Study on the Gothic Complex in A Rose for Emily论《献给艾米丽的玫瑰花》中的哥特式情结

论《献给艾米丽的一支玫瑰花》中的

哥特式情结

摘要

美国作家威廉.福克纳的作品《献给艾米丽的玫瑰花》被视为美国南方哥特式小说的杰作。这部小说讲述了爱米丽小姐悲惨的一生，充满悬疑，耐人寻味。这篇论文主要从几个角度讨论了《献给艾米丽的玫瑰花》的哥特式风格。

这篇论文分为四部分，第一部分，对威廉.福克纳和他的短篇小说《献给艾米莉的玫瑰花》作了简要的介绍，并且指出了这篇论文的目的和意义。第二部分主要介绍了哥特式文学的来源和哥特式特点在文学上的体现。第三部分,也是这篇论文最重要部分，通过分析环境描写，主题，叙述方式还有人物描写来体现《献给艾米丽的玫瑰花》中的哥特式特点或风格。最后部分对这篇论文作了总结，它所得出的结论是《献给艾米丽的玫瑰花》很多方面体现了哥特式特点，并且因为它的哥特式特点作者才成功地表达了他所想表达的主题。

关键词：哥特情结；环境描写；主题；叙述方式；人物

Study on the Gothic Complex in A Rose for Emily

Abstract

A Rose for Emily written by American writer William Faulkner is regarded as the representative work of southern gothic fiction of America. The story writes Miss Emily’s tragic life and it’s full of su spense and intensely interesting.

This paper discusses the Gothic characteristics of A Rose for Emily on several angles, and it is divided into four parts.

In the first part, it introduces the William Faulknerand his A Rose for Emily briefly and points out the aim and the significance of the study.

In the second part it introduces the gothic characteristics in literature. In the third part which is the most important part,it points out that the author uses gothic characteristics from four aspects of the description of environment, the theme, the narrative way, and the character.In the last part, it concludes that the author combines gothic characteristics with the realistic content successfully and expresses his complicated feeling precisely because of using gothic characteristics.

Key words:gothic complex;environment description; theme; narrative way; character

Contents

Abstract (i)

内容摘要............................................................................................................................. i i 1. Introduction . (1)

1.1 A brief introduction of William Faulkner and his A Rose for Emily (1)

1.2 Introduction of the Gothic Characteristics in Literature (2)

2.Literature Review (3)

3.TheGothicCharacteristicsin ARoseforEmily (4)

3.1 The gothic characteristics in the description of environment (4)

3.2 The gothic characteristics in the theme of A Rose for Emily (5)

3.3 The gothic characteristics in the narrative way of A Rose for Emily (7)

3.4 The gothic characteristics in the character (8)

4.Conclusion (10)

Bibliography (13)

Study on the Gothic Complex in

A Rose for Emily

1. Introduction

1.1 A brief introduction of William Faulkner and his A Rose for Emily

William Faulkner is one of the most distinguish writer in American literature.He was born and lived in the South, which influenced him greatly, therefore, most of his works described the people and their lives in the South. As the appearance of Faulkner, the South appeared the literary glories of “the South Renaissance”, which ever was called “the literary desert."(Yu Jianhua, The Second Prosperous of American Literature, 460).

He invented a county and a town in his imagination, and he wrote about the society in the South by inventing families which represented different social forces: the old, decaying upper class; the rising, ambitious, unscrupulous class of “poor whites”; a nd the Negroes who labored for both of them.His major works included Sartoris, The Unvanquished, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, The Town and A Rose for Emily (Laurence B.Holland, The Norton Anthology of American Literary ,534-537).

Published in 1930, A Rose for Emily was one of the best known and the most widely read novel among William Faulkner’s short stories. The story took place in a mythical town that William Faulkner called Jefferson, Mississippi. The story happened at the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the town was learning to live with South’s loss in the Civil War and the consequent dismantling of the slavery-based society that had preceded it. Because of the loss in the Civil War, people in the south led a poor life. Especially the white people, their life suddenly become poor because most of the slaves went to the north to work for the northern industry，so the white people couldn’t get accustomed to thelife changein a short time, but they still pretended to be noble and kept their family’s dignity(Howard Clin cotton, American History, 30).

