To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time

The Laudian Libertine and the Liber Pater: Christian and Pagan Themes in Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time”

By

Varo Borja

Love seeketh not itself to please,Nor for itself hath any care,But for another gives its ease,And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair. –William Blake

A candle burns long into the night in the English countryside near Devonshire, the chill winds of winter flicker the flame as an aging, defamed and soon-to-be deposed priest pens the last few lines of a mammoth work. Myriad pastoral and priestly scenes are scribbled in the tome over which the priest labors, but the contents of his volume reflect not only the enlightened musings of an Anglican prelate, the poems in his book are full of sylvan scenes where flowers and lovers are found to be as sacred as the communion chalice and the tears of long dead saints. The year is 1647, and the priestly poet is Robert Herrick, author of a work containing more than 1,000 poems. One poem in particular stands out from the rest as the golden apple of Grecian myth stands out from an ordinary orchard. “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time” is perhaps the greatest work of the more than a thousand found in Herrick’s volume, Hesperides, published in 1648. “To The Virgins, To Make Much of Time” is the epitome of Herrick’s quest to marry the lore of the pagans to the sacraments of the church. Thomas Whitaker, in his article titled, “Herrick and the Fruits of the Garden” for the Johns Hopkins University Press, explores in depth the relation of ancient myths and Christian themes found in Robert Herrick’s poetry, and refutes the claim made by some scholars that Herrick’s poetry was “trivial.” I will explore the claims made by Whitaker, and by using other scholarly sources as well, attempt to disclose some of the pagan and Christian motifs in “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time” and build upon the ethos of Whitaker’s statement that Herrick sought to, “transcend death, and escape from the temporal flux into the eternal realm of art or ceremony” (Whitaker 33).

In the first section of Thomas Whitaker’s article, he enumerates the many themes found in Herrick’s poetry, stating, “This is a realm of nature, ritual, youth, love, perfumes, tran-shifting times, dainty myths, faeries, and religion” (Whitaker 17). “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time” displays theses motifs in microcosm, with the first stanza focusing on nature, youth, and love particularly (Lines 1-4). However, as with most of Herrick’s poetry, the underlying root is of a religious nature. The first stanza not only evokes scenes of soon-to-be-wilting rosebuds, but slyly hints at the dual nature of Christ, as both corruptible flesh and eternal spirit. Also, the lines “And this same flower that smiles today / tomorrow will be dying” are references to the life and death of Christ (the Lily of the Valley) on the Cross. According to Orthodox Christian tradition, Jesus of Nazareth lived and died as a virgin, and was plucked from the cruel earth in the hither verge of his ripest maturity. In “Fruits of the Garden,” Thomas Whitaker states, “We see the eternal sickness of the rose that was later to prompt Blake’s cry, the transience of beauty which dies in the very act of smiling” (19). Certainly this first stanza of “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time” is more than an admonition to marry; this thinly-veiled exhortation is a call to live in holiness while there is yet time, before the “transience of beauty” which is the world as we know it, passes away in the death before rebirth. Here Herrick is seeking, through clever allusions, to prolong his own youthful nature through association with “wilting rosebuds,” and to seek, as Christ did through adoption, the welfare of not only his young parishioners, but the best good of the universal “youth” of 17th century England. With so many “children” in his flock, Herrick would certainly transcend the confines of mortality and enter into the eternal priesthood of the saints and martyrs through the agent of his poetry.

Herrick continues with his Christian themes in the next stanza when he cries, “The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun / The higher he's a-getting / The sooner will his race be run / And nearer he's to setting” (5-8). Here Herrick is making a reference to the omnipresent and omniscient Father God, who views the world from heaven and is near to completing the current dispensation and the end of Second Age of Man. With the coming of the New Jerusalem and the rapture of the saints, the marriage of Christ and his Bride (the Church) will be complete and the time of earthly marriage will be over (Matthew 22:30). Once again, Herrick seeks, through thinly-veiled imagery, to exalt the Son of Man and God the Father and by art enter into deeper communion with the Triune God; a sort of poetic communion ceremony whereby Herrick escapes the death of the flesh by casting his eyes upon “the glorious lamp of heaven” (5).

