Lesson8ARoseforEmily讲述.doc

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner Guide to Reading Published in 1930, “A Rose for Emily” is one of the best known and the most widely read among Faulkner’s short stories. The story took place in a mythicaltown that William Faulkner called Jefferson, Mississippi. The time of the story is during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the town was learning to live with South’s loss in the Civil War of 1861-1865 and the consequent dismantlingof the slavery-based society that had preceded it. The end of slavery, however, did not end white supremacy, nor in particular the social dominance of the prominent white families who, though small in number, had owned the largest plantations and the largest numbers of slaves. The prestige of those families persisted, even in their unaccustomed poverty. One of their long-standing social problems was to find suitable marriage partners for their offspring since so few outside the family were deemed worth to join it. The status of upper class white womanhood in Southern slavery- based society was both superior and limited. The wife of a plantation owner was raised up above ordinary womanhood so that she was treated with a chivalrous deference. Though the white women gave birth to the only legitimate heirs, they were powerless to control the behavior of their men. What the white women did acquire was social power, to the point where a whole community might feel boundto accedeto their wishes. The older such a woman became, the harder it was for anyone of lower status to say no to her. Faulkner’s work is noted for its complexity partly because he deliberately places a considerable burden upon the reader. Instead of telling a simple straightforward story, he often exploits vague references, ambiguities, symbolism, experimental points of view, jumbledtime sequences, avoidance of clear transitions, withholding of vital information to compel the reader to join in the writer’s search for truth. Some of these techniques ar