The story described a white woman, Emily’s tragic life under the South’s loss in the Civil War.Emily’s life was strongly dominated by her father, and she had no right to date with males and choose her lover. After her father’s death, she could only date with a northern worker. But to her disappointment, the worker refused to marry her, and the

refusal drove her to kill him by using poison, and she let his body company her. After Emily’s death, the town people discovered a skeleton in the house, and found out that the poor Emily was a murder, and people were shocked by the discovery.

Thematically, this short story is not as simple as it seems. The conflicts in the story can be interpreted on different levels. On the superficial level,it was a murder story with gothic characteristics. It described an eccentric woman who lived in her old decaying mysterious house that other people had not visited for decades,and, of course, a dead body in the house finally was discovered after so many years. Onanother level, the story can be read as a conflict between the South and the North with Emily representing the declining South and Homer Barron representing the North. On a deeper level, the story explores the inner world of a human being, or the inner struggle in the human heart.

1.2Introduction of the Gothic Characteristics in Literature

The word “Goth” came from the name of a Germanic tribe. The gothic people were famous for their brutal and uncivilized features. They ever lived in north Europe, then invaded in Rome Empire fromthe third AD century to the fifth AD century, and set many kingdoms in Italy, Spain, south part of France and North Africa. A thousand years later, after the Rome Empire died out, Italian Vasari (1511--1574) used the "Goth" for the first time to refer to an architectural style in middle age, which was "tall sharp pointed, vaulted roof or tower ,narrow windows, colorful glass, darkness houses, gloomy ladders."(Xiao Minghan,Criticism of Foreign Literature,9) The gothic architecture was originated in France in 11th century, and it was popular in Europe from 13th century to 15th century. This kind of architecture style mostly is seen in the church, and also in common architecture. The gothic architecture has a high status in the history of architecture because of its excellent skill and its achievement in the field of art. The gothic characteristics not only appear in architecture, but also appear in many fields such as literature, movie, music and clothing.

The so-called “Gothic Revival" appeared in aspects of architecture and literature during eighteenth century to nineteenth century, which was the gloomy and depressed tone in middle age. Meanwhile, some literary works enjoyed the same tone with "Gothic fiction" in the time. Take Horace Walpole for example, his "The Castle of Otranto" set an example for early classic gothic fiction. The birth of "Gothic fiction” was not only r elated

with the "Gothic feeling" of the cemetery poetry of England, but related with the "Gothic characteristics"，the aesthetic standard of Edmund Burke (1729-1797) as well.

The gothic characteristics in literature are that the story mostly takes place in a distant ages and desolate places, the characters are locked or imprisoned in narrow spaces or in a mysterious gothic building and suspense often mingles with love. There are some usual ways of suspense, such as mysterious inheritance, secret antecedents, lost will, the secret of family, ancestral curse and so on. And at the end of the story, the mystery or the suspense is solved, the evildoer is discovered and the impediment of the love between the hero and the heroine is brushed aside. Compared with romantic fiction, the gothic fiction mostly describes adventurous story and the impediment of love mostly is caused by the evildoer, while the romantic fiction mostly describes the family’s triviality, and the impediment of the love in the romantic fiction between characters is caused by them. The theme of the gothic story mostly reveals through death, murder, violence and horrible scene. In a short, the novels with the gothic characteristics reveal a mysterious, horrible, depressed and gloomy atmosphere. Since the 18th century, the gothic characteristics had been used in the literary works popularly, and there are many famous novels with the gothic characteristics, such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights，Notre Dame de Paris,A Rose for Emily and so on. A Rose for Emily isespecially the most representative work of gothic fiction.

