The Rose of Southern Gentility Never Withers
Strictly speaking, the plot of the short story "A Rose for Emily" may
seem to suggest that the story is a mystery story. It is the tale of a
woman who kills her lover when she is jilted. But the character of Miss
Emily and the character of the Southern town in which she lives create
suspense rather than the plot line itself. The story demonstrates how the
character of Miss Emily and the superficially genteel character of the
small Southern town in which she lives enable the murder of Homer, Emily's
beloved, to take place without the town punishing Emily's crime. The
murder is foreshadowed by the way the town and Emily's father treats the
woman her entire life. Her denial of reality is encouraged by the town's
protection of its aristocracy and her father's feeling that no one is good
enough for his daughter. This special treatment allows Miss Emily to deny
her need to pay taxes and the demise of her father. In her mind she
eventually becomes married' to the suitor of her choice through death, and
to continues to enact the persona of the proper Southern belle, despite her
The first foreshadowing in the story of Emily's sense of
exceptionality in the eyes of the town takes place in regards to her taxes.
The allowances made for the character's eccentricities of living are
similar to those made for her taxes. "Miss Emily had been a tradition, a
duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating
from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the
edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron--
remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on
into perpetuity." (All quotes from Writopia version of Faulkner,
William's "A Rose For Emily," 1999, http://www.online-
library.org/fictions/emily.html) Miss Emily is a relic, this sugge...