A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner

Miss Emily, however, never married. Her father had never accepted her suitors, meeting them at the door "clutching a horsewhip." He selfishly kept her single all those years, which must have caused immense embarrassment to a woman from her era, whose whole life should have led up to her marriage. She seldom left her house after her father died, further mystifying herself to the town who watched her life from behind their lace curtains. The Civil War came and went, and Miss Emily still lived in that same house "set on what had once been [the] most select street," "lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps."

Her father believed that no one would ever be good enough for his daughter, and thus he turned away all the men that asked for Emily's hand. So, Emily had only her father to protect and take care of her, and now that he is dead, she found herself all alone. She doesn't have anyone to protect her, and furthermore, she's left with no money, but for the house that she lived in. At this turning point in Emily's life, the townspeople turn their back on her, for her suffering seems to give them pleasure, since now "she had become humanized" (31). The difficult t... ... middle of paper ... ...rom the Negro" (34), and so they had no idea about what was going on in Emily's life.

This is when the authorities went to her house to ask for payment, and she refused straight out. The story goes back thirty years before this when, there had been a terrible stench coming from her house. This was a couple years after her father had passed away, leaving her only the house but no money, and soon after a man she was seeing had disappeared from her life. The townspeople, unwilling to confront her about it, sprinkled lime around her house until the smell left. The story moves further back to when she begins dating the man named Homer Baron and the town fetches her cousins to attempt break up the relationship.

When the townspeople come forward with complaints of the bad smell coming from her house. He says, “Dammit, sir will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?” (24) Emily Grierson is a good example of how the Old South functioned. They were proud and unable to accept that times were changing. She had wanted things to stay the same so badly that she shut herself in her house unwelcoming for anyone to enter. She could not handle her father’s death and tried very hard to isolate herself from the world changing.

In every section of Faulkner’s story, it is told from the point of view of the townspeople. They have almost an omnipresent perspective, yet the amount of knowledge that they lacked drove the town mad with gossip, negative gossip that is always tries to pity her. It is very possible that Emily knows about her negative connotation, and largely chooses to ignore it, such as when she ignores the people that call her, refuses to let people enter her home, and stays inside her house for nearly ten years. She does not feel loved by the people of the town, so she does not associate with them, yet through their constant mission to pity her, they spark her hunt for the favor of a man. Soon after her father dies, she begins to look outward for love for the first time.

She went against even the most fundamental of social laws and gave a laborer, by the name of Homer Barron, an opportunity to court her. This shocked the entire town and “reaffirmed her imperviousness” (429). Emily was unable to produce a healthy relationship with a person because her father kept her single to her thirties, making her feel as though no man deserved her hand.

The McGraw Hill Reader. 8th ed. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. New York: McGraw Hill, 2003.

The story says “they broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings” (732). Everyone began to worry about Miss Emily wondering if she needs aid, but doctors on the other hand wanted to discard her father’s body. After she broke down she agreed to ... ... middle of paper ... ...es she have company except for her manservant who has been there with her through everything. Miss Emily let her past conflict with her present by keeping the body of her deceased father in a room in her home. By her keeping the deceased body it causes a major over that began to leak into the city.

Since she was a Grierson, the townspeople never saw her as a human being. Although, she was just a person, the people saw her and her family as a tableau. Emily was known to be a stubborn woman in life. Once her father died, she didn’t believe her father was dead until the townspeople talked her into burying him. A couple years later, she finally decided to go out of her house and she met a man named Homer Barron.

Emily and her home is wh... ... middle of paper ... ...d to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will." Since that quote suggests that her father was a selfish and psychotic it is directly expressed by her great aunt Lady Wyatt that the craziness runs in the family. This short story views society as the decline of the old south. Emily was a traditional southern belle who was submissive that drove her into insanity.