What Emily Grierson Represents to the Townspeople in Faulkner's " A Rose for Emily"


A Rose for Emily tells of a woman named Emily Grierson who lived in the South where a rigid class structure determined the expectations regarding a person’s behavior and society’s treatment of them. Miss Emily was the daughter of a rich upper class man who was quite influential in the community of Jefferson so it was expected that the community respect his daughter, Emily. Many allowances were made for Miss Emily’s bizarre behavior because of Mr. Grierson’s standing in the community. Miss Emily did not pay property taxes because of past favors that her father had done for the town. Emily’s marriage to Homer Barron could have been seen as a disgrace because of her husband’s place of birth and occupation, he was a Northerner and a day laborer, but the marriage gave Emily the opportunity to redeem herself by performing the role of a wife, which was expected of a woman with such a high status in society. Miss Emily represented women in society who were unable to find happiness because of a stifling class system that dictated the standards for living and prevented Emily from getting the medical help she needed during her times of deep suffering.

     Some of the townspeople could not fathom the courtship between Homer and Miss Emily since they felt that “even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige.” (p. 2172) They disapproved of Miss Emily and Homer riding past in her glittering buggy on Sundays with her head held high as if she were courting a man considered appropriate by the community of Jefferson. The women in the community thought Emily’s behavior was disgraceful and not a proper example for the young people in the community. They called upon the Baptist minister to persuade Miss Emily to act in a manner befitting her station but after his meeting with Emily, he refused to return to her house so Miss Emily continued to exhibit behavior, which was unacceptable to the community. No one attempted to change her behavior again because Miss Emily was soon seen at the jeweller, which suggested to the townspeople that she was preparing to get married to Homer.

     After her father’s death, Miss Emily continued to portray herself as a very dignified woman. Even when she became ill she was determined to maintain her status in the community and the townspeople realized that she continued to demand their recognition of her as the last Grierson remaining in the town. “She carried her head high enough ­ even when we believed that she was fallen.” (p. 2172) Her life was a sorrowful story that provided a steady source of gossip for the townspeople.

     Miss Emily represented “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.” (p. 2169) The town fathers refused to confront her about the smell emanating from her house. Instead, they put lime to treat the odor. The pharmacist gave arsenic to Miss Emily even though she refused to give him a valid reason for its use. The community looked after Emily but it was out of a sense of duty and not genuine concern for her welfare and everyone gossiping about her evidenced this. Many people did not agree with allowing Emily to freely behave as she pleased but the townsfolk followed the orders of the town fathers who felt that the community owed it to Miss Emily’s father to take care of her.

     The townspeople felt both pity and sympathy for Miss Emily. They knew that her father had dominated her all her life and that the only man whom she loved and was willing to marry had suddenly left her. After her father’s death, she continued life in the same pattern, of male domination that she had experienced during her father’s lifetime. She sought to find a replacement for her father and was attracted to the authoritarian character in the men that she loved and this may have been the reason why she kept their bodies around after their deaths to maintain the same environment to which she had been accustomed and to alleviate the feeling of loneliness. No one questioned Emily holding her father’s body for three days after his death or the cause of Homer’s death even though he had disappeared and had subsequently been found dead in Emily’s house and she had been known to purchase arsenic. Instead, the people of the town still felt a tremendous amount of pity and sympathy for her stemming from a sense of duty to her father. The Negro man who worked for her never said a word to the townspeople about his work at Miss Emily’s home and therefore no one discovered Homer’s body or attempted to enter Miss Emily’s home until she was dead and buried. Only then did they enter her home where they were forced to break down the door of one of the rooms in the upstairs part of the house. In this room, they found the remains of Homer and all the wedding accessories that Miss Emily had purchased years before. This showed that the townspeople greatly respected Miss Emily’s privacy until the end.

     Miss Emily’s great losses caused her to distance herself from reality and she was seen as an individual who had sunk into a deep mental depression. She locked herself away from the rest of the world and refused to make friends. No one called upon her and she did not attempt to change her lifestyle. Eventually she sunk deeper and deeper into a world of insanity. The discovery that she had kept the bodies of her victims in the house did not diminish the townspeople’s feelings of obligation so they attended her funeral in numbers and buried her among the “ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate Solders.” (p. 2169)