Essay On Miss Emily In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

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Throughout William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the town of Jefferson, Mississippi was an unwitting accomplice to the wrongdoings of Miss Emily Grierson. The town saw the Grierson family as a tableau- a representation of the old south, which was slowly disappearing. They believed her to be a “tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 168). Thus the town held her on a sort of pedestal, albeit a small one, but one that constantly kept the people from seeing her actions for what they truly were: an act of a mentally unstable human being. Emily’s status in society, as well as the town’s blatant refusal to see what was clearly in front of them, subsequently lead to Homer Barron’s demise. Through the townsfolk’s continued excuses, Miss Emily was able to continue on her eccentric and ultimately deadly path. The town’s inability to see anything other than a southern lady in Miss Emily …show more content…

They have been sidelined- watching like eager observers might closely follow a particularly exciting horserace. The town believes the Grierson’s “hold themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner 171). Perhaps it is the mystery of the unknown that drives the townsfolk’s interest. At the same time, however, the aristocratic airs the Grierson’s seem to hold intimidate the town. The people of Jefferson even going so far as to call them a tableau: “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the backflung [sec] front door” (Faulkner 171). When the druggist informs Emily that, by law the use of such poison must be given in order to purchase it (Faulkner 172), she had merely stared him down until he’d looked away and retrieved the arsenic. In short, Miss Emily is able to browbeat the citizens of the town into

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