sympathy for women and he spoke for women’s freedom. Besides, the story also showed southern people’s suffering and anxiety after their loss in the Civil War. Especially the white people, they couldn’t easily get accustomed to the life without slaves, and their life became totally miserable, and they cherished the memory of the past rich life; and they still thought that they were superior to others, and kept their family’s dignity. But in their deep heart, they hated the northern people who were destroyers of their happiness, so Emily’s killing Homer showed their hatred for the North. And Homer’s refusal to marry to Emily showed the northern people’s contempt for the backward system of the South. In brief, the author also attacked the decayed thought of white people in the South by Emily’s murder. So the theme of the story was showed in gothic characteristics successfully.
3.3 The gothic characteristics in the narrative way of A Rose for Emily Mostly, gothic literature is about suspense, and the suspense is mostly about murder, death or shocking ones. Because of the suspense, the gothic literature has its own characteristics: mysterious, horrible and gloomy atmosphere and the process to solve the suspense is an adventurous experience. The usual way of telling the suspense is flashback form, because this kind of narrative way can make readers feel the mystery of the story and attract readers’ attention to go on reading it. When the readers read this kind of story, they may have the feeling of being spies. Of course, as the representative work of gothic fiction, there’s suspense in A Rose for Emily.
Faulkner deliberately set a flashback form to tell the story. At the beginning, Emily was dead at her seventy--six years old. The whole town went to her funeral for different purposes: the men had a respectful affection for a fallen monument, and the women were curious to see her inner house. Who was Emily? What kind of person was she? Faulkner immediately grasped readers' interest to read on.
She once was beautiful and slim, but her father drove all the men who pursued her. Only after her father died, she could date with a Northerner. Unfortunately, she could not marry with him, which hurt her so deeply that she had to keep herself far from the world from then on.
However, the ending is out of expectation. She was shrewd and unscrupulous. She
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secretly murdered her fiancé by rat poison, and kept his body in her bed and slept with him for forty years. It is really tricky and surprising. The ending may be unreasonable to some extent, but it really shows Faulkner's creativity. He adopts the flashback to add much profound meaning to the short story, which is superior to the normal narrative way of the general fictions. So at last, to people’s surprise, they found Emily was a cruel murderer, and people were shocked by the discovery.
In addition, the choosing of the narrator also reflects the gothic characteristics. Mostly the suspense is told by the narrator who doesn’t participate in the events he recounts, he’s not a character in the story but is someone not even named, who stands at some distant from the action recording what the main characters say and do, recording also what they think, feel, or desire (X. J. Kennedy ＆ Dana Gioia, An Introduction to Fiction, 45). The narrator in A Rose for Emily is “we”, the people in town, but not the character Emily. After Emily’s father was dead, she didn’t went out as before, so as observers, people in the town narrated her actions and guessed her life according to her and her black servant’s action. They narrated Homer’s returning to Emily’s house, and they guessed they might get married. When they smelled the disgusting smell from Emily’s house, they guessed that her killing rats or snakes. And when Emily bought the rats poison, they guessed the poison was used for killing rats. So the narrator’s guess makes the story become more mysterious.
The flashback form and the choosing of the narrator grasp people’s curiosity for the suspense, and make the suspense more mysterious, and also reflect the gothic characteristics successfully. In a short, the narrative way created a mysterious and terrified atmosphere, so the gothic characteristics exist in the narrative way of the story.
3.4 The gothic characteristics in the Character
Usually, the characters in the gothic literature are eccentric and mysterious. And most characters are not ghost but real people who have twisted characteristic caused by their life experiences, such as their childhood, their parents’ influence and their love story, and they act in abnormal way. Because of the character’s twisted or eccentric characteristics, the story or the suspense appears in gothic characteristics. Mark Madoff(1979) took Lewis’s The Monk an example and pointed out that in fact, the
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description of the violent behavior in the gothic literature was the description of character’s repressed soul. The character of Emily in A Rose for Emily was a normal person, but the way she acted was very eccentric and mysterious, so people around her began to be curious about her life, and suspected her life.
