Selected South African High School Students’ Reading Responses on “A Rose for Emily”

Selected South African high school students’ perceptions of stereotypes in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” are the center of attention in an attempt to establish or refute the existence of a uniform interpretation in the interpretive community. The textual reader responses were collected by using a questionnaire. The results show that the respondents use stereotypes to understand encounters with literary texts and as tools to connect the content of the text with their own experiences. The stereotypes also provide a framework for the readers to position themselves with or against the text and the depicted characters. Consequently, the female respondents are more inclined to distance themselves from sexist values than the male readers. Next to all the readers condemn racist values and racist language detectable in the text. Overall, the readers distance themselves from negative values and identify themselves with positive values. The results show that readers use a variety of stereotypes as aids to interpret the characters, events, values and structure of society in “A Rose for Emily”.