A Rose for the Short Story

 From the ‘Genre Study’ prompt:

In his famous review of Hawthorne’s Twice-told Tales, Edgar Allan Poe classifies the short story based on its “unity of effect and impression.” Building on this idea, literary critic Brander Matthews (1901) adds that this “essential unity of impression” “shows one action, in one place, on one day. A Short-story deals with a single character, a single event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions called forth by a single situation.”

While “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner doesn’t show “one action, in one place, on one day,” it does fit into Edgar Allan Poe and Brander Matthews’s idea of “unity of effect and impression,” which is increased by its dealing with both the town and Emily. “A Rose for Emily” jumps around across a long period of time, from when Miss Emily was young to her death of old age. “A Rose for Emily” also doesn’t deal with “a single emotion” or “the series of emotions called forth by a single situation.” And though the story centers around Emily, I think there’s also another very important character to consider, and thus the only trait it fits is “essential unity of impression.”

Though there’s only one important named character the story consistently deals with throughout, the townspeople are also a character of the story and thus it breaks the “rule” set by Brander Matthews. Throughout the story, every single sentence that’s about Miss Emily is also about how the townspeople interact with her and their opinions. Even the first sentence sets up this theme: “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant — a combined gardener and cook — had seen in at least ten years” (9). This quote describes Emily’s larger-than-life status and reclusiveness, the gossipy nature with which she’s treated, and the old gender roles and class dynamics in the town. As another example, when Emily buys arsenic, Faulkner writes, “Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up […] When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: “For rats”” (11). This quote shows both Emily’s cultivated self-assurance and the overall attitude of the townspeople that enables Emily’s behavior just because of her background. Again, in looking at Emily’s character, the story also directly reveals the character of the townspeople. 

The way characters work in short stories is much different than in other genres. Many poems don’t have characters, and the ones that do (except for epics) describe and flesh out their characters very differently than in prose. Novels, on the other hand, typically have many more characters than short stories or poetry and have the time to delve much deeper into their psyche. They can have realistic major changes of character over the course of the plot, whereas in short stories, there is just no time to have a fundamental shift in character. In plays, especially the few we read in Sophomore English, there are typically more characters, but because of the way plays work, there’s shallower understanding. Characters in short stories can be complex, like Emily, but they don’t go through major changes. 

“A Rose for Emily” is undoubtedly a short story (it’s only 7 pages long), but it, and most of the short stories we’ve read, definitely challenge the dicta with their many events and emotions. Perhaps something about length could be added to the definition, since a novel or poem could have all the other traits but still be a novel/poem. I'd add that a short story is a work written in prose, which is read in a relatively short amount of time, with few but not necessarily one characters, locations, times, and feelings. 

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." Uni High English: The Short Story. Course Packet Solutions,

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