Literary Circle Questions for “A Rose for Emily”
1. In what ways was Emily a product of her environment?
(Sub question: how did the gossiping intruding neighbors influence Emily’s behavior?)
2. How does the story represent the experience of women, specifically in the post-civil war South?
(Sub question: how is Emily confined or restricted—and what does her experience suggest about the south?)
3. How has patriarchy shaped Emily’s experience?
4. Should Emily be seen as a victim? Why or why not?
(Sub question: Is she to blame for her own actions? Or has she been driven to do this?)
5. In what ways does Emily’s desire for and denial of love or partnership represent patriarchy? Do you think all people want this? Do you think women need a man more than men need women?
6. How is Emily’s life an allegory (an extended metaphor) for the challenges that the South was going through during this period in history?
(think about all the decay and death represented in this story—her house, her body,—and the fact that she was not keeping up with a changing world)
7. What does the work reveal about the impact (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
(Sub-question: In what ways does this work reveal something about male control over women- this can be personally, in families, economically, etc)
8. Which character is more isolated, Emily or Tobe? What are the different reasons behind their isolation? Did either of them have a choice? Are there other groups in this story that are as repressed as women?
9. “It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorate with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps- and eyesore among eyesores” (1)
What does the house symbolize in this story? What is meant by the line an “eyesore among eyesores”? How did her lack of inheritance allow her father to control her even after his death?
10. “That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau; Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, were not pleased exactly, but vindicated, even with insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned down all of her chanced if they had materialized” (3)
Why do you think the narrator chose to make the narrator plural? Is it a female speaking or a male? What effect does it have on the relationship between Miss Emily and her community? What does it say about the role of women in society that their private lives are seen as publicly available? Would this same treatment have been given to a man?
11. What other places do the narrators take an opinion on how Emily has lived? Are they generally kind to her or vindictive?
12. Why did she kill Homer Barron?
13. Is it significant that this was written by a man? Why or why not?
14. Using a feminist lens, this story is essentially about: