Lisa Napell Dicksteen
English 204-4 March 25, 2004
CONSIDERING SOME OF FAULKNER’S
WORD CHOICES IN “A ROSE FOR EMILY”
It is interesting sometimes to simply consider a short story as a collection of word choices. In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” why did the author write, “They rose when she entered (377),” rather than ‘they stood,’ or ‘they got to their feet’? Why does Faulkner describe Emily’s stationary as “archaic (377),” and the dust on the pillow as “patient and biding (382),” rather than using other, equally descriptive language? Would the alteration of even a few of these descriptions alter the overall effect the story has on the reader? I contend that it would.
Examining the description of Emily’s house in the story’s second paragraph, affords a number of possibilities for alteration. Why “heavily lightsome (376)” as a descriptor for the ginger breaded style of the 1870s? What exactly does lightsome mean? The dictionary offers several options that work: graceful, lively, lighthearted, gay, cheerful, and frivolous being the most likely. How can something be heavily lightsome? Was Faulkner saying that the house was over-decorated, perhaps like a wedding cake, as some of the homes of that time were; weighted down with “cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies (376)?” It is possible that he meant to let readers understand that even the most light-hearted frills become onerous if taken to extremes.
Many of the events in Emily’s life might be considered in this light. Her father was strict, which can be a good way to raise a motherless daughter to take her place as a lady in the proper society of the day. However, when taken to extremes, as it clearly was in this case, it leads to a young woman’s virtual imprisonment within her own home and the warping of her personality.
Faulkner describes the paper on which Emily writes to the Mayor indicating that she no longer goes out as having “an archaic shape (377).” The word archaic denotes something from an earlier time, something no longer in use; old-fashioned; antique. These are all words that the townspeople would be likely to use to describe Emily herself. In fact, Faulkner actually has them use the word “tradition (377),” with its connotation of a time long passed, to describe her. Faulkner could have told the reader that the paper was ‘old-fashioned’ or that ‘it was of an odd shape even most grandmothers didn’t use anymore.’ But those phrases don’t have the same magisterial quality as archaic.
There is something regal about archaic that is not present in antique or old-fashioned. The dictionary includes a definition that supports this theory; indicating that archaic implies not only a cessation of regular use, but that such an object, when used, would be used only in ritual or poetic circumstances. This fits with the picture Faulkner is creating of a living antiquity; a relic of another age. He writes that she appeared as an “idol (378)” in the window and that her haircut gave her a “vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows – sort of tragic and serene (379).” All these word choices serve to underpin the overall impression of aging royalty.
When describing the way Emily dismissed the town’s representatives in their quest to collect the taxes Faulkner uses the word vanquished twice in the same sentence. “So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers… (378).” Here the reference is to her commanding presence and the regal, soldier-like resolve she inherited from her father. Faulkner could have said ‘she sent them away,’ or even had her dismiss them, but neither word is sufficiently severe. The implications of vanquish include the battlefield and decisive victory. By reminding the reader that dismissal by Emily is something so rigorous that it needs to be done only every 30 years or so, Faulkner strengthens the picture of Emily’s character while further weakening the image of the defeated town representatives. One might be turned away from the home of a weaker woman, yet retain the ability to try again. One is vanquished by Emily so thoroughly that it takes a generation for the wounds to heal and the town to try again to impose their will upon her.
Faulkner seizes a number of opportunities to remind the reader that the townsfolk are jealous of Emily and her family, and have been for generations. Some of those reminders are obvious, as when he spells out the way in which the collective narrator makes it clear that the towns people feel superior and are heartened to learn that all Emily’s father left her was the house and that, “Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less (379).” Later Faulkner has the narrator revel in the gossip about “Poor Emily” (379) dating a Northerner, a Yankee, and a common day-laborer at that. Later he expresses the subversive pleasure people got from being able to refer to the high-and-mighty Miss Emily as fallen when it appears that Homer Barron has run back up north rather than marry her. These are but a few of the more obvious examples.
On the other hand, Faulkner reminds the reader twice on the same page of this jealousy in a much more oblique manner. He does this by telling his readers that the gossip surrounding Emily’s relationship with Homer happened not ‘behind closed doors’ or ‘within secure salons,’ but behind the latticed or slatted windows called jalousies, which were in use at the time of the story to keep out the sun. In the first reference, he shows the reader gossips whispering, “behind jalousies closed upon the sun of a Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed (380).” In the second, the whispering takes place “behind the jalousies as [Homer and Emily] passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy (380).” Not only does the word jalousies sound like the word jealousies, it also shares that meaning. In Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, jealousy, in the sense of envy, is listed as the word’s first meaning; followed by the window-related meaning that is primary in “A Rose for Emily.” Faulkner knew that the words shared similar sounds and meanings. He could have described the ladies talking behind their hands (380) and left it at that. But he added this bi-definitional word, twice in one page, to increase the reader’s subliminal understanding of the relationship between the narrators and Emily.
The use of the word “bought (382)” to describe the flowers massed on Emily’s coffin by her visiting cousins is important in that it draws attention to itself. The necessary accoutrements for the proper burial of a lady of a certain class at that time would have been well enough known to the reading public at the time this story was written as to require no great descriptive detail. Yet, in addition to the crayoned portrait of Emily’s father that has been haunting the entire story and is present again in this scene, Faulkner found it necessary to include the fact that the flowers were purchased, rather than gathered from Emily’s own gardens or brought by her friends and acquaintances from theirs.