In the next stanza of “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time,” Herrick longs once again for youth—not only bodily youth but spiritual youth when he exclaims, “That age is best which is the first / When youth and blood are warmer / But being spent, the worse, and worst / Times still succeed the former” (9-12). As Randall Ingram notes in Studies In English Literature, “His [Herrick’s] poetry must be simultaneously monumental and malleable, stone and living” (Ingram 5). The eternal stone and the malleable branches of childlike faith resound throughout these lines from “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time.” These lines also pay homage to the First Age of Man, the millennia before Christ when men lived by faith in the coming Messiah and his reign of justice. Here Herrick pays homage to the Old Testament saints through allusion to youth; the iconic, virginal state of Israel making preparations, through ages of foolish, yet necessary strivings for the coming of Christ, a time that shall surely, “succeed the former.” Herrick also makes reference to the blood of youth, the blood shed at Calvary that made propitiation for sin and insured eternal life; this blood also is the latter half of the Eucharist, the “former” sacrifice for sin which, portrayed through ceremony and Herrick’s artful verses alike, bequeaths immortality upon the recipient and the artist in transcendent harmony.

In his article, “Fruits of the Garden”, Thomas Whitaker states that Herrick’s poetry is above all “ceremonial” and concerned with images “drawn from nature [that] are delicately symbolic” (17). The natural union between man and woman, God and man, and Christ and God the Father is the underlying religious theme of this poem. The last stanza expresses this topic beautifully when Herrick writes, “Then be not coy, but use your time / And while ye may go marry / For having lost but once your prime / You may for ever tarry” (13-16). In these lines Herrick provides a dual exhortation to unbelievers, both unbelievers in the sacrament of marriage and wayward souls lacking eternal salvation. He adjures them to, “use” their “time” wisely, to accept the gift of marriage both in the physical and the spiritual sense “while ye may”, and not “tarry” until their “prime” is “lost” (13-16). This exhortation mirrors the verse from the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew which states, “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut” (Matthew 25:10). After the wedding invitations have been sent, and the bride and the bridegroom have undertaken the sacrament, the “door [will be] shut” and those who have tarried will be lost forever. Once again, Herrick sets his eyes on the eternal through the medium of the temporal, and seeks through his art to “transcend death” and sit, arrayed in his priestly garb, at the wedding ceremony of the Lamb (Whitaker 33).

Robert Herrick also includes, in true Renaissance fashion, many allusions to pagan myths within his poetry. Herrick is concerned with the natural, and natural man in his pristine, mythologized state was a lover of wine and beauty and a devotee of the English Liber Pater, or Dionysus. Thomas Whitaker states in “Fruits of the Garden” that:

His [Herrick’s] ‘rustic’ religion draws upon classical, Christian, and native English sources; his images drawn from nature are delicately symbolic; and his ‘love’ is often the refined badinage of the Roman and Alexandrine poets (17).

Robert Herrick also lived in a time of religious extremism, particularly concerning the doctrines of John Calvin and the English Puritans. Robert Herrick was an Anglican vicar of the Laudian sect; a theological school that sought, by a type of marriage, to join the physical world (which was heavily denigrated by the Puritans) with the spiritual realm—a philosophy more in line with the prevailing, 17th century Renaissance humanism than with the grim, gaunt and draconian dogma of the Calvinists (Johnson 2). In his article titled, “In Vino—et in Amore—Veritas; Transformational Animation in Herrick’s ‘Sack’ Poems” William C. Johnson states:

For Herrick, Laudian vicar of a tiny village church, Puritan restrictions and social restructuring remained not only intellectually and aesthetically, but morally and theologically, antithetical to his sense of God’s permeating presence in the world (2).

Consequently, Herrick looked to the ancients for wisdom and found it within the pages of sages such as Homer, Euripides, Virgil, and the other multitude of poets, playwrights, and penmen of Greece and Rome. When Herrick speaks of “rosebuds” in the first stanza of his poem, could he not also be referring to the myth of Narcissus by the pool, “tarrying” long in amazement at the reflection of his own beauty, and sacrificing his own mortality, not in dissolution or devil-flame as the Calvinists would prophesy, but in splendid rapture at the sight of his own magnificence? Furthermore, when Herrick speaks in the second stanza of, “the glorious lamp of heaven” running “his race,” he most assuredly refers also to Apollo, son of Zeus, who in Greek mythology drove his glorious, golden chariot across the sky every day to shed light upon the earth (5-7). In the last stanza, Herrick refers to an eternal “tarrying” on the part of those who have either spurned love or have been the victims of fate, such as the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, who fell victims to the cruel desire of the god of the Underworld and spent eternity in bereavement within the confines of the abyss. Ironically, but not without design, these mythological truths have their counterparts in Christian theology, and lend an air of continuity and Classical perfection to Herrick’s poetry that wouldn’t be found had he succumbed to the stern ravings of his Puritan contemporaries. Herrick’s immersion in Classical motifs also serves his manifest purpose of transcending the grave, and through the continuity of spiritual truths allows him to, “escape from the temporal flux into the eternal realm of art or ceremony” (Whitaker 33).

