A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner

A rose for Emily shows how there’s a gap between the way men and women are treated. The narration is in third person point of view with different people and it emphasizes how different people have different outlooks on life. Women are inferior to men and there only values are there appearances according to A Rose for Emily. People in the town participate in these beliefs all throughout the story with their words and action.

No doubt that woman is perceived as inferior to men in the story. Emily is insulted like she’s dumb or a lower human to man or something through the whole story. The story begins fueling their beliefs towards women. It says “When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house…” This shows men only showed up because of respect. The men only went because they sort of had to. For instance Colonel remitted Emily’s taxes and the narrator states that what he told her was only believable to a women. Colonel thinks hews smarter than Emily and he can take advantage of her mind. H “invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily’s father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of colonel Sartoris generation could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.” This was just a way of trying to give Emily charity and I think she knew it. As time went on in the story “more modern ideas” cam into play and it says it led to some dissatisfaction therefore showing the people didn’t want to except change, therefore backing up their belief that woman are unequal to men.

Pursuing this further, the people in the town believe women only values are their appearances. The author spends almost a whole page criticizing Emily appearance. There was nothing about her mind, her other values, or her accomplishments. Initially Emily has a bad smell around her house, as a result the women start to think it’s because Emily’s kitchen is dirty. Emily has a man as a servant and they make comments like “Just as if a man – any man – could keep a kitchen properly”.