Differences Between Two Female Characters

The day after her father's death, the women of the town went to give their condolences to Miss. Emily. To their surprise, Miss. Emily was "dressed as usual" and had "no trace of grief on her face (Perrine's 285)." Emily told the women that her father was not dead. Finally after three days of trying to hold on to her father, "she broke down, and they buried her father quickly (Perrine's 285)." The town's people tired to justify Miss. Emily's actions, by saying that she had nothing left, and was clinging to the one thing that had robbed her for so long they convinced themselves that she was not crazy.

In the beginning, the audience gets a glimpse of the house belonging to Miss Emily. The exterior of the house was beautiful, but aging. When it was first built in the post-civil war era, it was lovely. However, after revolution and change, Miss Emily’s home was the last standing house on the block. This is vital to the story because it paints a picture for the reader’s mind. The interior of the house was dusty and unclean after the change. This demonstrates how cooped up Miss Emily truly is. She never

“After her father’s death she went out very little, after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (Faulkner 805). Miss Emily was an interesting character that is commonly associated with death and isolation. According to Willow D. Crystal, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" suggests that there is a tension between what is private and what is public. I agree, but I would add that the character of Miss Emily emphasizes the isolation and death themes that Faulkner attempts to achieve.

Her unwillingness to change after the civil war was one of the reasons she was so isolated. The narrator tells us twice that Miss Emily is similar to an idol, probably because she was raised to think she was above others, and others were raised to look up to her as well.  She was stuck with the mindset that she was better than others, even when the community was changing she believed that she didn’t have to obey the law. She also kept to herself and no one knew anything about her. According to Faulkner, the quote “…A note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin flowing calligraphy in faded ink…” shows me in a symbolic way, that Emily is stuck in time. The story of Emily is old and dated itself. The author uses the words archaic, calligraphy, and faded. It took me back in time while reading these words, which is exactly what Emily is.

She, Emily, is physically living but not in the present; she is stuck living in her past. We first see this when her father dies, “She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body.” (Faulkner). This depicts that she is enamored of the dead which is why she resists in letting them bury her father. Emily did not want to kept denying her father’s death so she decided to hold onto him. By the description Faulkner gives, one may say Emily just did not know how to adapt to change. With that being said, she feared change so she did not want to let go because she was so dependent on her father and now he was gone. Once Emily passed on and was buried, people from her town go into her house and discover a decomposed corpse along with the strand of gray hair on the pillow next to what was formerly Homer Barron. Faulkner explains in detail yet again what was found, “…What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt…Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head…we saw a long strand of iron-grey hair”. With this being said it is discovered that she, Emily, had been sleeping next to his dead body for years. These two examples are prime reasons one could conclude that she had an issue letting go of her past. Throughout the short story Emily seemed to not want to

The use of foreshadowing to describe the changes in Emily physical and emotional life is subtler and relies heavily on symbolism. The descriptions of the decaying house symbolize Miss Emily's physical and emotional decay, and as well as her mental problems. It foretells of her downfall,  "a fallen monument" (507). The house is full of dust and dark shadows, "It smelled of dust and disuse-a close, dank smell", and symbolizes the death-filled environment that Emily lives in (508).

While the outside of her house mirrors her physical decay the interior of the house allows the reader a glimpse into her mental and emotional state. Even though the outside may still be somewhat beautiful and dominating with it's classic structure, the inside of the house smelling "of dust and disuse" and with furniture in which "the leather was cracked" (622)shows that the admirable elegance Miss Emily portrays is just a façade. From the "tarnished gilt easel" holding her fathers picture and the "tarnished gold head" of her cane to the "dim hall from which a staircase mounted into still more shadow" Faulkner uses the interiorof her house to allude to Miss Emily's flawed, dark and decaying mind. Miss Emily's appearance on her deathbed with "her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight" (627) not only resembles the objects in her house covered in dust but also prepares the reader for the climax of the story. In the final scene when the townspeople find Homer in the room with "curtains of faded rose-color" and "rose colored lights" (627), the dark side of Miss Emily's rose-colored world is unveiled. Her obvious loneliness, recorded by the indention on the pillow next to Homer's body, makes her sin almost

