Historical Criticism Of A Rose For Emily

Every person has a different concept of the word love. In the early 20th Century, the setting of “A Rose for Emily,” took place during the Civil War and the main character Emily, thought love was never being by herself. According to the book Literature for life, “Historical criticism seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it-- a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography and milieu” (Kennedy, Gioia, Revoyr 1401). In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the author ties the historical criticism by including the Battle of Jefferson’s Cemetery, a Yankee, and a Gothic house into the story.
In the beginning of the short story, “A Rose for Emily,” the narrator opens the story of Emily Grierson’s funeral. Emily Grierson was 74 when she died and in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” the narrator states, “And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson” (Faulkner 467). The Battle of Jefferson was a Civil War battle and the unknown soldiers who died in this conflict relate to Emily’s
In “A Rose for Emily,” the narrator describes the character Homer Barron as a “Yankee” and considers Homer to be an eccentric person that is not fit to marry Emily. According to Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the narrator claims, “Then we said, ‘She will persuade him yet,’ because Homer himself had remarked—he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club—that he was not a marrying man” (Faulkner 471). Before Emily’s father passed away he thought no man was good enough for his daughter and now that he’s gone Homer has served as a replacement for Emily’s new