In conclusion, it must be said that Herrick suffered for his broadness of vision and his devotion to a faith that encompassed not only Orthodox Christianity but, “May-poles, Hock-carts, Wassails, [and] Wakes” (Whitaker 17). Robert Herrick has been considered by some to be a “minor poet” (Ingram 1), but upon deliberate study of “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time” I have found him to be quite skilled at what he set out to do, which was, in part, to marry the natural to the spiritual world. Robert Herrick lived in a time of great political and religious upheaval; he not only witnessed the violent overthrow of the Stuart monarchy (to which he was loyal), but the reign of his nemeses, the Puritans, under Oliver Cromwell. He also lived in the time of the Thirty Years War, the bloodiest conflict that Europe had ever seen, which was propagandized as a religious struggle and ended the same year that Herrick’s volume, Hesperides was published. Herrick was deposed from his position as vicar and cast into ill repute by the Puritan majority in England shortly before Hesperides was published, yet despite all these difficulties, Robert Herrick maintained the ability to see beauty in the world, and in his religion as well (Johnson 2). William C. Johnson states:

It [Herrick’s poetry] is a world in which people, things, and times commingle, in which Christian and pagan, classical and current, co-exist in harmonious contemporality, a dynamic world in which red roses not only suggest other things but actually do become white cheeks. It is an environment where anything, at any time, may trans-form, blend, or shift to something else (2).

It was in this shifting of paradigm, this confluence of themes and images, and in his ever-vigilant eye for the beauty of nature and the sacramental holiness of marriage in all its forms, that Robert Herrick truly was able to, “escape from the temporal flux into the eternal realm of art or ceremony” and join the pantheon of English literature’s living gods.

Works Cited

Herrick, Robert. “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time.” Works of Robert Herrick. London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1891. Luminarium. 11 March 2000.
29 April 2008. http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herrick/tovirgins.htm

Holy Bible. New International Version. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2003.

Ingram, Randall. “Robert Herrick and the Makings of Hersperides” Studies
In English Literature (Rice) 38 (1998): 127—. Academic Search Premier.
EBSCO. Academic Support Center, Caldwell Community College and Technical
Institute, Boone, NC. 24 April 2008. http://wf2dnvr2.webfeat.org/

Johnson, William C. “In Vino—et in Amore—Veritas: Transformational Animation in
Herrick’s ‘Sack’ Poems” Papers on Language and Literature 41 (2005): 89-108.
Masterfile Premier. EBSCO. Academic Support Center, Caldwell Community
College and Technical Institute, Boone, NC. 22 April 2008.
http://wf2dnvr2.webfeat.org/

Whitaker, Thomas R. “Herrick and the Fruits of the Garden” ELH 22 (1955): 16-33.
JSTOR. Appalachian State University Library, Boone, NC. 28 April 2008.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872002

