1856- Miss Emily was born
1894- Remission of Miss Emily's taxes by Colonel Sartoris and China Painting when Miss Emily was about 40 years old. Miss Emily's father died
1896- Miss Emily buys some poison
1930- "A Rose for Emily" was published
1938- Miss Emily died
After reading "A Rose for Emily" and "Of time and its Mathematical Progression: Problems of Chrology in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily", I thought that even though the story had one initial date mentions it did mention a few other things so, I was thinking to make ti easier to read I would make a little time-line of events but, in the progress of doing so, I discovered that it was not an east task. Above is what I could kind of piece together by what some people had already had figured out but, as Gene M. Moore mentions, "the original manuscript Faulkner assigned a different date to the remission of Miss Emily's taxes and a specific date of her father's death: that date ub 1904 when Colonel Sartoris...remitted her taxes dating from the death of her father 16 years back, on into perpetuity" (Horton pg. 497). After reading this passage it makes it hard to figure out who is actully giving the informaiton in the order that it was actually done. But, if this information is right the remitted was in 1904 which was 16 years after the death of her father in 1888. This is all very confusing but, can also have some meaning to what exactly happened in Miss Emily's life.
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2 comments:
Lauren
You've uncovered one (of the many) unsolved mysteries surrounding this story! The chronology of events is definitely fuzzy; even Moore acknowledges that 8 different scholars have determined 8 different timelines for Emily's life! I wonder why Faulkner chose to be so elusive in plotting out his character's life...I wonder if perhaps he based her character on a real person and thought if he provided too clearly defined details that readers might guess who the "real" Emily is? Just a guess...what do you think?
It seems that figuring the dates is harder than you think. You have Emily dying at the age of eighty-two, but the story says "Up to the day of her death at seventy-four..."
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