A Rose For Emily Feminist Analysis

A Feminist Reading of

A Rose for Emily and Sonnet 43

1. Abstract:

To simply introduce the term, Feminism according to Oxford dictionary is “The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.” (www.oxforddictionaries.com)

Although there is a wide spectrum of Feminists’ views, they all share the assumption that women suffer from injustices at different levels based on their sex. Feminists’ desire is achieving sexual justice and women’s welfare. Feminism movement started back in 20th century and till today new movements, branches and theories are introduced, each of which has certain views from certain perspectives. For example, “Liberal feminism focuses on equal rights; radical feminism focuses on the sex war and separatism

At Literature level, Feminist Literary Criticism has taken lots of attention and played a major function in reevaluating literary production, where how it is read and how to identify literary works with female characters as a challenge to the male-dominated outlook for women in literature where women have been historically presented as objects and seen from a male perspective.

This paper, however, provides a general Feminist interpretation of two major works of art belonging to two different ages and cultures: “A Rose for Emily” a short story by the American author William Faulkner (1929) and “Sonnet 43” (1845) (one of “Sonnets from the Portuguese”) of the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Both works provide two contradictory models of women in patriarchal society. Major aspects in the selected works are tackled against the Feminist concepts on Patriarchy, Discrimination, Gender Stereotypes, and Dependency (economic or emotional).

2. A Rose for Emily: A Feminist Reading

Victorian woman was generally looked at as a woman for love and marriage. The Sonnets, in their superficial form, when first published were read and celebrated under this view. A woman deeply in love with all devotion, content and inspired by her lover to write poetry – man as a source of stimulation, a good woman literature should have a man to be created. Elizabeth is a self-taught intellect. When talking about Feminism, women education is a major concern, in the biography of EBB “She watched her brothers go off to school knowing that there was no chance of that education for herself.”