An Interpretation of A Rose for Emily from a Feminist Perspective英语专业毕业论文.doc

An Interpretation of A Rose for Emily from a Feminist Perspective Abstract: The fiction A Rose for Emily is a short story written by William Faulkner. The fiction A Rose for Emily describes a typical southern woman victimized by the conventional system of the South and patriarchy. This essay mainly analyzes the reason why Emilys life is a tragedy from a feminist perspective. And give a brief account of feminism. The essay is also with the purpose urge women to learn how to construct selfhood and to be a independent woman. The essay has four parts. The first part is the introduction about A Rose for Emily. The second part is the introduction of feminist. The third part is reasons of Emilys Tragedy. The forth part is the conclusion. Key words: feminism Emily patriarchy tragedy 摘要：小说献给艾米丽的玫瑰是威廉·福克纳的一篇短篇小说。小说描写刻画了一个典型的受南方传统和父权制社会迫害的南方妇女形象。本文主要从女性主义角度分析造成艾米丽悲剧命运的原因，并且对女性主义做了一个简单的介绍。启发了广大女性的如何自我建设和成为一个独立的女性。本文共分为四章。第一部分，介绍献给艾米丽的玫瑰的主要内容。第二部分，介绍女性主义的概念及其发展。第三部分，从女性主义角度分析艾米丽悲剧命运的成因。第四部分,总结全文内容。关键词： 女性主义 艾米丽 父权制 悲剧Contents1. The introduction about A Rose for Emily1.1 The Introduction of the Author William Faulkner 1.2 The Story, Theme and the Symbolism of A Rose for Emily1.3 The Gothic style in a rose for Emily2. The Introduction about Feminism 2.1 Feminism and Feminist Movements 2.2 The history of feminist movement3. Reasons of Emilys Tragedy from feminist perspective 3.1 The absence of feminism make Emily become the victim of patriarchy 3.2 The view of love between male and female is unequal because of the absence of feminism 3.3 The conventional system of the South choke back the South womens the view of feminist4. ConclusionReferences1. The introduction about a rose for Emily1.1 The Introduction of the Author William Faulkner The author of A Rose of Emily , William Faulkner is a very famous writer in 20th century American literature. William Faulkner ( 1897 - 1962 ) , a major figure of contemporary American literature, is representative of South Literature in the United States. He wrote 19 long novels and more than 100 short stories in his life. He was famous for his long novel named The Sound and the Fury by, which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Besides this, h is short stories draw the attention of the critics with time passing by. Now this paper w ill regard his short story A Rose for Emily as the target of study.William Faulkner is an American short story writer, novelist, best known for his Yoknapatawpha cycle, When he was four or five years old, the family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, where he resided for the rest of his life. Oxford was with some fictional modifications, a prototype of Jefferson, in the mythical country of Yoknapatawpha, the setting of Sartoris and most of his subsequent works. His central theme, however, was not Oxford, or Mississippi, or even America. It was, as he put it, the universal theme of “the problem of the human heart in conflict with itself.”Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949. Faulkner's style is not very easy in that he has connections to European literary modernism. His sentences are long and hypnotic. Sometimes he withholds important details, or refers to people or events that the reader will not learn about until much later. Through the late 1920s and the 1930s his bold experiments in the dislocation of narrative time and his use of stream of consciousness techniques placed him in the forefront of the avant-garde . His verbal innovations and the labyrinthine organization of his novels make him difficult to read, but his popularity continues to grow, and today he is considered by many to be the greatest writer of fiction that the United States has yet produced.1.2 The Story, the Theme and the Symbolism of A Rose for Emily1.2.1 The Story of A Rose for Emily This story is narrated through a third person's point of view.  The story is told from the townspeople. The story starts off with Ms. Emily's funeral. It states that "the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant-a combined gardener and cook-had seen in at least ten years." As we can see, Ms. Emily was sort of like a mystery to citizens of the town.  The author continuously uses symbolism in the story. When the deputation came to her house for her taxes, Faulkner describes how the house and Ms. Emily looked. "only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores", This statement explains how the house gave off such a depressing mood.  "Her skeleton was small and spare;", this line shows us how her appearance showcased death also.     When Ms. Emily was younger, her deceased father used to force away all the young men that were in love with her. The summer after her father death, she fell in love with a Yankee by the name of Homer Barron. Everyone in the town was whispering about their relationship and wondering if they were married. After a while they stop seeing Homer and decided that they got married. The townspeople then proceeds by saying that Ms. Emily then died a while after. They didn't know she was sick.    After they buried her, they knew that there was one room that wasn't opened. So after they decently buried her they went to see the room.  When they opened the room they was greeted by great amounts of dust. They also explained that the "room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured." They also saw a man's collar, tie, suit, shoes, and discarded socks. "Then shockingly, laying right there in the bed was the man. For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust. Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair."1.2.2 The Theme of A Rose for EmilyFaulkner's A Rose for Emily, like much of Faulkner's fiction, occured in the South following the Civil War. The story explores many themes, including the society of the South at that time, the role of women in the South, and extreme psychosis.In the story, the townspeople's points of view on Emily actually reflected the society's value at that period to some extent. Although the townspeople didn't have direct contact with Emily, their views on her and her family greatly affected her life. Their praises and admiration influenced her father to keep her sheltered longer than she actually needed to be. Her father controlled her thoughts and lifestyle. Emily felt that she was released when her father was dead. She dived into love with Homer and neglected people's judgments on her .When she realized that Homer intended to leave her again, she decided that he would always be with her, whether he was alive or not. In his death Emily found eternal love which was something no one could ever take away from her.The order of events is unusual, it is written