Ashes of American Dreams

Ashes of American Dreams: An Analysis of Death of a Salesman

by

Varo Borja

The jungle is dark but full of diamonds – Arthur Miller

The American Dream, according to Arthur Miller, is a type of ubiquitous delusion, fueled by the fumes of the Reformation, leaving in its wake the bones of the Willy Lomans of this world to bleach in the setting sun of the modern age. However, Mr. Miller’s vision was almost assuredly clouded by his resentment of the white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant path to success. In Death of a Salesman, the victors are those devoted to efficient study—not just the perusal of mathematics books and law treatises, but the profitable study of human nature. Willy Loman’s brother Charles and his son Bernard, if not for the implied ties of blood to the other Loman’s, could easily be mistaken for Brooklyn Jews: shrewd, studious, and devoted to the realistic conquest of the Almighty Dollar, be it through a game of casino or a case tried before the highest court in the land. This stereotype is at first misleading and ultimately erroneous. However, Mr. Miller portrays Willy Loman and his sons as red-blooded, pugilistic, yet foolish Anglo-Saxon social warriors bent on the appropriation of the American Dream to their hot-tempered wills—a much more harmonious characterization. Whatever Mr. Miller’s motives for the way he crafts his characters, there seem to be forces at work within the play other than that of race. Socio-economic, psychological, and religious connotations abound throughout Death of a Salesman. In reference to these determinants, I have selected an article titled, “Is There a Science of Success?” by Nicholas Lemann that explores these elements from the point of view of a social scientist, the noted Dr. David McClelland. Dr. McClelland propounded that, in light of certain personality tests that he created, the American psyche is composed of three distinct elements: the needs for achievement, power, and affiliation. Furthermore, in Death of a Salesman these three underlying personality motivators are displayed quite distinctly in the characters of Willy Loman and his nephew Bernard, and contribute on the one hand to Willy’s eventual demise and Bernard’s ultimate success.

The need for achievement, or more properly termed, the ability to be efficient, is considered by Dr. David McClelland to be of prime importance to the young man or woman determined to succeed in the American system (Lemann 88). Dr. McClelland compares the man or woman driven by the need for achievement to be like a person competing in a ring toss who takes the position from the goal with the maximum prospect of success (Lemann 95). In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman’s focus on achievement is low, based on the qualifications that Dr. McClelland sets down, and Willy’s achievement is based almost solely upon the attainment of money, material comforts, and personal glory: a goal that Dr. McClelland deprecates as an end in itself (Lemann 92). By contrast, Bernard’s character in the story is highly focused on achievement, as set down by Dr. McClelland’s principles, and consequently Bernard succeeds where Willy Loman and his progeny fail. In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman asks of Bernard regarding the latter’s success,

Willy (small and alone): What—what’s the secret?

Bernard: What secret?

Willy: How—how did you? Why didn’t he [Biff] ever catch on?

Bernard: I wouldn’t know that Willy.

Willy (confidentially, desperately): You were his friend, his boyhood friend. His life ended after that Ebbets Field game. From the age of seventeen nothing good ever happened to him.

Bernard: He never trained himself for anything. (Act II)

This quiet conversation between Willy and Bernard is quite revealing. Willy, the once proud purveyor of charm and physical prowess cowers at the feet of his erstwhile despised, yet now successful nephew, pleading with Bernard to pass on to him the secret of success that is almost self-evident after reading Dr. David McClelland’s principles. Bernard valued achievement through patient study and training, while Willy Loman and his sons placed their bets in the gamble of life on fleeting displays of vainglory such as the Ebbets Field game, thereby equipping themselves poorly for the quest for success and engendering their eventual failure in the race for the American Dream.

Next, Dr. McClelland propounds that the desire for power is one that can either lead to extreme fortune or abject poverty (Lemann 92). Dr. McClelland uses an analogy of two gamblers to contrast the seeker of achievement and the pursuant of power. Dr. McClelland relates that at a hypothetical roulette wheel, the seeker of achievement would bet on a color, while the power hungry person would bet on a number, therefore lowering his/her odds dramatically, but raising the possible stakes of a win exponentially (Lemann 95). Furthermore, Dr. McClelland states those primarily in need of power are, “more likely to have glamorous lives” (Lemann 94), but that they also, “want the world to beat a path to their door” (Lemann 95). Willy Loman is certainly a devotee of the power cult in America, but his quest for power turns on him like a boomerang and all but cuts him to pieces. Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman, is akin to the man who bets all he has on a number on the roulette wheel (his sons, his ability to physically dominate, and his ability to sell himself, or be “well-liked”) and loses in pathetic fashion, taking his fortune and his family down into the abyss together (Requiem). Conversely, Bernard channels his desire for power into a patient and determined, yet educated effort to succeed by surer measures. Bernard doesn’t count on his ability to be liked or to physically dominate other men and women; he counts on his training, his ability to perform his job, and ultimately on his aptitude for achieving realistic, worthwhile goals (Act II). In Death of a Salesman, while Biff, Happy, and Willy are indulging in dreams of pomp, power, and the subjugation of others by their overly-masculine dominance, Bernard seeks more realistic aims,

Bernard: Biff, where are you? You’re supposed to study with me today.

Willy: Hey, looka Bernard. What’re you lookin’ so anemic about, Bernard?

