Poor Emily: No Roses for You

bluekara13
Dec 2, 2023
4 min read

The shadow of a rose pictured as a regulatory sign. — An off limits rose

Have you ever seen a movie where the scene is creepy while the music is light hearted? I will share some examples: In Face/Off with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta, the Olivia Newton-John (Grease fan?) version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow is playing while the two actors engage in a massive fire fight. Similarly, in American Psycho, Huey Lewis' song Hip To Be Square begins to play as actor Christian Bale's character prepares to hack actor Jared Leto's character, with an ax. In both situations a viewer is psychologically torn by the visual horror of the scene and its contrasting score.

Enter the short story by William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily. Emily is the tragic character in this gothic fiction story which contains elements of psychological horror, mental illness, isolation and small-town gossip. The story contains a timeline of events which follow in approximately this order:

Emily's father dies and she refuses to relinquish the body for three days.
In the following two years she begins seeing a day laborer named Homer Baron, a relationship which is looked down upon by the townspeople and more so by Emily's family.
Emily purchases arsenic, rat poison, from the local druggist.
She is "deserted" by her lover (Homer Baron),
In the two weeks following Homer's desertion, a horrid smell begins to emanate from Emily's home.
Emily becomes somewhat reclusive for the next 10 years; following this period she begins giving china painting lessons to children from the town. This continues for approximately seven years.
Ten years pass from the time of the last art lesson to the time of Emily's death.
SPOILER ALERT
After Emily has been buried, Homer is found in the second floor bedroom of the house where he has been lying dead for approximately 30+ years.

The details in between the bullet points are always important and we will not leave them out. Her father, while alive was purported to have chased away all of Emily's potential suitors and when the father dies Emily cannot let him go, even in death as he was all that she had left. There is speculation that an element of The Electra Complex may have been at play here. The Electra Complex is loosely defined as occurring in a daughter-desires-father version of the Oedipus Complex in which the son desires the mother.

We also discover at the end that her lover, Homer Baron, did not desert her but was actually dead, probably poisoned by arsenic, and in the second floor room of the house. No one spends time at the house except for Tobe, the man that silently works at the house and runs to the market for Emily and the children that Emily teaches in the art of china painting. The townspeople are gossiping about Emily from the beginning of the story, pitying her, predicting her actions, pitying her decisions, but never helping, at least not with altruistic sincerity. Despite the seemingly unending gossip, Emily keeps her head held high and remains strong amid the adversity.

Finally, I will circle back to the beginning to introduce the contrasting score which shares its namesake with the story I am discussing. A Rose For Emily, song by The Zombies was released in 1968, thirty-eight years after Faulkner's A Rose For Emily, was published. Approximately the same length of time that Homer Baron was dead upstairs...

The story reads as dark and tragic while the Zombies' song plays light and happy; the song lyrics still resonate with the story's core theme, which in my opinion is that there are in fact, no roses for Emily. The lyrics read:

The summer is here at last

The sky is overcast

And no one brings a rose for Emily.

She watches her flowers grow

While lovers come and go

To give each other roses from her tree

But not a rose for Emily.

As the story goes, Emily's father has chased off any suitors that Emily may have had. So, as she goes through her youth into her twenties, she is never able to find a partner. No rose for Emily.

Emily, can't you see

There's nothing you can do?

There's loving everywhere

But none for you

There is a desperation that comes through in these lyrics. Emily meets Homer but everyone believes Homer to be gay and not the marrying type. But can she let go of him? Is there a way that she can keep Homer forever?

Her roses are fading now

She keeps her pride somehow

That's all she has protecting her from pain

And as the years go by

She will grow old and die

The roses in her garden fade away

Not one left for her grave

Not a rose for Emily

Emily ages while holding on to the pride of her family name; it is all that separates her from the gossiping townspeople. Finally, Emily herself dies and even the lover that she murdered to keep with her becomes fodder for the gossiping townspeople who find him entombed in the bed in the closed up second floor room. Not even in death can she keep that which she holds to be hers.

The song ends with a reprise of the following lyrics: