A Rose for Emily – chronology
Using Constraint Logic Programming to Analyze the Chronology in “A Rose for Emily” - JENNIFER BURG1, ANNE BOYLE2 and SHEAU-DONG LANG3 Department of Computer Science, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem
Abstract. William Faulkner’s non-chronological story telling style has long been a challenge to critics and a puzzle to beginning literature students. “A Rose for Emily,” one of Faulkner’s most frequently anthologized stories, exemplifies the complexity of Faulkner’s treatment of time. In this paper, we apply a constraint-based problem solving method to an analysis of the chronology of “A Rose for Emily.” Constraint logic programming is a declarative programming language paradigm that solves problems by enforcing constraints among variables. CLP’s ability to sort numeric variables
that do not yet have definite values makes it possible to sort the events of “A Rose for Emily” with only fragmented and relative time information. In attempting to sort the events of the story, we find an inconsistency in the temporal references scattered throughout the narrative. After removing this
inconsistency, we are able to compare our chronology with earlier ones and discuss the thematic relevance of Faulkner’s nonlinear plots.
1. Faulkner’s Treatment of Time
One of the most intriguing and perplexing elements of William Faulkner’s work is his treatment of time. Through shifts in narrators, non-chronological story telling, and reappearing characters, Faulkner’s stories can leave unseasoned readers with a jumble of “incidents” related through the ramblings of memory. While a deeper understanding of Faulkner’s nonlinear approach to time may come later, a first understanding of Faulkner’s stories requires some sorting out of these events and their relative significance.
Faulkner’s most widely read short story, “A Rose for Emily,” illustrates this
difficulty. Beginning with Emily’s death, Faulkner meanders back and forth
through a period of change from the pre-Civil War South to the modern age.
From the very first words of the story’s first paragraph – “When Emily Grierson died” – Faulkner weaves together the events of Emily’s life using frequent references to time, telling us that some event occurred “thirty years before” this or “eight or ten years after” that, or on the “next night” or “within three days.” All the pieces of the puzzle seem to be there, but it is not immediately clear how they fit together. In the nearly 70 years since the story’s publication, critics have offered numerous chronologies, defended on the basis of biographical, historical, contextual, textual, or canonical evidence (Going, 1958; Woodward, 1966; Hagopian,1964; McGlynn, 1969; Nebeker, 1970, 1971; Wilson, 1972; Perry, 1979; Schwab,1991). (See “A Comparison of Chronologies” below.)
In this paper, we describe a computer-based tool for comparing and checking the consistency of chronologies, and show how application of this tool can be pedagogically and analytically useful. Applying a constraint-based sorting procedure to the events of “A Rose for Emily,” we uncover an inconsistency in the relative time information given in the story. Removing the inconsistency, we sort the events and compare our results with earlier interpretations. We conclude that while a preoccupation with chronological ordering would be a misreading of Faulkner’s “huge meadow” of time, testing the consistency of various proposed chronologies is useful to an understanding of his characters’ motivations and historical circumstances.
2. A Chronology of “A Rose For Emily” - Let us begin by summarizing “A Rose for Emily,” not in Faulknerian style, but straight ahead from beginning to end.
Emily Grierson was the only daughter of a once-prominent family of the Old South. She appeared to have many suitors in her youth, but for some reason Emily never married. Maybe she was too much under the control of her domineering father. Maybe the Griersons held themselves a little too high above the rest of the town, and none of the suitors were considered good enough for Emily. Maybe none of the suitors ever actually asked Emily to marry him. In any case, when Emily’s father died, she apparently could not accept the loss and denied his death for three days, until the townspeople finally convinced her to bury him.
Left with almost nothing and still not married by the age of thirty, Emily found herself an object of pity rather than envy among the townspeople. Then Homer Barron, a construction worker, came to town. Before long, Emily was seen everywhere with Homer. He wasn’t the kind of man the townspeople would have expected Emily to marry – a common laborer and a Yankee – and the propriety of her unchaperoned relationship with him was questionable. Emily’s out-of-town cousins were called in to save Emily’s reputation. While they were in town, Emily went to the druggist and bought some arsenic, and everyone feared that she would try to kill herself. But then she bought a man’s toilet set with the initials H.B. on each piece, and it looked like a wedding was in the offing.
The wedding never materialized. Homer disappeared for three days, returned, and then was never seen again. Emily became reclusive after that. She was sometimes seen through the window, like the time when some men were sent out to sprinkle lime around her house because it smelled so bad. For about eight years, Emily gave China painting lessons to earn money. Once, a deputation of town aldermen was sent to her house to tell her that she had to pay taxes. She refused and sent the men to see Colonel Sartoris – a man who had been dead for quite some time. But other than that, no one but her
manservant entered her house. On the day of her funeral, the townspeople finally got to see the inside of her house again. This is when they found out what happened to Homer Barron. When they entered Emily’s bedroom, there lay Homer’s skeleton on the bed. Next to it, on the indentation of a pillow, was a long strand of grey hair. But we’ve spoiled the fun here. Faulkner does not tell this story in so straightforward
a fashion. Instead, he sends the reader on a dizzying voyage by referring to specific moments in time that have no central referent, and thus he weaves the past into the present, the present into the past. This nonlinearity has thematic significance to the story, as we shall see later.
But beginning readers of the story are generally most concerned with a basic understanding of what happened and when,and they naturally pay close attention to the many clues regarding time. At the time of Emily’s death, no one “had seen [the inside of her house] for at least ten years.”
“In 1894 . . . Colonel Sartoris . . . remitted her taxes . . . .”
A deputation of aldermen from “the next generation” then called on her to tell her the deal was off. At that time “Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.”
“She had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell.” And so forth. The time information is abundant, but how are we to sort these events with some confirmation that our sorting is consistent?
Table I. Variables and their meaning
Emily’s death
Last time anyone but Emily’s manservant saw the inside of her house
Colonel Sartoris remitted Emily’s taxes
A deputation called on Emily asking her to start paying taxes again
Emily stopped giving China painting lessons
Colonel Sartoris died
There was a bad odor around Emily’s house
Emily’s father died
Homer Barron came to town
Homer disappeared
Emily was born
Emily appeared in town again after Homer’s disappearance
First period of time when Emily shut her doors to the public
Period of China painting lessons
A Second period of seclusion
No one besides the manservant had seen the inside of Emily’s house for
at least 10 years before her death.
1894 Colonel Sartoris remitted Emily’s taxes in 1894.
A generation later, a deputation called on Emily to tell her that she would
have to pay taxes after all.
Eight or ten years passed between the time when Emily last gave China
painting lessons and the time the deputation called on her.
Colonel Sartoris died after he remitted Emily’s taxes.
Colonel Sartoris died almost 10 years before the deputation called on
Emily.
There was a bad odor around Emily’s house 30 years before the deputation
called on her about her taxes.
The last time anyone but the manservant saw the inside of Emily’s house
had to be after or at the same time as the visit of the deputation.
The last time anyone but the manservant saw the inside of Emily’s house
had to be after or at the same time as the last China painting lesson.
The odor around Emily’s house appeared two years after her father’s
death.
Homer Barron came to town after Emily’s father died.
Emily was older than 30 when Homer Barron came to town.
Homer disappeared after he came to town.
The odor appeared less than 6 months after Homer disappeared.
Emily appeared again on the streets after Homer’s disappearance.
74 Emily died at the age of 74.
The first period when Emily shut her doors to the public happened after
her reappearance after Homer’s death.
Emily gave China painting lessons for 6 or 7 years.
When Emily shut the door on her last China painting student, no one but
her manservant saw the inside of her house after that.
Emily was about 40 when she gave China painting lessons.
Colonnel Sartoris remitted Emily’s taxes while the China painting lessons
were going on.
The beginning of the period of seclusion has to be before the end.
Emily died after everything else.
Intuitively, it should be clear that these constraints are irreconcilable. Faulkner tells us that the deputation of aldermen went into Emily’s house:
A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier.They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairwaymounted into still more shadow.
Common sense then dictates that the last time anyone saw the inside of Emily’s house (moment B) was at the same time or after the deputation’s visit. In the same passage we learn that the china-painting lessons occurred between eight and ten years earlier. Later in the story we are told that the china-painting students were the last townspeople to enter Emily’s house:
Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good.
One way to reconcile this conflict is to assume that when Faulkner says that
“the front door closed . . . for good,” he means that only in the context of the
China painting lessons. Or maybe the deputation of aldermen simply went in the back door. In any case, some re-interpretation is necessary in order to arrive at a consistent chronology. Here we see that CLP can either help to clarify our own possible misreadings of the story, or point up an inconsistency in the chronology that may have escaped our notice, despite many readings, because of the nonlinear presentation of events.
The remission of taxes is either at the beginning of Emily’s period of chinapainting lessons, in the middle of this period, or at the end of this period.
(Either C is the same year as N, it is between N and E, or it is in the same
year as E.)
Colonel Sartoris dies either during Emily’s period of giving china-painting
lessons, or after this period (either F E orF > E).
The members of the deputation requesting that Emily pay taxes are the last
townspeople (other than Emily’s servant) to see the inside of her house until
her death (B D D), or someone else is the last person to see the inside of
Emily’s house (B D).