Bernard: He’s gotta study, Uncle Willy. He’s got Regents next week.

Happy (taunting, spinning Bernard around): Let’s box, Bernard!

Bernard: Biff! (He gets away from Happy.) Listen, Biff, I heard Mr. Birnbaum say that if you don’t start studyin’ math, he’s gonna flunk you, and you won’t graduate. I heard him!

Willy: You better study with him, Biff. Go ahead now.

Biff: Oh, Pop, you didn’t see my sneakers! (He holds up a foot for Willy to look at.)

Willy: Hey, that’s a beautiful job of printing!

Bernard (wiping his glasses): Just because he printed University of Virginia on his sneakers doesn’t mean they’ve got to graduate him, Uncle Willy!

Willy (angrily): What’re you talking about? With scholarships to three universities they’re gonna flunk him?

Bernard: But I heard Mr. Birnbaum say—

Willy: Don’t be a pest, Bernard! (To his boys.) What an anemic! (Act I)

Bernard is cast off as a harbinger of doom by the Lomans, when in reality Bernard seeks a much surer path to victory in the American system than Willy and Biff with their fancied sense of entitlement based on dominance, or Happy with his foolish boxing antics in the midst of a real crisis. This “channeling of the Power motive” by Bernard and contrasting lack of balance displayed by Willy, Happy, and Biff is fully in line with the McClelland system, and at least in Bernard’s case, results in long-term success within the American system (Lemann 98).

Finally, the need for affiliation is evident in Death of a Salesman through the constant and unsuccessful attempts of Willy Loman and his offspring to be both “well-liked” and exert undue influence upon their peers (Act I). Throughout the story, Willy Loman is obsessed with who he is connected to and with how other people feel about him and about his ability to sell himself. Dr. David McClelland, in his book The Drinking Man, explored the need for Affiliation and likened it to the ability to “love and be loved” or “a feeling of optimism and of being in control of one’s life” (Lemann 96) expressed through interaction with one’s family and society at large. Willy Loman certainly places a high rating on the need for affiliation, but overly so. Willy Loman is not only interdependent with his wife, sons, brothers, and with society, he is ultimately in abject dependence upon them for both his livelihood and his sense of well-being (Act II). When Willy Loman pays his final visit to his brother Charlie to ask for money, this abject dependence, coupled still with the desire to exert the power motive, is quite evident,

Willy (moving toward the chair): I’m keeping an account of everything, remember. I’ll pay every penny back. (He sits.)

Charley: Now listen to me, Willy.

Willy: I want you to know I appreciate…

Charley (sitting down on the table): Willy, what’re you doin’? What the hell is goin’ on in your head?

Willy: Why? I’m simply…

Charley: I offered you a job. You can make fifty dollars a week. And I won’t send you on the road.

Willy: I’ve got a job.

Charley: Without pay? What kind of a job is a job without pay? (He rises.) Now, look, kid, enough is enough. I’m no genius but I know when I’m being insulted.

Willy: Insulted!

Charley: Why don’t you want to work for me?

Willy: What’s the matter with you? I’ve got a job…

Charley: Then what’re you walkin’ in here every week for?

Willy (getting up): Well, if you don’t want me to walk in here—

Charley: I’m offering you a job.

Willy: I don’t want your goddam job!

Charley: When the hell are you going to grow up? (Act II)

Such dependence could only lead to an unbalanced life, and eventually, to the ruin experienced by Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. In opposition to this sort of dependence stands Bernard, the once quiet, shy and socially unacceptable lad who becomes, through the relinquishing of this sort of dependence for a healthier interdependence with co-workers and family, a man brimming over with self-assurance and quiet contentment. Perhaps the starkest contrast between the McClelland-type healthy, successful man and that of the man suffering from a “cruel delusion” (Lemann 98) is in the last meeting of Willy and Bernard before Bernard leaves to try a case before the Supreme Court (Act II). Willy Loman’s high reliance on affiliation, in the end, places him in the position of both a beggar of money from his brother Charlie and a humble, broken and nearly psychotic flatterer of the nephew he once regarded as a “pest” (Act II).

