In the short story "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner contrasted the past with the present era. Emily Grierson, the protagonist, did not accept the passage of time throughout her life, keeping everything she loved in the past. The past was represented in Emily herself, Emily's relationship with her father, Colonel Sartoris, and in the Board of Aldermen. The present time period was expressed through the new Board of Aldermen, Homer Barron, and the town people.
             Miss Emily was referred to as a "fallen monument" (Gwynn, A Pocket Anthology, 154) because she was ideal of past values, but fallen because she was vulnerable to death. Emily's house smelled of dust and disuse and had a closed, dank smell (Gwynn, A Pocket Anthology, 155). In the following paragraph Emily is described as "...bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue," (Gwynn, A Pocket Anthology, 156) similar to the depiction of the house. Emily had not always had that appearance; the picture with father depicted her as slender, making her seem frail and hungering to take part in society in her time. After her father's death, Miss Emily was quite sick for some time. When she was seen again with her short hair cut she had "a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows–sort of tragic and serene," (Gwynn, A Pocket Anthology, 158) implying that she had already begun to enter into the changing society (the world of the present).
             The Board of Aldermen acknowledged that Colonel Sartoris remitted Miss Emily's taxes. But this caused problems to the new Board of Aldermen who waited to collect her taxes. She declared, "See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson," (Gwynn, A Pocket Anthology, 156). First, Emily refused to acknowledge her father's death, now she refused to recognize that Colonel Sartoris had
             ...