This sorting exercise and an examination of the resulting timeline can be helpful to students trying to understand Faulkner’s work, for through the sorted timeline we see more clearly the transitional time period during which the events of the story take place. In our sample timeline, Emily was born in 1850 and died in 1924, her life beginning before the Civil War and ending within America’s period of industrialization and growth. Considering the different possible historical settings in which Emily lived makes an excellent starting point for classroom discussions.
5. A Comparison of Chronologies
the remission of taxes in the same year as the death of Emily’s father OR set the remission of taxes at the time of the china-painting lessons.
birthdate no earlier than 1842 or later than 1856.
Table IV. The timeline for “A Rose for Emily”
K (1850) Emily is born
H (1879) Emily’s father dies
I Homer Barron comes to town
J Homer disappears
G (1881) A bad odor appears around Emily’s house
L Emily reappears after a period of seclusion
M Emily begins a second period of seclusion
N (1894) Emily ends second period of seclusion; begins giving China painting lessons
C (1894) Emily’s taxes are remitted
E (1901) Colonel Sartoris dies
F Emily stops giving China painting lessons
D (1911) A deputation of town officials call on Emily about her taxes
B (1914) Last time anyone but Emily’s servant sees the inside of her house
A (1924) Emily dies at the age of 74
Emily’s age at her death to be 74, which would put the date at 1924 in our chronology.
Moore also points out that in an early manuscript of “Emily,” the 1894 remission of Emily’s taxes was described instead as “that day in 1904 when Colonel Sartoris . . . remitted her taxes dating from the death of her father 16 years back, on into perpetuity” (emphasis ours). To check the plausibility of this 1904 date within our interpretation, we substitute C D 1904 for C D 1894 and again try to sort the time points. The sort fails, indicating that Faulkner perhaps was correcting his own inconsistency. However, if we leave the tax remission at 1894, we find that Emily’s father indeed could have died 16 years before the date of the tax remission, as Faulkner originally stated. (We can check this by inserting H D 1878:1 into our program. H D 1878 won’t work, but 15.9 years could certainly be considered 16 years to Faulkner’s degree of accuracy!)
6. Relaxing our Constraints in the Meadow of Time
And so, you might ask, “to what purpose” have we “disturbed the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves”? Faulkner is well-known for twisting chronology “almost beyond recognition” (Sullivan, 1971), not only in “A Rose for Emily,” but in much longer, more complex novels. There are many hints to the readers that we should not be too strict-minded about linear time. Consider, for example, Faulkner’s obscure and complicated masterpiece on time and narration, The Sound and the Fury, published just one year before “A Rose for Emily.” On the day he will commit suicide, Faulkner’s Quentin Compson, perhaps trying to reverse time and his sister’s fall from virginity, breaks his grandfather’s watch, recalling his father’s admonition that “time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” Perhaps readers and critics of “A Rose for Emily” should heed Mr. Compson’s advice and strive to “forget[time] now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer
it.”
Our investigation into the apparent slip in Faulkner’s chronology reinforces the view that Faulkner’s fictional world in “A Rose for Emily” is not to be laid out in linear time, but exists out-of-step with time as most of us know it. “[T]ime comes to life when the clock stops” – and Emily, who, like Quentin, cannot accept loss or a diminished world, struggles mightily throughout the story to stop the clock. Indeed, Emily, has always denied time and change. She can’t accept the death of her father or of Colonel Sartoris; she rejects the end of the old order of Southern life and ignores “the next generation, with its more modern ideas”; finally, she refuses to lose her beau. Thus, she cuts herself off from time and constructs a room in which she stops the clock for Homer Barron. Not only does she murder him, but she continues to sleep for years beside the body of a lover who cannot betray her.
As the narrator who tells the story reminds us, there are two ways of understanding time. Some see it as a “mathematical progression,” a fixed and coherent chronology. Emily prefers to view time as “not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches . . . .” While Faulkner teases readers to imagine that they can follow time through that diminishing road into the past and arrive at a coherent vision, what they find is inconsistency in time and of motive. It may be that to understand Emily, we must give up our orderly sorting of experience, and for a moment view time as “an undying meadow,” a place untouched by death and loss.
This is not to say that a study of Faulkner chronologies is a pointless one.
Faulkner’s stories and novels are deeply rooted in their historical setting. It
certainly makes a difference to understand that Emily’s spinsterhood coincided with the diminished glory of the Old South, that she denied the death of her father for days and her lover for years, and that she lived until 1924, a time vastly different from the pre-Civil War days of her youth. CLP provides an objective means by which we can compare chronologies, check for our ownmisreadings, find possible inconsistencies, and consider their thematic repercussions. It also offers a tool with which beginning literature students can make sense of a story told in Faulkner’s unconventional style, giving them a way to sort out the plot in a variety of timelines, leading them inevitably to deeper discussions of the text.
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