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Episode 442 - A Rose for Emily (Patreon)

Published:
2019-03-11 23:17:03
Imported:
2026-06
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Join us as we chat about William Faulkner's classic story A Rose for Emily!

Special thanks to our reader K.J. Middlebrooks!

Next up: The House of Sounds by M.P. Shiel

Comments

Stella B.

Oh man. We had to read this in high school (11th grade)! I remember, when we got to the hair on the pillow part the whole class had a reaction. I could really tell the teacher was looking forward to having us read it. Most of the symbolism went straight over my head at the time, but looking back on it, I can't believe I missed some of this! Anyway, this marks the latest of the stories I read in school that you've covered (the others being The Yellow Wallpaper and The Devil and Tom Walker) and I really wish y'all had been around when I was in school!

Matt Heerdt

So Emily killing Homer over the fear of Homer leaving is definitely a good point, but I had read it differently. Emily was too proud (reinforced by her father) to take a working-class husband and killed Homer to still have the relationship *and* keep her family pride. Having her cake and eating it too, I guess. The fear of him leaving makes more sense, I suppose, but all the talk of family pride gives another option.

Jon Hancock

"Little Billy Faulkner, the noted midget and horse tumbler..."

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

So, yeah, definitely not weird in the Lovecraftian sense. But perhaps all the more fearful for being just a sick mind doing what most folks find unthinkably repulsive. Films like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th can be frightening in their use of jump scares and sudden reveals and implacable stalking death. But they are ultimately not *really* scary because those bad fellas don't really exist. Films like Psycho and American Psycho and Zodiac can be much scarier because the bad fellas really do exist. They might be your neighbor. Or that sweet old biddy who won't pay her taxes.

Jon Hancock

I especially enjoyed the Patrick Bergin and Julia Roberts film adaptation of this story exploring the situation from the side of the corpse, "Sleeping with the Emily."

Forrest Rush

Oh Great God Faulkner. Growing up in the South a passionate reader and someone with a passing interest in writing, especially anything of a horrific bent, I knew that ole Bill’s shadow would also stretch long, dark and be nigh inescapable. First, Homer. In high school, my glass closeted English lit teacher just shushed our giggles at the line and said “That’s how folks spoke back then. It doesn’t mean what you all think it means.” The irony didn’t hit me till years later in college when my Massachusetts transplanted prof (I went to Auburn University), who was the first academic I had ever heard openly speak about Lovecraft, eviscerating him as he did practically everything, said “Of course Homer likes guys. Faulkner said so, didn’t he? He rarely says anything directly. Have you never read Sound and Fury? Take him at his word when he hands you something.” As most anyone who grew up in a small town can attest, whether in the South or elsewhere, the openly closeted gay guy is kind of part of the required scenery. Maybe that has changed, probably has. I left the US decades ago, long before the rise of all the dating apps. But I always thought Homer was and that was one of Emily’s motives, along with him being the first man who paid the slightest bit of attention to her without her father’s interference and her being a fallen blueblood with more pride than Scarlett O’Hara and all the curtain dresses Tara could provide. Second, is it a weird tale. For most of my life when I was in the South, I sided with Lovecraft. I read Faulkner and all the other southern greats as a teen and recognized the power and the beauty of the writing, but I just couldn’t get into it. I don’t want to say bored, but disinterested. Lovecraft’s Providence, Miskatonic, Arkham were these wonderfully exotic (funny huh) places, cold, dark and slimy with wonderous old gods and fish people. I lived in Emily’s and Benjy Compson’s Deep South, in pressure cooker heat and an apartheid society, on the wrong side of the railroad tracks that still had their own segregated sections. So, while the story could give me a bit or a pause, it just didn’t capture my imagination like wandering through those ancient New England streets filled with decaying houses occupied by god knows what mysteries from beyond. Down south, we’d have one isolated farm with probably a single chainsaw massacre clan and hillbillies playing dueling banjos in the woods. Give me the fish people and Whatleys any day of the week! So no, not a weird tale. But the meaning of the title (that this story is a rose for the tragedies of her life she never got) is moving. I would though want to offer up anything by Flannery O’Connor for you guys to go over. I know. Also not really weird fiction except by making that psychological stretch. But I love to imagine what HP would’ve made of A Good Man is Hard to Find. She is my absolute favorite southern writer. I’ll finish this overly long entry (can’t wait to see how many times Patreon deletes it), by adding a result I found on the internet when I searched about Homer’s sexuality. After many entries by various academics one website had a selection of student answers. One young scholar wrote “He ain’t gay. He’s a yankee.” Well, that sums it up nicely I guess.

