Kill Your Darlings: Oscar Wilde’s Princess Salomé as a Probable Source for William Faulkner’s Lady Emily Grierson

摘要

A similar tragedy of lethal obsession, wanton murder, and perverse necrophilia, Faulkner’s short story A Rose for Emily remarkably parallels Wilde’s play Salomé: A Tragedy in One Act. In the bloody crime of Wilde’s Princess Salomé, Faulkner sees the archetype of a compelling and terrifying female nature, thereby creating the shocking perversity of his Lady Emily.Faulkner’s short story, with Lady Emily an epitome of apocalyptic depravity like Princess Salomé, marks the end of an era in the history of the American South.