William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”

William Faulkners A bloom for Emily was primarily print in the April 30, 1930, issue of Forum. It was his first briefly stage promulgated in a major magazine. A slightly revised translation was published in two collections of his short fiction, These 13 (1931) and Collected Stories (1950). It has been published in dozens of anthologies as well. A Rose for Emily is the story of an uncommon spinster, Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the strange circumstances of Emilys disembodied spirit and her odd relationships with her father, her lover, and the town of Jefferson, and the horrible secret she hides.The storys pestilent complexities continue to inspire critics while casual readers find it one of Faulkners most accessible works. The popularity of the story is due in no scummy part to its gruesome ending. Faulkner often used short stories to flesh unwrap the fictional kingdom of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, for his novels. In fact, he revised some of his short fiction to be used as chapters in those novels. A Rose for Emily takes place in Jefferson, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha. Jefferson is a critical setting in much of Faulkners fiction.The character of Colonel Sartoris plays a role in the story he is also an important character in the history of Yoknapatawpha. However, A Rose for Emily is a story that stands by itself. Faulkner himself modestly referred to it as a ghost story, but many critics recognize it as an extraordinarily various work. As Frank A. Littler writes in Notes on Mississippi Writers, A Rose for Emily has been read variously as a Gothic standoff tale, a study in abnormal psychology, an allegory of the relations amongst North and South, a meditation on the nature of time, and a cataclysm with Emily as a sort of tragic heroine.