Miss Emily is also decaying, but it is subtle and internal--the awful smell that begins to permeate from her dwelling is a reflection of the withering woman within rotting. Perhaps most tragically, Miss Emily’s isolation is far from self-inflicted. Her blind devotion to the ones she loves; her father, her husband, her home; only serves to further condemn her actions. Her neighbors disregard toward her inabilty to let go of her father after his death, despite the delicacy of her being, caused for her madness to fester. “She told them her father was not dead.

The symbolism between the past and the present was also shown in the beginning of the story when Faulkner wrote, "…only now Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps – an eyesore among eyesores." It was ironic that the same description "stubborn and coquettish decay" could be a description for Emily as well (71). As the house fell into decay, so did Miss Emily, "She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water and of that pallid hue." Miss Emily was described as "a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head" (72). Traditionally, in the Old South people wore black while they were grieving the death of a loved one. The cane she used

Just as Miss Emily’s resistance to change is symbolized by the Grierson house so is Miss Emily’s loneliness. The Grierson house is so symbolic because it had once been a hub of activity with china painting lessons and guests. After the death of Emily’s father, the house was shut off from the rest of the world, very much like Miss Emily herself. The narrator tells us that “From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china painting.” (Faulkner 34). We can tell, and perhaps understand to some degree, that Miss Emily has a very real fear of being left alone. This is first revealed by her denial of her father’s death for several days. “She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days” (Faulkner

Emily's father suppressed all of her inner desires. He kept her down to the point that she was not allowed to grow and change with the things around her. When “garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated…only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps” (Rose 217). Even when he died, she was still unable to get accustom to the changes around her. The traditions that her and her father continued to participate in even when others stopped, were also a way that her father kept her under his thumb. The people of the town helped in

Miss Emily tried to keep the body of her father with her in her house. This signifies that she did not

The very beinning of the story is extraordinary. It begins with the burial of Emily, the residents around her coffin did not feel anything, most of them were curious. There were neither friends nor relatives, nobody who was in mouring for her, only inquirers. The readers can ask, what kind of person was Miss Emily? Why the others did not feel sadness? Perhaps there is a bigger question: what was the reason that nobody went to her house more than ten years (except her slave, Tobe).

This reality sends panic and fear through her because now she has nowhere to turn and no one to tell her what to do, no one to command her life. Not only is she stricken with the loss of her father but now she is cut off to the outside world, because her only link has passed on. Emily immediately goes into a state of denial; to her, her father could not be dead, he was all that she had and she would not let him go.

When Miss Emily refuses to respond to a government letter regarding her taxes the Board of Alderman comes to visit her. When she comes in she is cold to the gentlemen, showing her lack of social skills which in many cases is a factor in mental Illness. Also before Miss Emily makes the guests leave she tells the, that if they still think she has taxes they need to "see Colonel Sartoris," (Faulkner 149) who has been dead ten years. This statement by Miss Emily could be seen as her minds unwillingness to live in the present. Her mind belives what it wants which is also the case after her fathers death. We see in the book that after her father’s death and her subsequent breakdown, Miss Emily was “sick for a long time." This could mean the state that Miss Emily refused to believe her father was gone. Right after the death of her father, the ladies of the town come to Miss Emily’s home to offer their condolences, and they observe that she had “no trace of grief on her face” (Faulkner 151). The inability to either feel or demonstrate appropriate emotion, is a classic symptom of mental illness. More explicitly, Miss Emily insisted to the visitors that “her father was not dead” (Faulkner 151). For this reason, Miss Emily would not let anyone remove her father's body until three days after her father should have been buried. Finally the third day “she broke down” and let the townspeople remove the body quickly