The fact that the origin of the flowers is mentioned at all is a clue that there is something unusual about that origin. Here Faulkner is making this small word, a mere six letters, stand for the ways in which, despite the fact that she has lived there her entire life, Emily is separated from the people of the town.
In this same paragraph, Faulkner tells his readers not that the entire community came to ‘pay its respects,’ ‘to say good bye,’ or even ‘to see Emily.’ He tells his readers that the townspeople came “to look at Miss Emily (382).” He might as well have said ‘they came to gawk.’ But that would have been too obvious. One has the feeling that those in attendance were there solely for the thrill of entering after her death the house they’d been barred from while Emily was alive. This is an example of morbid curiosity at its most perverse. And it is achieved by the author’s selection of the exact right word rather than the almost right word.
When the ladies of the town arrive to satisfy their curiosity under the guise of paying their respects their voices are described as “sibilant (382).” Here Faulkner has chosen a word with several interesting facets. It sounds like the word jubilant and so conveys the ambivalence they feel regarding Emily’s passing. It means to speak with a hissing sound, like a snake or a serpent. Faulkner might have written of their voices as ‘expressing forced or false remorse,’ or as ‘twittering nervously,’ but he chose sibilance. The serpent has long served as a symbol of jealousy, a major theme in “A Rose for Emily.”
Faulkner again employs sibilant to describe the same ladies in the next paragraph; calling them “sibilant and macabre (382)” as they pass by the coffin and gossip about the life of the corpse therein. He repeats the jubilant and jealous serpent reference and adds the reminder that the whole event is rather macabre. The combination of the two reinforces each individual image while underlining the schaudenfreude felt by the town throughout the story.
As the story is drawing to a close, Faulkner describes in great detail the room that has been sealed. One of the main motifs in this segment is the “pervading dust (382)” that has gathered in the room over time. ‘Pervading’ seems a logical choice of word in that it creates an image of a room suffused with the presence of the past. Faulkner could have said simply that the room was ‘full of dust.” He could have said ‘the forcing of the door caused the years of accumulated dust to dance around the room’ – but that might have admitted a trace of gaiety to the scene, not the tone he was striving for.
Toward the end of this descriptive passage, Faulkner allows the reader to view the remains of Homer lying on the bed, trapped in “the long sleep that outlasts love (382)” and covered, along with the bed itself, with “that even coating of the patient and biding dust (382).” Dust, being inanimate, is unacquainted with the virtue of patience. It does not bide its time. It is not sentient nor is it aware of the passage of time. So why does Faulkner refer to it as patient? Why not comment on its ‘inevitability,’ or remind the reader of the inherent biblical reference? And if he wants to anthropomorphize the dust, why consider its patience rather than its ‘silence,’ its ‘impassive presence,’ or its ‘omniscience’? Here Faulkner is reminding us of the patience with which Emily waited, biding her time, all her life. First she waited for her father to die, then she waited for someone to love, then she waited for that man to marry her, then she waited for the poison to take effect and, in the end, she waited to die. Even when she was too ill to climb the stairs to sleep beside her beloved, she knew that he was there, patient as the dust to which he and she would both return, waiting for her to join him.
In depicting the shoes of the deceased Faulkner uses the word “mute (382).” Shoes with no feet in them can be described as empty, or they can simply be placed beneath a chair as they are in this tableau – their location sufficient to define their emptiness. Why then does Faulkner add that tiny extra word: mute? At this point in the story the dramatic tension is building toward the crescendo. That word is a quiet clue. A first time reader would be forgiven for missing the significance of this tiny word in their rush to get to the end of the story and see how the author resolves their mounting misgivings. Even someone studying the story for nuances and clues might pass over it easily many times, until the time it jumps off the page. Mute? Mute! Of course, mute. The shoes are inanimate, naturally they are mute. Despite their tongues, shoes cannot speak, whether they are being worn or not. However, the person who owns and wears the shoes can – unless he is rendered mute. Once again, Faulkner has chosen the ideal word to create the atmosphere he wants the reader to experience.
The short story serves many purposes. It might reflect an aspect of society, or redress a wrong done the author. It might espouse a political, philosophical, or moral viewpoint, or offer a solution to a social problem. Whatever the overall purpose or mandate of an author in the construction of a specific short story, he or she must build characters, plot, narration, and exposition so they all support the main vision. Faulkner was a master at making every word count. As the examples above attest, every word in “A Rose for Emily” was chosen with the intention of strengthening the foundation of the world Faulkner was creating. There are no false notes, no extraneous words, and no words that don’t do their share of the work. In considering “A Rose for Emily” as a collection of word choices the reader is left with an understanding of how if even a few of those choices had been made differently this would have been another story, a different story, most likely a weaker story. It is clear that the alteration of even a few of these descriptions would alter the overall effect the story has on the reader.
Works Cited
Faulkner, William. “A Rose
for Emily.” An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Sylvan, Barnet et al. 13th
ed.
Jalousie. Webster’s New
Universal Unabridged Dictionary. Ed. Jean L. McKechine. 2nd ed.