The story "A Rose for Emily" was William Faulkner's first published in 1930. This story could be called a horror story and even physiological short story (281). The story is about Emily Grierson, a woman whose life is by a narrator that is unknown, it could possibly be someone whom knew Emily; this narrator represents the attitudes, ideas, and the gossip of the community. Emily became deeply depressed by the death of her father. It wasn't until his she meet a Northerner by the name of Homer Barron. When she is faced with no love from Homer, she murdered him by arsenic poison, possibly after she found out that he liked men, and she was used by him so the townsman would not know of his sexuality, more or less so the townsmen wouldn't know he was gay. It was discovered after Emily's death and the upstairs bedroom was forced open that Homer's corpse was found in a embrace from forty years before and a strand of gray hair lying on the pillow beside him. Remembering the relationship of Emily with her father, her place in the community and her problem with reality, the present and the past, the character is told about Miss Emily in the story.
The Grierson family had a streak of insanity and insane pride. Miss Emily's father was a selfish and dominating man. None of the young men who came courting her were good enough for their name. Emily's father discouraged men and drove them away. When he finally died, his daughter was still unmarried and was left nothing but the house (284). In a way, the narrator says, "People were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized now she would know like other people, what it felt like to count pennies" (281-289).
The townsmen thought that Homer, Emily's boyfriend, with his strong masculine appearance and his skills possibly reminded Emily's of her dominant father. In the South ...