(1) Emily
So besides the description of environment, the theme and the narrative way reflected the gothic characteristics, the character of Emily was also involved in “Gothic characteristics\mysterious. She had been isolated from the outside world for forty-year since her father died and Homer's missing. Her door remained closed all the year round and refused all the visitors.
Actually, she was an unrealistic stubborn woman. She did not want to dispose of her father's body, and “She told them that her father was not dead.” (William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily ) Ignoring the law, she refused to pay the taxes and repeated that “I have no taxes in Jefferson.” Moreover, she asked the officials to get explanation from Colonel Sartoris, who ever remitted her taxes. It seemed that she did not know Colonel Sartoris was dead before ten years. “It can be believed that her refusal to pay the taxes symbolizes the refusal to accept the changed society to some extent.”(Zhu Zhenwu,Study on Foreign Literature, 34). She took pain to keep her superior, dignity and the southern fair lady impression.
“Emily is a typical example of the decay system of the south. The failure of the Civil War brought corruption and decline to the South, which was very obvious in economy and politics.”(Zhang Kuiwu, A Survey of England and America, 74) However, it was imperceptible in moral and psychology. The South originally had their own unique economic form, cultural style, life way and moral standard, even their own language. All of these elements “easily stimulated the southerner rise a feeling of the nostalgia, which had solidified for the failure of the South in the Civil War.”(Yu Jianhua, The Second Prosperous of American Literature , 460). Therefore, the war led to a strange contradictory phenomenon: the old South \long as the failure of the war, but it more obstinately \than any other times. The South \in society and economy, but it was still \
Pitiable Emily was solidified by time. She fell into the past glories and honors of the
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South, but could not be brave enough to face the real life. Faulkner vividly pictured the southerners' subtle, complicated and contradictory psychology through Emily. Emily only was the epitome of the southern declining aristocracies. As the famous critic Malcolm Cloy said “The southern people lived under so heavy pressure that they almost lost their rational behavior, but responded mechanically.”(Yu Jianhua, The Second Prosperous of American Literature, 460).Thus, they broke out some uncontrollable violence and unreasonable behaviors occasionally. On the other hand, they tightly clung on the luxury and glories in the past to escape the reality, which seemed extremely unrealistic and ridiculous. In this way, Faulkner criticized the southerners who lived in a new time but kept outdated mind. And this distorted psychology was exactly the spiritual essence of the collapsing old south. Standing on a new angle, Faulkner re-examined closely and explained all of these, and sympathized the southerners' thinking way and moral standard.
Emily’s characteristic was deeply affected by her father’s strong control and the insecure society caused by the Civil War, so her characteristic became eccentric and abnormal, and she acted in mysterious and horrible way. Her desire for male was repressed by her father, and she didn’t know how to deal with the relationship with people, especially with males alone; so she chose to be separated from outside. As a result, her characteristic became more and more twisted because of the long-term loneliness and emptiness. Finally, her twisted characteristic led to her tragedy. So the gothic characteristic fully showed in the character of Emily.
(2) the Negro Tobe
Tobe is the supporting role in the novel , doing nothing more than carrying out the basket, open the door of the sort of thing, it seems dispensable in the story. However, as in this short novel, Faulkner has mentioned him more than ten times. Why is this? In-depth observation, we found his value: his presence in the work has an indispensable role to the romance of Gothic atmosphere of this Part.. First of all, Tobe himself is a character full of mystery. The readers do not know his history, do not know why he was still loyal and devoted to serving Emily after Gerryson come down, do not know why he finally disappeared, gone ... ... like a ghost, he appeared from time to time, then disappeared in a whisper away. He does not talk with people, he was as mysterious as his mistress . Second, his presence make the sense of mystery and snobby of Emily continue.
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Because of his presence, Emily was like a \
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