The Rose In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

A Rose for Emily bares its biggest symbolism in the title, the mention of a rose. Traditionally the denotative meaning of a rose is a shrub-bearing plant with pinnate leaves and multiple petals, mostly fragrant flowers in various colors, it is a wild, high-stemmed, climbing, fast growing, flower. The rose is considered as the queen of flowers, typically bearing red, pink, yellow, or white fragrant flower petals, native to north temperate regions. Numerous hybrids and cultivars have been developed and are widely grown as ornamentals. In the story the rose’s traditional meaning is transformed in to a last tribute to Emily, a kind of rose that is put onto her coffin, it also presents the reader with insight in to Emily’s life, her feelings, and

“A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man 's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured.” (Faulkner 223 ). It might at first read as an insignificant description of Emily’s bridal chamber, yet much more lies beneath it. Emily’s surroundings are rose colored, which gives entrance to the symbolism of the rose in this story. Seeing life through rose colored glasses, is a way of expressing the fact that people choose to ignore the bad, exaggerate the good, choose to grasp reality in their own phantasy filled way. Miss Emily had a difficult upbringing, felt unloved most of her life, when she finally found love, it once again did not work out, and she was left to be alone once

She comes from money, even if her families place in the upper class is of the past, she is still perceived as a lady, an institution of sorts, and is given that respect, even during times when the towns people do not agree with her living tax free, or during the times that she is perceived as strange, no one dares to speak up, bring up concerns to her. She is on a pedestal of sorts, she is a rose. In Emily’s case instead of facing reality, the reader encounters a woman that chooses to blind herself from reality, decides to ignore the truth she is living, and slips in to a sort of made up fantasy world. In which she is loved, lives her life with her “husband”, and finally for once in her life is not the outcast old maid. She lives her make-believe life behind closed doors, shutting out any chance of reality catching up with her, the reality that could open her eyes to the fact that her rosy love story is nothing more but a dream, since at the end of the day, she is living with a dead man (which she murdered), she is still alone and unloved. Her life is like that of a rose, in her misplaced perception her life is filled with love and beauty, she lives the fairy-tale every girl dreams of, yet beneath that beauty lies self-doubt, Emily’s insecurities and her lies, her ugly side (the thorns of the rose), she begins to decay and commits murder, all in the name of keeping the fantasy within herself