Emily Grierson From A Rose For A Rose For Emily

Tradition controls the actions of both the town and Emily herself.  “A Rose for Emily” captures the importance tradition holds for her Southern community.  The Civil War was an issue of lifestyle.  Southerners hung to the lifestyle they had, with the slaves. Tradition was the reason Emily didn’t pay her taxes. Her father was aristocracy and paid no taxes , therefore , Emily refused. When the slavery era passed, the South fell, the lifestyle was torn apart and the economy changed.  Old-time families, like Emilie’s, lost their position with their

When Miss Emily’s father passed away she began to start acting out. Emily is stuburned like her father, who refuses to change. Although her father had lots of money, he only left Miss Emily the home. Soon the town started asking Miss Emily to pay her taxes. But, she refused to do so. Colonel Sartoris, the mayor of the town, planned to not make Miss Emily pay taxes on her house, “Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity” (452), trying not to make it seem like Colonel Sartoris was offering her charity. He made up an imaginary loan from her father to the town

“Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 1). Emily, a member of the town’s elite class, relied upon her father when growing up and after his death, she refused to pay her taxes, stating that her father contributed much to society. But it was evident that she didn’t pay them because of a lack of maturity - financially and socially. When she was younger she pushes herself onto Homer Barron, a Northerner with no interest in marriage. Throughout the story, Emily is conflicted over societal change, and clings to her privileged manner even after finding herself in poverty. Yet, she becomes involved with a man from a lower social class, and a Northerner as well - hinting that he has different beliefs and values. The townspeople, however, believe the relationship it too modern when there is a possibility they are having physical relations despite not being serious about marriage. The community’s inability to commit to progress, contribute to the confused Emily’s decision. In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner uses the symbolism of Emily’s house and her hair to demonstrate her emotional instability and physical deterioration, illustrating the outcome of his story.

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” starts out at Emily’s funeral and then goes onto a story about taxes, which Miss Emily is exempt from paying for life by Colonel Sartoris. During her life, Miss Emily’s father kept her isolated and ran off any potential suitors with a horsewhip. When her father died, Miss Emily refused to acknowledge the fact for three days. Soon after, Miss Emily met and started dating Homer Barron, “a northerner and a day laborer.” The town goes from being happy about the relationship to thinking of it as indecent. Homer seemingly deserted Miss Emily shortly after she bought poison. All is quiet for the next 40 years until Miss Emily’s death when Homer’s corpse is found sealed in an upstairs room (Faulkner 323-327). This paints a picture of a lonely, desperate woman. Miss Emily was isolated with just a butler for company. That does not make her a murder. Emily Grierson is innocent of murder because any evidence is circumstantial or illegally obtained, Tobe cared for Miss Emily enough to kill for her, and Miss Emily is legally insane.

As a result, Miss Emily remains unmarried. This situation perhaps helps readers understand how Miss Emily is trying to cope of all the burden and pressures of great expectations that others have of her. While most individuals can handle this kind of stress, Miss Emily unfortunately is unable to develop healthy, adaptive coping mechanisms. Another glimpse of her character is when the sheriff office attempts to collect taxes, Emily tells them “see Colonel Sartoris” (33), who had been dead almost ten years. “I have no taxes in Jefferson” reasserts Emily (33). Despite many attempts to collect taxes, Emily simply continues to refuse to cooperate with the town authorities. This observation of Miss Emily's behavior is telling us how irrational and inappropriate she is when she interacts with other people. Another episode of her erratic behavior occurs when Judge Stevens, the new town mayor, receives several complaints from the neighbors that a powerful, terrible odor is originating from Emily’s property and ordered by the neighbors to “send her word to have her place cleaned up” (33). This is another hint that Emily is becoming separated from her community and is totally unable to relate to other people in an appropriate matter.

“A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner, is a story of Miss Emily Grierson, a woman who was born into a wealthy family in the town of Jefferson. She grew up and lived in a huge Victorian home with servants. After the Civil War, it seems that her family’s wealth started to diminish but the Grierson’s were still trapped in the past of their family’s wealth. Emily Grierson’s past and present life is being recalled by a narrator who expresses the attitudes and ideas of the community. The narrator uses phrases like “We knew”, “We said”, and “We believed” to show the towns involvement. The townspeople pity Miss Emily and look at her as “fallen monument.

