HOW THE PEOPLE SEE EMILY GRIERSON

Story: A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

SECTION 1
When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook-had seen in at least ten years.

We see here that people treated Emily as if she was an important, timeless figure to the whole town no matter how reclusive she waseither out of deep curiosity for her real nature or respect for the old and who has been around for ages.
Alive, 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. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.

Though
When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction.

But because Emily was persistent that she had no taxes, the town gave up in making her pay. It was due to this persistence and rebellion that made it seem like Emily had authority of her ownthat she couldnt simply be subjected to the laws of the land. We see that the people also dont want to have anything else to do with Emily, thus making it all the more possible for her to do things her way.

SECTION 2
"We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something.*

*regarding

the smell that enveloped her house two years after her fathers

death and shortly after her sweetheart left her (take note of the word left)

Only after sneakily removing the smell from her house did the townsfolk began feeling sorry for Emily.
We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.

Here, the "back-flung" front door creates the first tableau of a youthful Miss Emily, assiduously guarded by her father. Emily, a "slender figure in white", typifies the vulnerable virgin, hovering in the background, subordinate and passive. The father, "a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip", is a menacing dark image assuming the dominant front position. His turned back suggests a disregard for her emotional welfare as he wards off potential dangeror violation of her chastitywith his horsewhip. The back-flung door invites suitors in, but only those who meet Grierson's standards. Unfortunately, those standards are unattainableThe Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were"and Miss Emily remains unwed at age thirty.
When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days... just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly. We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

SECTION 3
Mr. Grierson has made such an impact in Emilys life that even after death, his intimidation takes visual form in Emily as she is compared to angels framed in church windows:
She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.

The images in this passage reveal a woman stripped of her sexuality. In this portrait, Emily assumes the semblance of a girl instead of a sexually mature woman of thirty. Her cut hair is especially important. Since ancient times, a woman's hair has symbolized

her sexuality. Emily's hair, along with her sexuality, has been cut short through her father's pride. The cut hair also introduces religious imagery, for an initiate into a nunnery shears her hair as a symbol of her chastity. During the summer, though, people began seeing Emily riding about with him on Sunday afternoons in a buggy with a team of bays. Was she serious about him? Or was she just being nice to an out-of-towner of inferior social status? Folks weren't sure. But they felt sorry for her as she was the last of the Griersons.
She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic.

SECTION 4
Because of that, everyone thought that "she will kill herself" and that it would be the best thing. At first, they were glad because she had finally found a man, but then Homer himself had remarked that he was not a marrying man (with some people even saying that he might be gay as seen in his actions). Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a
bad example to the young people.

After her father died, Emily had no husband and no income, so she clung to the past for support. She even denied that her father had died, a sign that her sanity was beginning to deteriorate. Over the years, she remained in the past most of the time, living shut up in her house. Her only connection with the outside world was her servant, who did the marketing. In a way then, Emily became a hidden relic of the Old South. To manifest her repudiation of modern ways, she spurned the tax bills of the new generation of government leaders and refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. Moreover, she defiantly allowed her house to stand as it was before her father died, making no repairs or other improvements. Whether Emily enthusiastically embraced Old South traditions in her youth or passively accepted their imposition on her by her father is open to question. In either case, there can be no gainsaying that Emily became a living symbol of the Old South that is why when she died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen
monument.

SECTION 5
When Emily died, they searched one room upstairs, which no one had seen in forty years. There, in the bed, they found the rotted corpse of Homer.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair

which indicates that Emily was a necrophile, a person fixated on death and/or sexual relations with a dead person. Emily had become the person she hated the mosther father. Her father, the dominant patriarch, robbed her of a husband and that part of a female's existence that can find fulfillment only through marriage. Emily eventually apes that male dominance by killing Homer Barron. Now robbing herself, she becomes the black silhouette of her father and assimilates his characteristics. After Homer's death, she successfully retains the corpse.

REFERENCES:
http://cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides5/Rosefor.html www.semo.edu/cfs/teaching/index_4883.htm