Reading As A Writer: A Rose for Emily

My initial reaction to reading William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily was sadness. At the beginning of the short story I felt sorry for Emily for having such a somber, unfulfilling life. She lost her father who drove away all the men that tried to get close to her and the man who she was going to marry her “left her”. Her days went by without her ever leaving the house. She grew old without friends or family, only with the worker who brought her food from the market. We learn that not even he spoke to her all those years. She was lonely.            

What we find out after Emily is dead that all of the years that everyone thought that Homer, her former fiancé had left her, he had actually been killed and kept in a bedroom upstairs. She kept his tie on the dresser, his clothes on the chair and his body in the bed, his arms still in an open embrace. Faulkner made sure the reader knew that Homer was not a guy we liked. He planned on leaving Emily and so she killed him with Arsenic. When she bought the arsenic, the man who sold it to her insisted it was only used for rats ; Ironic that she used it on a man who was planning on leaving her. His decomposing body caused a stench that disturbed the whole town; Townspeople actually sprinkled lime into her basement to try and lessen the horrible smell, without realizing what was causing it and not realizing the irony that lime is used to cover the smell of decay.

On the surface this short story seems to be about a psychotic old woman but in actuality it’s about the fear of being alone and of being left, about aging and decaying and about the one unstoppable phenomenon we all must fear on some level: time.

We see that Miss Emily starts off at the beginning of the story as a young, good looking woman. As the story progresses we see that he hair becomes more gray and plump. Not before long we see Miss Emily with sunken in eyes and loose wrinkled skin. Finally, we see her grey hair and small skull that makes her seem obese lying dead on the mildew stained pillow in her house.

The years that go by are marked by the amount of times that she refuses to pay her taxes to the townspeople; it comes up again and again as the story goes on. As the townspeople visit her, the stopwatch ticks on deep within her clothes where nobody can see it. Much like the way Homer continues to decay as time goes by in the bedroom upstairs. The house is described to be worn down and smelly while it used to be presentable and nice. It’s the only thing that was left to Emily when her father passed away.

We also see that Emily is compared to her house in many ways. Just like the house, Emily has let herself go and now looks like a much less presentable, older, grayer, fatter woman. The house is described as being “Stubborn and unrelenting”.  We see Emily fit this description quite well many times, for example when they townspeople try to collect taxes from her and also when she buys the arsenic from the drugstore. She is also very stubborn about not letting them put the new mailbox up on her house. As the house decays, we also see Emily’s emotional and physical well being decay.