FB

Ravewolf

I think the community as character also factors into a story like this. The community suspects something is amiss all along but looks the other way, refusing to face the immediate reality even as time passes. In this way, Emily and the town community mirror each other.

G. Monaldo

Very cool creepster vibe!

Jessie H.

"Celebrated author William Faulkner was a short man who couldn't stay on a horse." Every episode I expect some line that will make me laugh out loud and embarrass myself at the gym (I need mental stimulation while working out, don't judge me), every time I try to prepare for it, and every time I fail. Only this time it was particularly early on. I'm pretty sure people think I'm crazy, laughing out of nowhere in odd moments.

Josh Decker

I don't think it is supposed to be a mystery that Homer is gay. There are plenty of hints to that being the case and Faulkner used the phrasing of that day and society to communicate it. It's all a huge wink and nod (or more aptly a cocked head and a raised eyebrow). A genteel southerner would never say something so blunt as "that man is a homosexual" but they would still find a way to tell you. That being said, as a rural young gay lad when I read this, I empathized with Homer and it became his story to me and not Emily's. For me, it was the tale of an affable gay man in the prime of his life struck down by an elitist necrophiliac woman with daddy issues. It is certainly unspeakable horror in my eyes.

James Anthony

"... that his height was mentioned in his short biography..." I see what you did there

OliveDiamonds

I read this for my literature class last semester!! Where were you guys with this then?! XD

Steve

I'm less sure that it isn't Weird, because it is certainly against nature (as defined by the place and period) and it is certainly dark. Lovecraft's definition was fine for 1920 whenever but things have moved on since then. In much new Weird, the unnatural trope is often more hinted at than visible. There's the possibility of the unnatural rather than any clear evidence. The gothic, the weird, the uncanny all melt into one murky interstitial fogbank.

Devin Morse

I'm disappointed A Rose for Emily didn't involve any Zombies.

Ben Mund

Not having read the story, I was interested in your constant references to her "Bartleby the Scrivener"-like force of will. Now I'm curious enough to read it to see how much that idea played into the narrative.

Forrest Rush

BTW nobody's brought up I think the story that Homer was intentionally made gay by faulkner to humiliate some guy who had insulted a friend of his. I've never bought into that one, preferring to think Bill wouldn't use gay bashing for such an underhanded attack. I certainly like Josh's reading and would love to see it performed that way. Maybe somebody could contact Jordan Peele.

James Holloway

One of the things that I thought felt very relevant to Lovecraft was the idea of clinging to the past, even the dead past, as a way to feel safe and comforted. Lovecraft found meaning and purpose in the relics of history, although perhaps a little more tastefully. Those old men in their Confederate uniforms -- what are they doing but cuddling a corpse?

