摘 要

威廉福克纳是美国旧南方文学代表人物，他擅长挖掘隐藏在故事背后的内容。尤其体现在他的短篇小说《献给艾米丽的玫瑰花》中，故事讲述了美国二战以后旧南方没落贵族代表—艾米丽小姐的一生，包含了她的父亲以及情人对她的影响，我们可以清晰地看见一个悲剧的人物。艾米丽懦弱，胆怯，性格扭曲，孤傲却又向往爱情。她的悲剧不是她一个人的悲剧，而是整个旧南方人的悲哀。本文主要通过作者对于人物的细节描写，人物语言的使用等来分析来研究艾米丽的人物性格，目的是展现给读者艾米丽的性格，性格形成的原因以及她悲惨命运的必然性。

关键词: 艾米丽个性、旧文明、献给艾米丽的玫瑰花

Contents

1. Introduction 1
2. Demonstration 2
   1. Being distorted 2
      1. Murdering Homer 2
      2. Sleeping with the dead body 3
   2. Being unsociable, traditional and rigid 5
      1. Living alone with one slave 5
      2. Clinging to the old tradition 6
   3. Being aloof and pompous 7
      1. Refusing to paying taxes 7
      2. Noble Family background 9
   4. Causes of Emily's Weird Personalities 9
      1. Father's influence 10
      2. Homer's influence 11
      3. Social background 11
3. Conclusion 13

Worked Cited 15

Bibliography 15

Analysis on Emily’s personalities

Introduction

The author of A Rose for Emily is a remarkable American novelist-William Faulkner. William Faulkner(1897-1962) is one of the most notable novelists who was born in Southern American. Moreover, Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature and enjoyed worldwide popularity. Faulkner's works mostly lay emphasis on human being and social condition using his pen to describe a person in meticulous details, such as The Sound and the Fury(1929), As I Lay Dying(1930), A Rose for Emily(1930), Light in August(1932).

A Rose for Emily is a Gothic short novel created in 1930. This story mainly displays Emily's entire life from being oppressed under her father to murder her lover. The Civil War had translated so many southern triumphs and hopes into failure and illusions. Defeated intensified the myth of the south, sentimental, high status families, sex and racial discrimination, all of which recast limitations to the southern people and put them into a more disadvantaged position.

The study of William Faulkner's short story A Rose for Emily has sprung up at home and abroad recently, such as: Beauvoir(201), Robert(10), Brooks(7), Xiao Minghan(73-79), Che Wenbo(39)and Zhu Zhenwu(53-58). Those studies are mainly made up of three aspects: feminism, new criticism and modernism

In abroad, as Beauvoir says "For man, Emily is an amusement, a pleasure, a company, an inessential boon"(Beauvoir 201).

At home, Han Qiqun once praised Faulkner's greatness and unique achievements in surpassing the limit set by his contemporaries' views on females.(Han Qiqun 29-46)

From the survey, most writers only evaluate a part of A Rose for Emily, such as the analysis of Emily's personalities the social background and the comparison between Emily and other women. But, I did not find an essay written about Emily's personalities and its causes. Resulting from this, I decide to write a thesis as my

graduation project to help more readers understand the internal meanings of the novel. Furthermore, let more people have a deeper understand on the Old Southern cultures of America which are degenerate, backward, envy and decayed.

About this essay, the first is the brief introduction of author, novel and social background at that time. The second part of the essay main lists the personalities of Emily and literally attaches to the examples which we can found from the novel. The third part of the essay is a conclusion, and it generally explains the original reasons of Emily's fate with social background.

Demonstration

• 1. Being distorted

As an ordinary people no matter who is born with considerable fortune or poor, he may be common, kind, gentle, compassionate. What's more, he must aspire for a lover who always hovers around his mind, and he must take actions to capture his lover's favorable impression to accompany her perpetually. What did Emily do on the procedure of her pursue Homer? This is all about Xiao Minghan maintaining that the narrator in this story represented the old traditional southerners and Emily was not the representative but a victim of the old tradition in southern America.

• • 1. Murdering Homer

As we all know, Emily came from an aristocratic family in Southern America. She lived in a rich family and an honorable clan. Everything surrounding her fostered her grace and glamour. Emily was the dream lover to every villager of last generations, she was the monument of the Old South. In villagers minds, her lives were bored but colorful due to her identification. While things did not develop as we thought, Emily fell in love with a poor gay which had ruined the rules of aristocratic family, moreover, this is the turn point about Emily.

Homer was a Northerner, a day laborer. All citizens wondered whether a Grierson would love a day laborer or not. As the descendant of an aristocratic family, Emily must learn to be elegant and arrogant. People could not believe she should

adore a poor northern man, especially, during the war period between the south and the north. "Class prejudice may account for Emily's tragedy of not getting married", numerous people showed negative opinions on their relationship.(Li 37) Whereas, Emily shocked everyone including her families. As a result of this ridiculous affair, the Grierson began to interrupt their relationship and tried to destroy their love since they all insisted that the poor were not qualified to the Grierson. Emily ignored others remarks and laughing, she loved Homer, she finally sought her life destination. She is willing to devote everything to her lover including her dignity. She was willing to guard her love as the sacrifice of killing Homer in order to keep him around her.

Even though Emily knew Homer was gay, she still loved him and wanted to marry him resulting in Homer’s death. In order to live together with him, Emily poisoned Homer and slept with the dead body near decades. Compared with other ordinary people, no one could do those dreadful things. Emily should have let Homer go and should have blessed for Homer. But, actually, Emily chose an extreme approach to trapping Homer around her forever. Why did Emily choose to destroy? Because Emily would rather destroy the thing she couldn’t get than give up. It was unbelievable to do such horrible thing whenever in past or now. However, Emily who was viewed as an elegant lady did it successfully. Why couldn’t learn to give up and bless Homer? Maybe Emily wasn’t reluctant to fail so that she would rather kill Homer. Killing Homer only because Emily couldn’t him was one thing that reflected Emily’s distorted personality.

• • 1. Sleeping with the dead body

This is the climax of the story, the ending of the story. Villagers were forced by curiosity to explore one room above stairs. Surprisingly, people saw a room prepared for a couple where lied a dead man that certainly is Homer who had missed for decades.