In conclusion, the “cruel delusion” (Lemann 98) suffered by Willy Loman throughout Death of a Salesman is all too accurate, but still quite pessimistic. Dr. David McClelland, although well-meaning in his attempts to define human motivations and train men to, “become the kind of people economists think everybody is” (Lemann 92) still falls far short of defining what truly makes life worthwhile. Perhaps Willy Loman and his kind are too aware of the systems laid down by Dr. David McClelland and his brood of social scientists. McClelland’s system, like most of the social propaganda of the 20^th century, is based on the tenets of Charles Darwin and his “process of natural selection” (Lemann 98) which likens men more to beasts of burden than intelligent, compassionate, and loving sons of God. Perhaps the greatest fault of Dr. David McClelland’s theories and of the American system is the absence of grace and mercy found in the writings of the men whom Dr. McClelland ascribes the promulgation of the American Way: the fathers of the Reformation (Lemann 89). To go back even further, the writings of Solomon might be ascribed to the competition of man against man when he said, “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men” (Proverbs 22: 28-29). However, it is in the words of Jesus of Nazareth that we find the solution to the infinite and vain struggle for achievement, power, and affiliation, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Perhaps the trouble with Willy Loman and his like is the ultimate absence of the ability for true relation to both man and God. Bernard, in Death of a Salesman, seeks neither to dominate nor to manipulate Willy Loman and his sons—Bernard seeks only to love Biff and humbly “carry his shoulder guards” (Act I). Near the end of the play, Bernard fistfights with Biff after Biff’s return from New England, not out of a desire to dominate Biff, but out of a sense of brotherly concern for his failing hero (Act II). In a final act of generosity and magnanimity, Bernard seeks to cheer Willy Loman when Willy’s metaphorical roulette number had finally cost him all (Act II). It is chiefly in this aptitude of Bernard for quiet, humble service and genuine concern for his fellow man that he dignifiedly lives out the American Dream, and not only is he a winner in the American system, but in the grander scope of Creation as a whole.

Works Cited

Holy Bible. New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1985.

Lemann, Nicholas. “Is There a Science of Success?” Atlantic Monthly 1072

(1994): 83-98. MasterFile Premier. EBSCO. Caldwell Community College

and Technical Institute Learning Center, Boone, NC. 25 March 2008

http://wf2dnvr8.webfeat.org/

Miller, Arthur. “Death of a Salesman.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature.

Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 1908-1972.

Venerable Oaks and Steel Magnolias

Venerable Oaks and Steel Magnolias: A Response to “A Rose for Emily"

By

Varo Borja

The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past. – William Faulkner

The sun set properly upon the Southern Way in the wake of the red tide of defeat suffered by the gray coats that ended the Civil War and ushered in the period of carpetbaggers, worthless Confederate cash, and corrupted traditions known as Reconstruction. Out of the alloy of war, defeat, dissimulation, poverty, and time was hammered some of the finest prose ever to be composed by an American. William Faulkner presented to the world, through his stories, the stage on which the great drama of the human condition could be explored at depths previously unforeseen, but perhaps his greatest gift to the world of letters was to explore this drama in microcosm, especially as the theatre of the human heart was beheld in the South. In “A Rose for Emily” Faulkner laid bare the duties and passions of a woman and a town confined within the amphitheater of Jefferson, Mississippi many years after the last, thin, gray wraiths had disappeared beneath the tombstones of Faulkner’s, “cedar-bemused cemetery” (Meyer 95). However, the specters of Southern pride and antebellum anachronism are alive throughout this self-proclaimed “ghost story” as the passage of time refuses to give rest to these ever-present phantoms of the past. Primarily, in “A Rose for Emily,” the past exerts its influence upon the present through the machinations of tradition and duty; these devices exert their sway upon each of the sexes in different ways and assign each sex specific roles, but much like the gray uniforms of their not-so-distant kin, the gender roles of the good people of Jefferson become blurred at times, if not entirely inextricable from each other.

As the only real first-class citizens of the American south, the traditional role of southern white men was to fulfill their duty as protectors and patriarchs. First and foremost, the past holds sway in the present tense through the role assigned the southern man of protector of the weak; in this case the “weak” one happens to be Emily. Near the beginning of the story, we are informed that Colonel Sartoris, the once-renowned patriarch of Jefferson, protected Emily in a financial sense by remitting her taxes (Meyer 96). However, to preserve not only Emily’s livelihood but her pride as well, Colonel Sartoris is forced to resort to an elaborate ruse to accomplish this feat of contrivance, therefore resorting to silly, feminine subterfuge (Meyer 96). Furthermore, the men of Jefferson protected Emily’s reputation by scattering lime on her yard to avoid a lingering stench emanating from her mansion. However, the good men of the town “slunk about the house like burglars” (Meyer 97) in a tragic-comedic act of desperate, duty-bound civil service, taking special care not to be seen and further Ms. Emily’s disgrace. This scene portrays the elders of Jefferson more as hens than as roosters, and lends a feminine subtlety to their innate southern chivalry.