FB

MonsterTalk

Obviously what was missing was the Derleth fix to the ending. Here, let me take a shot: Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we could see it was a bookmark - and only then did we turn and realize we were standing in not just a bedroom, but a vast and dusty library of forgotten tomes. The book of Eibon, fragments of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, Mysteries of the Worm, infernal works by Wade Jermyn, and worse. Much worse. As we stared, mouths agape at the scene, the corpse began to move ever so slightly. But we had come prepared. We emptied our revolvers into that blasted thing and burned Miss Emily's house to the ground and salted the soil. <chef kiss=""></chef>

Arn Lehrmann

Thanks for another great episode guys :-D Your closing talk abaut what we are willing to accept due to our age reminded me of one om my favorite Douglas Adam's quotes :-D : “I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things." ... So sorry guys I am afraid most of us end on the 'wrong' side of point 3 ;-D

Chad Anctil

This may be my first time commenting here, but Chris and Chad’s discussion early on about getting glimpses inside your neighbors’ houses reminded me of something that could probably only happen in the modern day. Our neighbor, diagonal across the street, was an early adopter of a very large, 60+” flat screen television, which sat proudly on his living room wall, and which could easily be viewed from the street via a large front window. It was still a shock, however, as I was taking out the trash one evening, to see a movie of a very... adult nature streaming in ultra high definition from my neighbors’ front room. I did not watch long, but to this day I still wonder if that woman ever got her sink fixed...

Andrew M. Reichart

I for one was relieved by the clarification about Chris's age. When he stated he was "40," I feared that either he or I had gone hopelessly mad, and nothing but a bolt of cleansing lightning would save us.

Elisheba

I've been assuming for a while that this podcast will end with a cleansing bolt of lightning.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

On curiosity about other people's houses and window-gazing: for about four years in the early Aughts I lived in (witch-haunted) Salem in the area not far from downtown where the homes of old blue-blood families smack up against less fancy houses inhabited by less fancy people (thanks to the Great Fire of 1914, the change in architecture is pretty stark). I was one of the less fancy, but I got to nod pleasantly at neighbors on the street who unironically dressed and talked like Thurston Howell III. Anyway, in the fancier homes within a few blocks of Chestnut Street, it is apparently common to set up street-level rooms with fine furniture and art and light them at night with the curtains open. I would never see anyone in these rooms; they seemed to be mainly for us creepers to admire as we walked by.

Ntrovert

Faulkner has always been a struggle for me. I read "As I Lay Dying" for a Modern Novel class in HS, and I just DIDN'T like stream of consciousness. I kind of stayed away from his work ever since, which sucks. I liked this story quite a bit, and maybe I can have another go at Mr. Faulkner.

Micah Champion

In high school, I played Homer Baron in the one act play of A Rose For Emily. The play made Homer out to be much more a lady's man, stringing Emily along. I may have unwittingly helped that impression with my performance. The poor girl who played Emily had a lot of wardrobe changes, so between every scene she had to re-dress while I watched off-stage for our queues. In one flashback scene Homer and Emily are walking across the stage to a picnic. When I saw our queue to start walking I reached back behind me and grabbed her hand like a relay baton and started walking onstage in front of a midday high school audience not noticing that she wasn't quit done dressing. To her credit, she stayed in character, while I probably just looked really confused, as if Homer was l already headed around second base. The next day, in nearly every class, I got a lot of jeering from my male classmates. Oh, and the girl who played Emily hated my guts for the rest of my senior year. Ah, my short-lived acting career....wonderful!

MR ZEEL

And BTW, its Mr ZEEL guys, XX Z

M T

While it might not hint at a greater unknown, it has the same creepy quality of a certain old man with a certain book with certain pictures in a certain old house. True, no cleansing bolt of lightning, but still, I see that quality of the story relatively equivalent.

Morbid Smile Art

So glad to see you covered this story! I taught college freshman composition here in Georgia for years and this was consistently a student favorite in our horror-themed classes. As you mentioned, we studied it as a prelude to Psycho and there were lots of interesting observations. Firstly, the servant is one of the few POC in the entire story despite the southern setting, and we had long conversations about the implications of the bullwhip and the fear he showed toward the town as a whole. Like Emily, he too is seen as an other by the collective “we,” and the implications of a dead white nan in an old dead white lady’s house meant he had no choice other than to just go and never look back. Have y’all ever thought about covering more southern gothic, particularly some of the eerie or horror stories from Joyce Carol Oates?

RebeccaR

I like peering into other people's homes to get interior design tips