2.Literature Review

After I look up in CNKI, China Journal Net, VIP information and other journals I have found two academic journals that are consistent with my thesis.I foundthree similar papers ,they are Zhang Qi, Zhangxuezhu. A Rose for Emily on the Gothic Features 【M】. Leshan Teachers College, 2003,11, Huang Fu Yan, 2011, rose ashes, love into a poem - on the Gothic features of Emily Rose, "we"and Yuhuan Huan, 2009.8 William Faulkner dedicated to Amy ? Gothic Rose Li in the complex "Jiannan Literature ",and their main view is that "A Rose for Emily"is an outstanding 20th century American novelist William Faulkner's short stories. A striking feature of this novel is the use of Gothic Marxism.This article will focus on the Gothic complex in"A Rose for Emily" in orderto help readers better understand this masterpiece.In "A Rose for Emily", Faulkner uses the

gothicliteraryartisticexpression,makingtheir characterization, description of environment, atmosphere, setting and plot are all rendered with rich Gothic colors, through the description of Ai Millie's life tragedy to expose the dark side of Southern society, accused the South Puritan tradition and patriarchal society the persecution of women.

3. The Gothic Characteristics in A Rose for Emily

Savoy Eric(1970) mentioned:“it’s very contradictory that a kind of literature, which is twined by the immortal history and attracted by queer grief, came into being in the country which believes in freedom and pursues the happiness of individual.”H e said ironically the existence of gothic characteristics in American literature. Although the society advocated pursuing happiness and freedom, the unfairness and ugliness still existed and then the gothic literature appeared. Faulkner, the author of this novel lived in a special environment which was full of depressing and gloomy atmosphere due to the South’s loss in the Civil War.“Therefore, his habit, thinking way and life attitude closely related with thi s unfortunate field.”(Jay Parinier,The Norton Anthology of American Literary, 633). He had complicated feeling for his hometown’s loss in the Civil War. On one hand, he complained about the poor or miserable life caused by the war, and had a little hatred for the North. On the other hand, he praised the improvement of human being caused by the war, because the war opened the door of eliminating slavery system, so he only could express his complicated feeling for the South’s loss precisely by using gothic characteristics in his literature. In A Rose for Emily, he used gothic characteristic in many aspect such as scene or the description of Emily’s house, theme, narrative way, character.

3.1The gothic characteristics in the description of environment

The gothic story usually takes place in isolated placeswhere people seldom visit, such as a hidden castle in the jungle, a farmstead, and old dilapidated house and so on. The author attached much importance to the description of the scene and playing up the mysterious and horrible atmosphere. Baron Armond(1972)said:“the word “mystery”connects with the gothic characteristics naturally.”Emily's house embodies gothic characteristics.

Emily's house was a special style building made of wood. When her parents were alive, the house was noble style, which "had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of theSeventies."(William

Faulkner,A Rose for Emily). As the timepassed,however, the house still kept its outdated style and "lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay."(William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily).We could feel an incompatible atmosphere with the age.And the description of the house also revealedEmily’s character that she rejected the modernized or changed world stubbornly.

Several years later, the deputation had a chance to go into Emily's house for the first time. They went into “a dim hall from which a s tairway mounted into still more shadow." (William Faulkner,A Rose for Emily).Moreover, there was "a dust and disuse--a close, dank smell"(William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily).in the air. The parlor was "furnished in heavy, leather--covered furniture." (William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily).Faulkner describeda dim and mysterious picture for us.And this mysterious picture made readers curious about her life in the house.

It was really shocking that the town people saw in Emily's base room.“A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as a bridal." (William Faulkner,A Rose for Emily). Homer's skeleton "had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace." (William Faulkner,A Rose for Emily). The second pillow which was in the same bed was the indentation of a head. It is clearly that it was Emily's "long strand of iron--gray hair."Homer had been missed for forty years, and Emily had been slept with his skeleton for forty years. Sepulchral atmosphere spread the air. It is shocking and absolutelyterrible. But it is not Faulkner who originally adds the terror element in fiction; it is the traditional style of “gothic characteristics." Faulkner not only uses thesecharacteristics in A Rose for Emily, but exaggerates several details such as murder, violence, etc. So the description of Emily’s house createdthe mysterious and horrible atmosphere successfully and connectedthe mystery with gothic characteristics naturally.

