Southern gothic in a rose for emily

Southern Gothic. A genre within Gothic literature with many presences of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts. In the short story A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a strong example of what Southern Gothic literature is.

In A Rose for Emily, the story is about the life of Emily Grierson, telling about the death of her dad, and her being trapped from dating and being in the real world up to her dad’s passing. Emily gets visited by the aldermen of the antebellum South, for not paying her taxes on time. They also talk about her friendship with homer, who disappears in during the short story. Eventually near the end of Faulkner’s story, Emily Grierson dies leaving the townspeople to discover the bridal tomb. Faulkner’s short story wouldn’t be known as American Gothic because it does t include little details in the setting. In American Gothic, you would see cathedrals, mansions, regular houses, and many churches.

While American gothic seems more up to date, A Rose for Emily is Southern Gothic because of its setting of plantation homes, old and being very run down. It was big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies. Describing the features of the plantation home (517). In the South during this time, there was also plantation homes for the many families that owned slaves. A Rose for Emily may also fall under the topic of Southern Gothic because of the amount of death talked about in the story. Within the story Emily’s dad passes, Homer dies, and eventually Emily ends up dead. When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument. Talking about the death of the main character, Emily (517). In A Rose for Emily there is many times where death is mentioned, like the death of her father, death of Homer and the death of Emily herself. In the short story, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, is a strong example of Southern gothic by creating a good setting of the South and also bringing in the dark, gloomy and transgressive thoughts of Gothic Literature. Faulkner also includes in his short story the death of many and the story behind how mortal the characters were.