"Sweat" ---> "A Rose for Emily"

In Zora Neale Hurston short story "Sweat" and William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"  it can be seen that each story has a independent women leading their own lives.  In Faulkner's short story Emily is found as the town misfit who came to be never seen but known by all. She is seen as a monument in the community and allowed to live there for free. In Faulkner's story Delia the main character and independent women of the story is completely different then Emily. Delia works for her money and has made a complete life for herself.

Looking at Faulkner's story by itself  Emily is a women who is crazy. She can be seen as a monument but becomes a recluse to the outside world.  After the vanishing of her newly husband Emily became insane cutting herself and house off from others. After the death of Emily at the age of 74 the town jumped at the opportunity to view the shut up house. "We noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair"(Faulkner 320). In Faulkner's writing I believe Emily was even more twisted then keeping dead human remains in her house but willing to lay with it. Through the description of the second floor room that was shut up you can see Emily with in some time towards the end of her life enter that room laying down with the remains because of the indentation of the pillow and the long strand of iron-gray here she had later in her life.

In reading "Sweat" Delia is seen as an independent women who has worked her whole life and made a earning all by herself. As she is married to a man who uses and abuses her she still places her sweat and blood into her work. She takes care of her house still supports her husband even though he cheats and spends her money on his mysterious Bertha. Delia still stands strong even when her husband what her gone in the hope of a snake taking her life. Ironically the creature that was going to take her life that she fears the most removes the person causing her the most pain. "She could scarcely reach the chinaberry tree, where she waited in the growing heat while inside she knew the cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish that eye which must know by now that she knew" (Hurston 386). During the time Delia waited outside ironically under a poisonous berry tree as her husband died. Not only did she wait as he died but as Hurston stated in her writing the cold river was creepy as the snake bite slowly killed him. I believe this represented the long years Delia put in working and going through the pain her husband caused her coming back to bite him.



Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily." 1931. The Story and its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 314-320. Print.

Zera Neale Hurston. "Sweat." 1926. The Story and its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 378-386. Print.