A Rose for Emily
The Rose of Southern Gentility Never Withers Strictly speaking, the plot of the short story "A Rose for Emily" mayseem to suggest that the story is a mystery story. It is the tale of awoman who kills her lover when she is jilted. But the character of MissEmily and the character of the Southern town in which she lives createsuspense rather than the plot line itself. The story demonstrates how thecharacter of Miss Emily and the superficially genteel character of thesmall Southern town in which she lives enable the murder of Homer, Emily'sbeloved, to take place without the town punishing Emily's crime. Themurder is foreshadowed by the way the town and Emily's father treats thewoman her entire life. Her denial of reality is encouraged by the town'sprotection of its aristocracy and her father's feeling that no one is goodenough for his daughter. This special treatment allows Miss Emily to denyher need to pay taxes and the demise of her father. In her mind sheeventually becomes 'married' to the suitor of her choice through death, andto continues to enact the persona of the proper Southern belle, despite her The first foreshadowing in the story of Emily's sense of
The allowances made for the character's eccentricities of living aresimilar to those made for her taxes. Homer, her chosen man, does not really wish tobe married. " As "none of the young menwere quite good enough to Miss Emily and such," when her father was alive,when Emily chooses who she will marry, she will have Homer, whether helikes it or not. "Miss Emily had been a tradition, aduty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, datingfrom that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered theedict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron--remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father oninto perpetuity. html) Miss Emily is a relic, this suggests,protected by the town as kind of an historical artifact-and thus, thetown's insistence upon its own history impoverish it and enable Emily'seccentricities to lead to the death of her prospective suitor and lover. Emily loves Homer, but despises that he leaves her. Nor can Emily's will change thehuman heart. The town loves Miss Emily'srepresentation of an older era, yet takes glee in her apparently singlestatus until the very end. She did that forthree days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying topersuade her to let them dispose of the body. " Thecreation of the fiction of the fragile southern belle is laced with politelies. Just as they were about toresort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her fatherquickly. "Not that Miss Emily would have acceptedcharity. Instead, it complies with Emily's denial of harsh reality. Miss Emily represents another era that the townwishes to preserve, even while it wishes to change this past and half-despises it.
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Acceptance Essays