3.2 The gothic characteristics in the theme of A Rose for Emily

Mostly, the characteristics of the theme in gothic literature are that the author reveals the evil of human being and attacks the darkside of the society, such as the unfairness and crime through death, murder, violence and revenge.

Gross, Louis.S(1979) pointed out: “the difference between American gothic literature and European gothic literature is that the European gothic literature is mostly

regarded as escapism and rejected by people, while American gothic literature speaks out people’s voice, especially people who are special such as females, homosexual, colored races and so on, although American gothic literature is still fictitious.”D ue to people are not allowed to express their depressed feeling caused by the insecure society or the dark side of society, they can only express the feeling indirectly by gothic discourse or using gothic characteristics in literature.

At Emily’s times, women were controlled by men strongly. Before marriage, women were controlled by fathers, so they had no right to choose their lovers or partners. Emily couldn’t go out to make friends as often as she can, and her father thought there’s no man who’s good enough to match his daughter in their town, so she was still single when she was thirty years old. When her father died, she depended on her father so much that she was not wiling to bury his father. After his father’s death, she had no courage to face the outside world alone, so she went outside seldom, and her neighbors were curious about her life and guessed how her life was going from her and her servant’s actions. And then the Northern worker Homer appeared and Emily was attracted by him, and Emily was too lonely and empty, and she was eager to his company, but to her disappointment, he refused to marry her. She knew that she couldn’t control his life when he was alive, so she decided to kill him. In order to own him forever, Emily killed him by using drug. To a large extent, Emily’s life was deeply affected by her father’s control, even ruined by her father. If there’s no her father’s strong control, she might get married at the right time and certainly she wouldn’t make her lover company by killing him.

So the theme of the short story which the author was trying to show was that he attacked the men’s domination overwomenby Emily’s murder, hernecrophilia, and her separation from outside for many years, and meanwhile the author also showed his 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 attackedthe 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 thenarrative 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 hada respectful affection for a fallen monument, andthe womenwere curious to see her inner house. Who wasEmily? 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 pursuedher. 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 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 whodoesn’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. Kenned y ＆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 killingrats or snakes. And when Emily bought the rats poison, they guessed the poison was used for killing rats. Sothe narrator’s guess makes the story become more mysterious.

The flashback form and the choosing of the narrator grasppeople’s curiosity for the suspense, and make the suspense more mysterious, and alsoreflectthe gothic characteristics successfully. In a short, the narrative waycreateda mysterious and terrified atmosphere, so the gothiccharacteristics 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 l ove story, and they act in abnormal way. Because of the character’s twisted or eccentric characteristics, the story or the suspense appearsin gothic characteristics. Mark Madoff(1979) took Lewis’s The Monk an example and pointed out that in fact, the description of the violent behavior in the gothic literature wasthe 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 reflectedthe gothiccharacteristics, the character of Emilywas also involved in “Gothic characteristics". She was stubborn, eccentric and mysterious. Shehad been isolated from the outside world for forty-year since her fatherdied and Homer's missing. Her

doorremained closed all the year round and refused all the visitors.

Actually, she wasan 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,sherefused to pay the taxes and repeated that “I have no taxes in Jefferson.”Moreover, she ask ed the officials to get explanation from Colonel Sartoris, who ever remittedher taxes. It seemedthat shedid 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 ofthe 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, itwasimperceptible 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 "died" as long as the failure of the war, but it more obstinately "survive" than any other times. The South "died" in society and economy, but it wasstill "alive" in the culture and mental.

Pitiable Emily was solidified by time. She fellinto the past glories and honors of the 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, whichseemed extremely unrealistic and ridiculous. In this way, Faulkner criticized the southerners who lived in a new time but