life after her father’s death.It seems like finally she can reason herself with the reality of her father gone,and live a life with another man who is not aggressive or possessive.Nevertheless,before long she realizes femininity itself is a curse.

Homer changes his mind and that suffocates the hope of the just cured Emily.Suddenly she finds she has to go back to the familiar life dominating by macho and all the symbols it involves,which means she has to say goodbye to a possibility she craves for.There’s no crueler thing in the world than letting Emily know how femininity is like and then depriving her right to get it.In abysmal despair,Emily kills the one who saves her,namely,Homer.She’s killing Homer represents her self-realization of the cure/curse paradox.On the one hand,she can be saved by a sort of femininity outside of her,and that is Homer.On the other hand,this is just a“painkiller”rather than a real solution to fill the blank of femininity inside her.Once you rely on something as addictive as a painkiller,then when the painkiller is taken away from you(Homer’s leave)you have to be buried in a far more desperate agony.This is the time when the so-called cure becomes a haunting curse.To break the curse,Emily kills Homer.She tries to keep the magic of femininity by keeping Homer’s body,but what she doesn’t realized is that,to get her redemption,she needs to change her macho self instead of resorting to someone feminine.

Macho and femininity in“A Rose for Emily”is nothing merely about“aura”but like tattoos of some archetypal images,becoming the indentation of Emily’s soul state.The paradox is that Emily needs femininity to complete her missing part in life and missing part in her persona,but when she herself is unconsciously walking the same path as her father,searching femininity is not saving her but just pinning her hope on others,which is,namely,increasing the risks of failing her.Emily’s tragedy comes from her insisting on her macho,or,in Faulkner’s words,the“noblesse oblige”(Faulkner,1970,p.233).She won’t adapt herself to the new era even when her robber,the old Grierson,is dead.She refuses to and can’t change herself due to her family environment,but hopes others to bring her missing part.The missing femininity curses her to chase it forever,yet it is the missing femininity too that let her become a macho lady,destining that she can’t achieve the femininity in herself but only resort to others;the chased femininity consoles her but pushes her into a deeper despair when it leaves.So it’s like a looping circle,trapping Emily in this paradox of macho and femininity.

Finally,let us go back to the question—why there’s a rose that doesn’t exist in the text in the title?Obviously,the rose in the title is a must for Faulkner to show Emily’s paradoxical situation.The rose for Emily in the title is a limited cure,like Homer,to complete her missing feminine part.To put the feminine rose and macho Emily together in the title is to complete her.However,the rose for Emily is also an everlasting curse to constantly remind her of the missing part of her persona.That’s why it’s a rose for her rather than her rose.She will never possess the rose,the femininity inside.All she could get is a feminine rose given by others.Even though there’s no rose in the story,the title uses the contrasting structure of feminine rose and macho Emily to construct the paradox of Emily,which is like an allegory predestining her tragedy.Faulkner uses the title to showcase Emily’s tragedy for the readers who haven’t read the story and as well sublimate the tragedy for the readers who have finished the story.A rose for Emily is not only her paradoxical situation about macho and femininity,but also what we want to give after our reading—to pay homage to Emily,the victim of patriarchy,the fighter who fights against the fate that she can’t control,with a red,red rose.