'The Astronomer's Wife,' By Kay Boyles

In the short story “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner, Emily, the protagonist, is shown as someone who’s life is falling apart and brought down by society. Emily in this story could be described as a victim to society and her father. Emily Grierson’s confinement, loss of her father and Homer, and constant criticism caused her, her insanity.

“Astronomer’s Wife” is a psychological story by Kat Boyle. Katherine Ames is an obedient wife to her astronomer husband. One day while completing some chores, she begins to realize that her husband ignores her presence. She tries convincing herself that him ignoring her may be due to his busy mind, “he’s a man of other things, a dreamer.””. As her thoughts are wandering, she hears her mistress call her down to inform her about the arrival of the plumber.

In a rose for Emily, the narrator was an unnamed younger townsperson. They didn’t identify with the women that went to comforted Emily after her father past or the men sneaking to her house chasing a smell. However, the narrator uses the words we when referring to the townspeople in whole. This also shows the narrator is participating in the story events like a fly on the wall. The narrator says thing like “we believed that she was fallen” and “we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it would be the best thing” to show the town’s objective. They dislike her even after the support her family had once given the town. These same family feeling of degust was shared by Emily toward the narrator. Emily keeps a barrier between her and the

In the Perrine handout, it says, “With the growth of artistic consciousness, the question of point of view—of who tells the story, and, therefore, of how it gets told—has assumed special importance” (Perrine). In this case, the author uses the plural form of first-person point of view which affects the tone and theme of the story. For example, In the “... first-person point of view, the author disappears into one of the characters, who tells the story in in the

In contrast to the third person limited point of view in “Parker’s Back,” the point of view in “A Rose For Emily” is the first person. The narrator’s exact identity; the first line refers to “our whole town,” implying that s/he is a towns person and neighbor. In fact, the narrator is never specified as one, single person; the pronouns “our” and “we” seem to indicate that the narrator consists of several people, or even the town as a collective whole. Rather than being told by a narrator who is outside of the story, and therefore objective, the first person nature of this narrator

The reader might think, as he or she reads the story, that Emily is a poor old lady being the picked on by the town. This short story may be named, “A Rose for Emily”, but this story is really about the town. Emily is not the protagonist of this story, but the foil character since her character lacks depth and detail previously stated. The protagonist of this story is the town. When Falkner writes the story from the perspective of the town, he helps the reader see how small towns in the south, like Jefferson, tend to be the selfish, hypocritical and judgmental in nature.

In the story “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner makes use of a point of view that is seldom used in literature. He uses first-person plural narration to tell the tale through an unnamed character's point of view. Although the narration comes from the first-person point of view, the narrator often uses pronouns that are usually associated with third-person such as “they”, “she”, and so forth. Also, through an unconventional, yet brilliant manipulation of point of view, Faulkner was able to create a definitive impact on how the readers view and think about Ms. Emily Grierson. The pronouns and diction used by narrator, who collectively is representative of the thoughts of the townspeople, demonstrated the isolative nature surrounding Ms. Grierson,

William Faulkner has done a wonderful work in his essay “A Rose for Emily.” Faulkner uses symbols, settings, character development, and other literary devices to express the life of Emily and the behavior of the people of Jefferson town towards her. By reading the essay, the audience cannot really figure out who the narrator is. It seems like the narrator can be the town’s collective voice. The fact that the narrator uses collective pronoun we supports the theory that the narrator is describing the life of “Miss Emily” on behalf of the townspeople. Faulkner has used the flashback device in his essay to make it more interesting. The story begins with the portrayal of Emily’s funeral and it moves to her past and at the end the readers realize that the funeral is a flashback as well. The story starts with the death of Miss Emily when he was seventy-four years old and it takes us back when she is a young and attractive girl.

Because “A Rose for Emily” is narrated in retrospect, this description of Miss Emily’s relationship with the town possesses a kind of foreshadowing not always present in stories narrated as the action unfolds. Each word takes on added meaning given that the narrator already know about Homer Barron and the room upstairs.

In Faulkner’s “A rose for Emily” the story is told through more than one persons’ eyes even though it is being told through first person narrator. Since the story is told through more than one person’s eyes it makes the point of view plural. The townspeople of Jefferson (including many generations) tell the story from their point of view. The story shifts from telling the story from the point of view of Miss Emily’s father’s generation. This is shown through the statement “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (31). It then shifts to telling the story from Miss Emily’s generation, and then moves onto tell the story from the generation that followed her. The word “we” is used often and refers to who is responsible for what happened to Emily in the story. It is safe to say that through the point of view in which the story is told one can determine that not one person feels responsible for what happens to Emily in this short story. The townspeople as a whole feel responsible, which then sets the tone for the

Throughout the story, “A Rose for Emily” the narrator tells the story from an unnamed narrator's perspective while sharing the town's feelings. This makes the reader feel immersed in the town they are reading about

Kay Boyle was born in 1902 to a middle-class family in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her family was very intellectual and exposed her to the arts early in her life. At the age of 11, Boyle attended the famous Armory Show in New York. She was heavily involved with the avant-garde literary scene in the United States and Paris. She was a prolific writer for important journals and wrote for the New Yorker and the Nation. Many critics feel Boyle’s writing had a strong feminist sensibility and feel she preceded many other so-called “feminist” writers. In the 1930’s many critics praised her style and the elegant use of the English language (Barnhisel). During the 1960s, she was involved in the feminist movement, civil rights, and antiwar movements. Boyle remained active in these causes until her death in 1992 (Gale). “Astronomer’s Wife” shows how we consider the difference between body and mind. This is a story of a woman named Mrs. Ames who is dissatisfied with her marriage. She has requested a plumber come to fix a water leak in her home. Instead of letting the servant tell the plumber the issue, she follows him as he investigates the pipes. Her interaction with the plumber allows her to see that she may be able to find happiness in other places. Mrs. Ames feels her husband is a dreamer and only concerned with “mind” things (Di Yanni, 63). I enjoyed reading “Astronomer’s Wife” because of the way Boyle painted clear pictures of the characters and Mrs. Ames’ epiphany of her

The setting in “A Rose for Emily” helps the reader understand the meaning and context of the story. The story takes place in the small, southern town of Jefferson after the Civil War. Jefferson used to have a class system in which the Griersons had a great deal of status. However, as society advanced, this system became a

The narrator of “A Rose for Emily” is pretty interesting. Told in first person, the reader can gather who the narrator is when he states that “Alive, Miss Emily was a had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town-”, this statement establishes the

To begin with, the first section of “a rose for Emily” tells about the struggle between Emily who symbolizes for the Old South and the new generation