out of order. The story is not a normal narrative; the events are not in order. For example, the story talks how Emily died at first, and the author ends it with Emilys death. Then it jumps to Emily dating “from the death of her father” (82). That she could date only after her fathers death shows how disordered her life was, which is similar to the plot of the story. Later in the story, the author describes how she was getting old, and then he jumps to her being forty and giving china-painting lessons. This polt represents the disorder of Emilys life. The author wants to emphasize that death is the central part of the story. Thats why the author starts the story with Emilys death.The theme of the story also explains why Emily, like most people in the Post Civil War South, can not accept changes. Emily exemplifies these people mostly by her unwillingness to accept the new order of life. One example of Emilys inability to deal with change and of her odd personality is shown by Emilys not wanting to pay her own taxes. Therefore, Faulkners storys structure is written out of order. The structure of the story symbolizes the disorganization of Emilys life. That causes her to make mistakes. Faulkner wants his readers to learn there are consequences that one has to accept in life. If one does not accept the changes he or she has to go through, one will have to learn to move on throughout life or else end up breaking the law and making such tragic decisions.1.2.3 The Symbolism in A Rose for EmilyMiss Emily's house is an important symbol in this story. (In general, old family homes are often significant symbols in Gothic literature.) For most of the story, we, like the townspeople, only see Miss Emily's house from the outside looking in. Let's look at the some of the descriptions we get of the house: It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps an eyesore among eyesores.The decaying house symbolize Miss Emilys physical and emotional decay, and as well as her mental problems. The representation between herself and her house is shown through constant neglect and unappreciation. In one point that Faulkner makes, the house is described to be stubborn and heartless, as Miss Emily is also described on many occasions. Examples of her stubbornness is not letting the “new guard” attach metal numbers above her door when the town began to receive free mail service, when she refused to believe that her father was dead, and refused to pay her taxes. Just as the house seemed to reject progress and updating, so did Miss Emily, until both of them became decaying symbols of their dying generation.These are all symbols of time in the story. What's more, the struggle between the past and the future threatens to rip the present to pieces. When members of the Board of Aldermen visited Emily to see about the taxes a decade before her death, they heard her pocket watch ticking, hidden somewhere in the folds of her clothing and her body. This is a signal to us that for Miss Emily time is both a mysterious "invisible" force, and one of which she has always been strongly aware. With each tick of the clock, her chance for happiness dwindles .Another symbol of time was Emily's hair. The town told time first by Emily's hair, her iron-gray hair symbolized her stubborn character, and then when she disappeared into her house after her hair has turned "a vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man" (4.6). When Emily no longer left the house, the town used Tobe's hair to told time, watching as it too turned gray. The strand of Emily's hair found on the pillow next to Homer, is a time-teller too, though precisely what time it told is hard to say. The narrator told us that Homer's final resting place hadn't been opened in 40 years, which was exactly how long Homer Barron has been missing. But, Emily's hair didn't turn "iron-gray" until approximately 1898, several years after Homer's death. The stationery is also a symbol of time, but in a different way. The letter the town got from Emily was written "on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink" (1.4). Emily probably didn't write too many letters, so it's normal that she would be using stationery that's probably at least 40 years old. The stationery is a symbol, and one that points back to the tensions between the past, the present, and the future, which this story explores.The taxes can be seen as symbols of death. The initial remission of Miss Emily taxes is a symbol of the death of her father. It's also a symbol of the financial decline the proud man must have experienced, but kept hidden from Emily and the town, until his death. Since the story isn't clear on why Emily only got the house in the will, the taxes could also be a symbol of his continued control over Emily from the grave. If he had money when he died, but left it to some mysterious entity, (the story is unclear on this point), he would have denied Emily her independence.Over 30 years after the initial remission of Miss Emily's taxes when the "newer generation" tries to revoke the ancient deal they inherited, taxes are still a symbol of death, though this time, they symbolize the death of Homer Barron.As we argue in "What's Up With the Ending?", the town is probably already aware that she has a rotting corpse upstairs. Maybe the taxes were just an excuse to definitively see what was going on at the house. The next phase of their plan might well have been foreclosure. They could have used the tax situation to remove Emily from the neighborhood, and to condemn her house. Perhaps they wanted to remove the "eyesore," and to cover up everything Miss Emily says about the past and present of the South. The fact that they didn't do this might just turn the taxes into a symbol of compassion. Wasn't it out of compassion that her taxes were initially remitted? That the "newer generation" decides to continue the tradition also shows that some of the older ways might well have merit.1.3 The Gothic Style in A Rose for EmilyThe gothic include the gothic style of building, a gothic story or film, and gothic writing, printing. The gothic buildings features are pointed arches, tall pillars, and tall thin pointed windows; A gothic story, film is about frightening things, and they happen in mysterious buildings, and lonely places, and they were popular in the early 19th century; Gothic writing, printing has thick decorated letters. A Rose for Emily uses the gothic writing style, which makes the novel have a horror, gloomy and mysterious atmosphere. The gothic style is ready for Emilys abnormal psychology. And it also makes reader feel depressed and sad.1.3.1 Whats gothic fictionGothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a style of literature that combines elements of bo