“A Rose for Emily,” by Faulkner, provides not only innumerable details but also a complex structure. Long after the reader has learned to identify and discuss the function of significant detail, they often continue to struggle with the influence of structure on a story. The imagery of changing portraits in “A Rose for Emily” allows the reader to explore both to find meaning. In addition to the literal portrait of Emily’s father, Faulkner creates numerous figurative portraits of Emily herself by framing her in doorways or windows. The chronological organization of Emily’s portraits visually imprints the changes occurring throughout her life. Like an impressionist painting that changes as the viewer moves to different positions, however, the structural organization provides clues to the “whole picture” or to the motivations behind her transformations.
Chronologically, the “back-flung” front door creates the first tableau of a youthful Miss Emily, assiduously guarded by her father. Miss Emily, a “slender figure in white,”1 typifies the vulnerable virgin, hovering in the background, subordinate and passive. The father, “a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip” (CS 123), is a menacing dark image assuming the dominant front position. His turned back suggests a disregard for her emotional welfare as he wards off potential danger–or violation of her maidenhead–with his horsewhip. The back-flung door invites suitors in, but only those who meet Grierson standards. Unfortunately, those standards are unattainable–“The Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (CS 123)–and Miss Emily remains…
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…cefully on her funeral bier with a simple image of love and loss, a strand of iron-gray hair resting on the yellowed pillow of an impotent bridal bed. This haunting image is the fianl pen stroke whispering the eulogy of her wasted life.
Notes
1 Collected Stories of William Faulkner (New York: Vintage, 1977), 123. Hereafter CS.
2 The southern planter patterned his lifestyle after the English country gentleman (Daniel Boorstin, The American: The Colonial Experience [Random House, 1958]). In doing so, he developed a code of conduct that reflected the romanticism of the medevial age. A feudal mind set–replete with courtly love, a code of honor, and a romantic quest–is evident in several of Faulkner’s male characters, e.g., Sutpen in Abaslom, Absalom! and Hightower in Light in August.
3 The Sound and the Fury (New York: Random House, 1992), 78.
The Final Episode of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Great Importance of the Final Episode of Huckleberry Finn
One of the things many critics of Huckleberry Finn just can’t
seem to understand is the final episode of the novel where Tom returns
and sidetracks Huck from his rescue of Jim through a long series of
silly, boyish plans based on ideas Tom has picked up from Romantic novels,
such as those of Walter Scott. Critic Stephen Railton dismisses these
final chapters as “just another version of their Royal Nonesuch” (405);
referring, of course, to the silly play put on by the Duke and Dauphin in
chapter 23. From one point of view, this whole “evasion” sequence seems
funny and humorous in the traditions of frontier and southwestern humor. Twain
had a reputation as a humorist, and some of his readers got a big laugh
out of this section.
Many, however, are put off by it; think it seems out of place in
this novel which deals with so many serious, adult subjects; who’s theme
is man’s inhumanity toward man but still able to be surpassed by the
simple friendship developed between a white boy and a Black slave
on a raft. To many, who don’t look too deeply, this final episode seems
out of place, anticlimactical, undermining, or just downright abhorrent.
Philip Young called the ending “irrelevant” (Gullason 357). Leo Marx
called it a “flimsy contrivance” (Gullason 357). And William Van
O’Connor called it “a serious anti-climax” (Gullason 357). That’s just a
small sampling.
But can it really be just some silly nonsense, some “Royal
Nonesuch”? Can we really think so little of Twain to believe that he would just
abandon the seriousness of …
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…d E. Hudson Long. New York: Norton, 1961. 305-309.
Railton, Stephen. “Jim and Mark Twain: What Do Dey Stan’ For?” Virginia Quarterly Review 63.3 (Summer 1987): 393-408.
Rubenstein, Gilbert M. “The Moral Structure of Huckleberry Finn.” College English 18 (Nov. 1956): 72-76. Rpt. in Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: An Annotated Text, Background and Sources, Essays in Criticism. Eds. Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long. New York: Norton, 1961. 378-384.
Stallman, R. W. “Reality and Parody in Huckleberry Finn.” College English 18 (May 1957): 425-426. Rpt. in Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: An Annotated Text, Background and Sources, Essays in Criticism. Eds. Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long. New York: Norton, 1961. 384-387.