Abstract
The title of William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, particularly the symbolic meaning of the rose has been discussed for years. Four major ideas towards the rose are summarized as love, lament, secrecy and an ambiguous ghostly feature. Based on the previous studies, this paper is aimed at discovering a most related meaning towards the protagonist Emily and the theme of the story. Emily is a Southern woman who afflicts from a patriarchal father and Puritan moral code of virginity. The rose for her, therefore, should be an opportunity to transcend the traditional South. The love story between Emily and Homer is her first try. And the rebellion converts to be a secret through Emily’s maintenance of Homer’s dead body. The symbolic rose, thus being a presence-absence, lives forever in the narration of “we” and memorizes by the readers. The high-profile love affair with Homer Barron is her first attempt to resist the pain she suffers from her dominant father and the Southern womanhood. Her rebellious action transforms to be in secret when she faces with the prevention from her relatives and other Southerners. Her brave kill of her lover, which is revealed at the end of the story, successfully remains her transcendence. In other words, the presence-absence “rose” safely conceals in Emily’s pretense to be traditional. And Faulkner succeeds in “A Rose for Emily” as well, by representing his humane concern towards Southern ladies like Emily.
Author Information
Peishan Cai, Sichuan University, China
Paper Information
Conference: ACCS2024
Stream: Literary Studies / All genres/ Theory
This paper is part of the ACCS2024 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Cai P. (2024) Emily’s Rose: Symbol of Her Transcendence to Traditional South ISSN: 2187-4751 – The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies 2024: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 173-180) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4751.2024.16
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2187-4751.2024.16
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