I found a striking similarity between James Joyce's "Eveline" and William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" concerning the stories' theme that it is often extremely difficult to escape a bad situation if it is the only situation one knows. In "A Rose for Emily," Miss Emily was unable to get over the deaths of her father and her lover and unable to escape the isolation which her father had imposed upon her. She had become so used to her isolation that she feared improving her life. Joyce's Eveline possesses a similar fear. She knows that her situation is not a desirable one; she acknowledges that unlike if she remained in her home, if she escaped with Frank, "people would treat her with respect then." Yet even despite this knowledge that her life is utterly miserable, she still thinks that "now that she [is] about to leave it she [does] not find it a wholly undesirable life." This conflict finally culminates as she remains on land, refusing to escape with Frank. Eveline is so afraid of abandoning her current life and self-imposed obligations that she forsakes her chance at freedom and happiness. Like Miss Emily, Eveline entraps herself in a rut to which there is no true escape.

Somein' Tells Me Yer Not from 'Round These Here Parts...

Another interesting tidbit about William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" concerns the deliberate choice of the early twentieth-century South as the story's setting. This setting is initially established by the narrator's mention of the "graves of Union and Confederate soldiers." Combined with the emphasis on "tradition," this mention indicates a Deep Southern sentiment to the narration. This Southern perspective impacts the plot of the story tremendously. Through the narrator's descriptions, it is clear that the city of Jefferson operates largely on the basis of reputation and social hierarchy. Instead of sympathizing with Miss Emily in her period of grief after her father's death, the community only indicates their relief that "at last they could pity" her because "she had become humanized."

It was this entrenched belief in social order, and the accompanying derision for the members of the city's aristocracy, that likely influenced Miss Emily's actions. Miss Emily was unable to truly connect with anyone within her community due to her elevated status. That is why Homer—a Northerner and, therefore, not a member of the dysfunctional Southern community—is accepted and even loved by Miss Emily. I think Miss Emily murdered Homer not out of anger or revenge—if that had been the case, she would not have slept next to his skeletal corpse—but out of misguided desperation. After living a life of detachment from her community, Miss Emily had become so desperate to keep Homer with her that she poisoned him in order to keep him with her dead or alive. While this is admittedly a rather macabre idea, it simply is a tragic, if not exaggerated, result of the Southern mindset.

This Is Heavy, Doc

Well, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is a bit odd, no? While this story was certainly the most dramatically interesting, it also was most definitely the most bizarre. Faulkner establishes this quirkiness by writing with an extremely convoluted chronology. The story opens with the present time of Emily Grierson's death and funeral. The narrator then recounts an altercation between Miss Emily and the Board of Alderman over taxes which occurred several years beforehand. Immediately afterward, the narrator employs flashback even further by taking the plot thirty years earlier. This scene, which describes how the city dealt with a "smell" about Miss Emily's house, creates a bit of confusion and suspense as the reader is unsure and curious of the source of the smell. Upon completion of this tale, however, the narrator goes back two years further to Miss Emily's father's death and the subsequent arrival of Homer. We then learn of Miss Emily's purchase of arsenic, followed by a seemingly abrupt topic shift to Homer's departure and ensuing return to the house.

After that, the narrator fast-forwards back to the present. It is here, in the present, that the jumbled events of the past are finally explained as the narrator and the other men discover Homer's skeleton where he had poisoned with the purchased arsenic. Instead of simply starting from the chronological beginning, Faulkner employed a series of flashbacks in order to increase the level of suspense of the story. By slowly feeding the reader individual clues, Faulkner leads the reader to finally discover the truth of Miss Emily's past in a more dramatic and exciting fashion.