William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, is a dark tale of a young girl damaged by her father that ended up leaving her with abandonment issues. Placed in the south in the 1930’s, the traditional old south was beginning to go under transition. It went from being traditionally based on agriculture and slavery to gradually moving into industrial and abolition. Most families went smoothly into the transition and others, like the Griersons, did not. Keeping with southern tradition, the Griersons thought of themselves as much higher class then the rest of their community. Emily’s father found no male suitable for his daughter and kept her single into her thirties. After her fathers death Miss Emily was swept off of

Being a member of an antebellum southern aristocracy meant that she was in a family that was defined as a “planter” also known as a person owning property and twenty or more slaves. After the Civil War, the family went through another hardship. The woman and her father kept on living their lives as if they were still in the past. Her father refused to let her get married. When the woman was thirty years old, her father died. This took her by surprise. After her dad passed, the woman refused to give up his body. The town thought it was just part of her grieving process. After she finally accepted her dad’s death, she grew closer to Mr. Homer. This took the town by surprise. Homer explained to Emily that he wasn’t the marrying type. She did not like hearing those words. Emily went to town and bought arsenic from a drug dealer. Because of this, the towns people were certain she was trying to kill herself. Emily’s distant cousins came to visit because the priest’s wife had called them. Homer left for a couple of days, but then came back after the cousins had left. Emily wouldn’t talk to any of the towns people. They wouldn’t confront her given her reputation. They wanted to ask her about the awful smell that had been coming from her house and to talk to her about her taxes. At first, they said her taxes were over looked in debt to her father, but then they changed their minds and sent her notices. The woman refused to pay them! Years later Emily had

The year is 1852, Emily Grierson has just been born into the small town of Jefferson. A town she will soon discover has distinct hierarchial differences and social classes that are to be followed by everyone in her community. However this same community and the values which it holds will eventually be a key factor in determining Miss Emily's madness. "A Rose for Emily", tells the story of a woman who fails to live up to her high reputation and fitting in a community where almost everyone knows each others business. William Faulkner lets the reader into the life of Emily Grierson from two different key perspectives, man and woman. The men represent respectful affection towards Emily, while the women

Stubborn and a bit unstable, Emily Grierson is the main character of William Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily “. Emily is a prime example of a flat character because she seldom changes throughout the whole story. Emily acts as if nothing has changed over the years. In the town of Jefferson, It’s as if time went to a stood still. She shows this flat affect throughout the story in many instances. For example, like her refusing to pay her taxes, not keeping up with the maintenance of her father’s home after his passing. So much so that the home was referred to as “an eyesore among eyesores, still standing among the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps (Faulkner, p. 121).

In “ A Rose for Emily,” the entire community conspires to protect both Emily and the small town from the shame and stigma of Emily’s illness and idiosyncratic behavior. The story focuses on Emily Grierson, the last living Grierson. Emily is an older lady living in Mississippi. As new town leaders take over, they make unsuccessful attempts to get Emily to resume payments on her taxes. She says that Colonel Sartoris has told her she has no taxes in Jefferson, though the Colonel had been dead for almost a decade. The main setting of the story is a creepy old house in Jefferson, Mississippi where Emily Grierson, the last living Grierson, lives. The house is not only old, but very rundown. The setting of "A Rose for Emily" helps develop a plot line which examines the effects of loneliness and isolation have on a person’s psyche. As a result, the story conveys a true and timeless main theme: one must change with the times; if one does not change with time, then one falls behind.

Miss Emily was an important character in the town of Jefferson. For some people she represented the old days when her family had a reputation and was highly respected. On the other hand, “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town…” (Faulkner), for other she was a burden to the city. After political changes her exemption from paying taxes become an issue. Her status didn’t mean anything anymore and she was supposed to be treated like everybody else. However, the fact that she was the last member of the great family made her someone special and after few attempts of sending her tax notices, even a new generation of towns officials decided to let

“Miss Emily” refused to pay her taxes because she believed she was pardoned from them due to the fact that Colonel Sartoris had once loaned money to their hometown. Nobody in her town challenged her on this, or the matter that she still had a negro servant that attended to her in her old fashioned home that she refused to update. The local color of the era Miss Emily wished to live in is particularly apparent. Her home is even described as once being part of the best neighborhood in town, another reason Miss Emily was stuck in the past. Another example of local color in “A Rose for Emily” is the oddity that even though Miss Emily is an outsider in town, nobody bothers to challenge her because she has an “Old South” social standing.

“A Rose for Emily” shows the struggle of Emily Grierson and her inability to accept the changing times due to a father who controlled her into only knowing and understanding his ideal of a southern woman. Emily is representative of old southern values and though the townspeople had begun to evolve with the changing times, Emily refused to conform. The role Emily held in society was both a blessing and a curse for her. Out of respect for whom she was and what she represented, she was

The mysterious tale, “A Rose for Emily”, focuses on the life and death of the main character, Emily, a stubborn and mentally unstable woman. . Throughout Emily’s life she has lived in the town of Jefferson for as long as the townspeople have remembered. The town develops and changes a lot while Emily lives there, but Emily does not. In “A Rose For Emily”; William Faulkner constructs Emily as a distinct character in order to show the theme of unwillingness to change as the town around her does.