Faulkner’s Southern Gothic, Term Paper Example

Introduction

In a sense, it is remarkable that “A Rose for Emily” and “Barn Burning” are stories from the same author.  The first is a strange, disjointed history of an eccentric and faded Southern aristocratic woman; the second is a fiercely masculine account of how one man’s rage infects his son, and consistently and violently upsets his family and the local people.  At the same time, Faulkner’s imprint is clear in both works.  Each relies on the feelings of desperation and decay that mark the Southern Gothic genre.  Beyond this, the genre is in place through the bitter pride that defines both Miss Emily and Snopes, and how the worlds around them judge and isolate these central characters.  While somewhat different in tone and approach, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and “Barn Burning” reveal the author’s gift for exploring the many sides to the sad genre of Southern Gothic.

The Stories

One of the most striking qualities of “A Rose for Emily” is the ambiguity of the tone.  From the very beginning, the unknown narrator describes Emily Grierson and her life in a distanced and intimate way.  He is, like the town, mostly lost in the mystery of her and unsure of her reality.  At the same time, he expresses specific knowledge that is difficult to explain.  Early on, for example, he describes the visit to Emily by the Board of Aldermen.  He brings Emily clearly before the reader’s eye: “She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water,  and of that pallid hue” (Faulkner 514). This then adds a layer of mystery to the core one of the story. Then, the narrator’s tone alternates between admiration, contempt, and a kind of pity.  In keeping with the town, the narrator expresses satisfaction when Emily is left with nothing, because she is now one of them.  Shortly after this, however, the sympathy is strong because he and the town feel for the empty life left to her, created by her late father: “We knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (516).  Through the entire story, and even to the grotesque conclusion, the tone is uncertain. At the same time, it is also always soft, sad, and distanced.

No such ambiguity is seen in the narration of “Barn Burning,” just as the tone is far more powerful.  Faulkner is highly descriptive in the story: “He felt no floor under his bare feet; he seemed to walk beneath the palpable weight of the grim turning faces” (Faulkner).  From start to end, however, the narrator follows a direct course and does not indulge in the wondering of the narrator in “Emily.”  Snopes leads and his son and family follow, the boy knowing all too well that his father will create disaster wherever they go.  They seem to be in the grip of fate and the narration reinforces this.  By the time the family comes to work for Major de Spain and the rug is soiled, the reader – as is true of the son – understands that only more trouble can come when the fury of Snopes is challenged by this matter.  Narration and tone are unrelenting.  They have a momentum that is as masculine as those of “Emily” waver and shift.  At the same time, this is also a similarity between the stories.  More exactly, it is the central character of each who sets the tone.  As Emily is vague and mysterious, these qualities mark the way in which her story is told.  As Snopes is fierce and hard, the same is true.  In a sense, Faulkner makes his approach in each story based completely on the core being of his leading characters.

Another element in place in each story is an undercurrent of intense conflict. “Barn Burning” is actually violent, in keeping with Snopes’s character and the title.  This violence seems to be embedded in the scenes, as though it follows wherever Snopes leads, and because Snopes always creates conflict.  Arriving at the de Spain land, his words to his wife about his intentions have a sinister quality, even before any real conflict has been generated: “’I reckon I’ll have a word with the man that aims to begin to-morrow owning me body and soul for the next eight months’” (Faulkner).  The violence that follows is then hardly surprising.  A different degree of conflict exists in “Emily,” but it is conflict all the same.  It is rooted in the appearance of Homer, who has a character at odds with what the reader knows of Emily: “Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the Square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group” (Faulkner 518).  As with “Barn Burning,” in fact, this Yankee foreshadows fate because the reader senses that he can never settle with the demanding and frustrated Emily.  No overt violence exists in the story, but the buying of the arsenic and Homer’s sudden disappearance clearly indicate extremes.  Emily maintains a tense and conflicted relationship with the town, yet her relationship with Homer emphasizes this further, creating layers of conflict.  It is not explosive, as in “Barn Burning,” but the effects are just as devastating.

In terms of imagery and setting, the two stories are again both different and similar. “Emily” exists within the town setting and there may as well be no other world.  The narrator paints this scene vividly from the start and presents the hybrid sense of the Southern Gothic environment: “Only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps” (Faulkner 514).  In “Barn Burning,” and even as the settings change, there is this same contrast between what was and what practical needs have set in place.  The first line powerfully brings home the almost comic duality between the grand and the common: “The store in which the justice of the Peace’s court was sitting smelled of cheese” (Faulkner).  In both stories, then, these are the landscapes of decay and uncomfortable change.

Beyond this, and strangely, the stories are linked by a factor going to the genre itself.  Snopes is a brutal and low-class Southern man, and Emily Grierson is the last of a line of aristocrats.  Both, however, have a force of pride that is so strong, it overpowers whatever comes before it.  This connects to how each is rooted in the idea of family.  The reader is given Snopes with no history; only his nature presents a life that has been defined by anger and resentment.  He holds to these forces as Emily holds to her own history and exemption from the demands of the external world. As harsh as he is with his son, Snopes does reveal his view of life as a battle to him, and one that requires something more than strength: “You’re getting to be a man. You got to learn. You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain’t going to have any blood to stick to you” (Faulkner).  This is then an interesting parallel with Emily’s bitter relationship with her father and her own legacy as the last of the Griersons.  As noted, if the town is happy to see her poor, it is also pained by the loss of a once-great family.  If her life has warped her mind, Emily clearly defines herself in terms of her standing as a Grierson, so pride and family combine to create a presence as powerful as Snopes’s.

All of this reinforces how directly Faulkner treats or uses Southern Gothic.  The genre usually portrays the South as a haunted space, as past traditions suffer and are crushed by the new world.  Many writers focus on the sad and poetic aspects, and present stories in which the loss at the heart of the genre is emphasized.  Faulkner, however, as with Southern Gothic writers like O’Connor, conveys this sense of a lost world, but he engages with the South in a way revealing the actual trauma at the heart of the loss (Matthews 220).  He digs into actual lives as unable to function in a changed world, as he reveals how these lives victimize others.  If he is unforgiving, Faulkner is nonetheless honest in his exploration of Southern Gothic, and this is what most elevates “A Rose for Emily” and “Barn Burning” as representing the genre.

Conclusion

 It may be argued that any literary genre is as limiting as it is enabling.  Readers come to expect certain qualities, and Southern Gothic is typically marked by an emphasis on tragic loss, the vanishing of a world, and stories going to both the poetic and the grotesque.  Faulkner does not deviate from this.  It is grotesque that a woman would sleep with a corpse, as it is horrific that a father would take out his hatred of the world on his son.  At the same time, the author does not rest on genre conventions, and his stories go far beyond any bizarre portrayal of what the South has become.  He uses the genre and does not let it dictate.  Above all, Faulkner relies on his characters to lead the way and he is true to the realities they face.  This is then an honesty and realism elevating the genre itself.  Ultimately, and while different in a number of ways, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and “Barn Burning” both reveal the author’s gift for exploring the many sides to the sad genre of Southern Gothic.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William.  “A Rose for Emily.” From The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter 11^th Ed.  Kelly Mays, Ed.  New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2013. Print. 514-523.

Faulkner, William.  “Barn Burning.” 2015. Web. 10 April 2015. <http://www.tarleton.edu/Faculty/sword/Barn%20Burning.pdf>

Matthews, John T.  William Faulkner in Context.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Print.