Saying Farewell

Well, here we are. At the last page of the book.

It was a nice journey and I really liked studying the course of English Stylistics. First of all I've broaden my knowledge concerning this discipline and I believe that in the future it will contribute to the general understanding of texts, giving me an opportunity to notice all peculiar features of English language. Also I consider the passages we analysed to be the bright examples of English literature; some of them inspired me to read the whole books.

Still, I'd like the course of English Stylistics to last a little bit longer:)

                                            Thank You!

CHARACTERS

     The main characters we meet in the story under analysis are Miss Emily Grierson  (a protagonist), Homer Barron and the townspeople (antagonists).

   Miss Emily is characterized both directly and indirectly. She is “… a small, fat woman in black… Her skeleton was small and spare… She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand” – the author uses similes and and epithets to insist that she’s physically ill. Still, she can stand up for her opinion: she rejects the demands to pay the taxes in a “cold and dry voice”. Miss Emily repeats the phrase “I have no taxes in Jefferson” several times which reflects her unwillingness to accept new rules of the society.

   Miss Emily is a conservative woman whose life becomes a tragedy due to the certain circumstances. For the whole town Miss Emily has been “a tradition, a duty and a care”. But though a lot of facts about her life are presented in the story by the narrator, Miss Emily’s genuine face opens only after her death. That proves the idea that every person is a mystery for the society and it’s impossible to explore somebody’s sole.

      It is also generally accepted that Miss Emily is a symbol of the previous epoch of America as she has lived at the times of slavery; when the democracy appears she is not able to accept new rules of the society, sticking to the past. I think that Miss Emily’s unwillingness to keep pace with the changes at the very end drives her mad. Miss Emily’s tragedy is a tragedy of the whole generation of Americans. It’s also mentioned in the story that Miss Emily is an artistic person as she teaches children to paint china and probably she is the one who painted her father’s portraits. But “then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines. The front door closed…”. That shows that there is no place for the old generation when the new one comes. I also believe that the indifference of the townspeople contributes to Miss Emily’s madness. The death of a father becomes a real challenge for the women; she doesn’t want to accept his departure and that leads to her becoming ill for a long time. It becomes obvious Miss Emily doesn’t have any friends; nobody cares when she buys poison at the drugstore and shows any support to her. The phrase “She will kill herself; and we said it will be the best thing” shows the cruelty of the townspeople which comes from the hidden hatred to Miss Emily as a representative of the previous epoch, and also from hidden envy because of the woman’s aristocratic origin.

         Can we consider Miss Emily to be insane? Probably yes, as she kills the man she loves, rejects the death of her father and Colonel Sartoris and captures herself in the house. But the initial purpose of her madness is the society she lives in.

The townspeople: Generally the citizens of Jefferson can be characterized as hypocritical and insincere. At the very beginning of the story we observe that “the whole town” comes to Miss Emily’s funeral but not because of a desire to honour her but because of  indecent reasons: the men comes “…through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house”. The townspeople reject Miss Emily during her life and shows attention to her only when she refuses to pay the taxes. This is also an example of the indifference of the new generation: they know Miss Emily doesn’t have money to pay the taxes but they show any sort of compassion toward the miserable woman. I think this is the main Faulkner’s forewarning: the progress, technical development of the society and its speeded up rhythm shouldn’t influence and change our moral values.

Homer Barron: Homer represents the rising working class and is the exact opposite to Miss Emily. He is very sociable as “pretty soon he knew everyone in the town”, but generally the townspeople don’t like him because of he's a rough-talking, charismatic northerner and an overseer in town working on a sidewalk-paving project. Still Miss Emily wishes to marry him in spite of all the differences between them as she wants to find love, a husband and a family. We can only predict whether they break their relationship or not and why Miss Emily murders him. Maybe because of the fact that Homer “was not a marrying man” or because of the gossips which appear in the town. This secret Miss Emily takes to her grave.

    There are also a few secondary characters in the story. Tobe is "an old man-servant – a combined gardener and cook". He is a symbol of slavery which still resists in America. Though slavery is considered to be overcome, the new generation calls Tobe as “the Negro” which is quite racist. The townspeople seem not to care much about Tobe, but actually he is the only person who knows the mystery of Miss Emily’s life. Colonel Sartoris, a close friend of Miss Emily’s father, is a symbol of corruption in traditional aristocracy and class system in the American South as he illegally dispenses the woman from the taxes. Miss Emily’s father is a representative of the former generation. He has no name in the story; I think that is because there are thousands of such people as Emily’s father in America and they are the stumbling block on the way to the democracy. He can be considered as a selfish person as he restricts his daughter in everything, but I think he’s just a parent who tries to protect his child.

From the point of view of presentation the text is the 1^st person plural narrative, but it is rather unusual because there is a transposition of pronouns I → we. Such technique is used in order to denote the whole town as observers of the events. We can suggest that Miss Emily's story is familiar to everybody in the town. The narrator of the story is omniscient though no evaluative judgments and interpretations are presented. The reader is placed in the position of spectator and has to interpret events on his own.

The Setting

The way I imagine Miss Emily's house

   The events in the analysed story happen in a southern town somewhere in Jefferson from the late 1800's up to the early 1900's. As for me, the main peculiarity of this town is that the representatives of two absolutely different generations live there. The trouble is that southerners who have lived during the slavery era don’t know what to do when that whole way of life turns around. At the same time the story also explores how contemporary generations deal with the legacy of the previous epoch.     An important part of the setting is Miss Emily’s house. It is described in the following way: “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”. The house is a symbol of time that once stopped for Miss Emily. After her father’s death the house becomes a shelter for young women, and as the time runs out, it becomes the only thing that connects her with the past. Initially the house looks elaborated and sophisticated, but it fades the same way as Miss Emily’s sole.

     When the Board of Aldermen, the representatives of the new generation, come “into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow” (alliteration; assonance – to describe the gloomy atmosphere of the house), they see that nothing has changed there: “It smelled of dust and disuse (a case of inverted epithet – to denote that time frozen in that place) a close, dank smell. ... and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray (a case of alliteration – to denote the way the house was neglected)”.

    Miss Emily imprisons herself in the house and there she dies: “Fell in the house filled with dust and shadows” (a case of hyperbola is used here to denote the tragedy of Miss Emily’s life). The women’s death reveals the greatest secret of her life. As the two female cousins enter the hidden room, they see a body of Homer Barron who used to be Miss Emily’s groom.

    Describing the room the writer repeats the word "rose" twice in the meaning of the colour in order to denote the innocent and endless love of Miss Emily to Homer  as rose color first of all reflects tenderness: "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 (a case of catch repetition – to denote that there is a thing that belonged to Hector) so tarnished that the monogram was obscured… Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded (a case of compound epithet – to show that Miss Emily loved Homer)". “Upon” denotes a case of anaphora – to make tension higher as it is a preface to the climax of the story which reveals the dreary truth – Miss Emily killed Homer Barron.

   So, we can say that the setting of the events in the given extract is realistic and presented in a detailed way as it provides a background for action and contributes to our understanding of the Miss Emily.