The traditional duty of patriarch was exemplified by southern men as the heads of their families and their towns; the supreme patriarch in “A Rose for Emily” is her father. Emily’s father exerts his influence, from the past, upon Emily in a figurative sense by becoming irreplaceable in her life and demanding, from the grave, utter obedience and ongoing implied deference. The childlike crayon drawing found in Emily’s home at the end of the story is the perfect example of Emily’s unwavering devotion to her father, and represents a lifetime, by her, paid in homage to the ghost of a dead patriarch (Meyer 101). Emily’s father also exerts his influence, from the past, upon Emily in a literal sense as shown by the choices she makes well into adulthood. Emily would rather kill her lover than suffer her father’s name to be tarnished through the unutterable act of adultery. However, the traditional role of patriarch is somewhat blurred by Emily’s character in the story. Emily also demands utter obedience from the druggist (Meyer 99) and deference, although somewhat backhanded and hypocritical, is paid her throughout the story, especially in her encounter with the city authorities (Meyer 96) and the visit paid her by the Baptist minister (Meyer 99).

The traditional role of the Southern woman, as portrayed in “A Rose for Emily” is one of pity-driven and gossip-laden domestic service, dutiful subversion and silly subterfuge. When Emily’s father dies, the ladies of the town fulfill their domestic duties by calling on Emily in her time of crisis. Faulkner must add, however, that “at last they could pity Miss Emily”, as if pity were a pre-requisite for love (Meyer 97). The ladies of the town also fulfill their domestic duties via the traditional Southern ingredient of gossip, which they relish as if it were a fine Swiss chocolate or a respectable form of vice, much like Homer Barron’s cigar (Meyer 99). The distant relatives of Emily, the Alabama Griersons, fulfill their obligation to subvert the scandalous activities of their wayward cousin and Homer Barron upon their arrival in Jefferson, all at the pious behest of the minister’s wife (Meyer 99). Finally, the ladies of the town fulfill their time- honored penchant for silly subterfuge when they enter Emily’s house, upon her death, with “hushed, sibilant voices and…quick, curious glances” (Meyer 101). Faulkner implies that the ladies of the town are more concerned with the lurid pleasure of seeing the inside of Emily Grierson’s house one final time than in paying proper tribute to the fallen, once-dreaded matriarch of Jefferson. However, upon further perusal of the text these same silly, traditionally feminine, and half-cowardly actions are found to be carried out by the men of the town as well in the sometimes-begrudged and constantly-chronicled domestic service performed by the Aldermen and elders of Jefferson on Emily’s behalf, particularly displayed in the awe and respect shown her when confronted (Meyer 96). Moreover, it is the voice of the town itself, not just the women, that claims alternate pity and indignation at the eccentricities and extravagances of the Grierson matriarch (Meyer 99).

In conclusion, the gender roles exemplified in “A Rose for Emily”, although interwoven and ambiguous at times, are just as true today as when this story was penned over fifty years ago. I am a Southerner and always have been, and I have experience with each of the roles portrayed in this story through the agency of my own family. My grandmother, the alternating spy, backbone, and comfort for our family here in Boone could just as easily be a staunch Alabama Grierson. Furthermore, my grandfather, a quiet, reserved and brave, yet compassionate man would most certainly spread lime on the yard of a neighbor in the dead of night to avoid general embarrassment, yet he still had the fortitude to serve his country during times of trouble. I have ghosts of my own in local “cedar bemused cemeteries”. Several of my relatives have served both the home front and the front lines in the conflicts of this country, much like those elders of Jefferson who stemmed the tide of Northern aggression in the 1860’s. Faulkner portrayed his subjects accurately in all their anachronisms and ambiguities, but the gender roles of the southern people are more than an admixture of cowardice and fortitude. These roles add vibrant splashes of color to the gray clothing of the south found in Faulkner’s stories and still provide diversity, humor, and depth to the experience of living in the south today.