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Caroline Needham
Mrs. Pettay
ENG 112
16 May 2016
A Rose for Emily Literary Analysis (HISTORICAL LENS)
In William Faulkners short story A Rose for Emily, the setting is Jefferson, a fictitious
town in Yoknapatawpha County Mississippi. Here we are introduced to the main character, Miss
Emily Grierson in a time shortly after the Civil War ended. Miss Emily lives alone in the house
that was left to her by her father when he died. The square frame house that use to be white,
decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies is now a very dusty, dirty, decrepit
house that was once found on the most select street in Jefferson, Mississippi. The contrast
between the once elegant house and its current sad condition is significant because it represents
the chasm in the traditional values of the gentile South and the progressive North post Civil War.
A Rose for Emily allows the reader to see how the historical roles in the late 1800s to
the twenty-first century have changed because in the short story. In the traditional roles of the
South, Miss Emily is not required to do any work as that is left to the slaves and the men.
In the South after the civil war, many people had difficulty adjusting to life without slaves. Social
rules and class structures changed drastically in many Southern towns. People that once held
power and were considered "high class" found themselves without privileges or power.

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Southern life before the civil war was simple, agricultural, and community oriented. However
after the Civil War, the south had to adjust to a more industrial lifestyle that was more common
in the North.

Southern attitudes about African Americans did not change drastically after the Civil War.
Southerns treated blacks with extreme prejudice and also treated white people from the north
with suspicion and resentment because the north forced the south to change when they really
didn't want to.
Although the townspeople are critical of Miss Emily's inability to adjust to life in the
"new" South, they secretly enjoy the fact that she won't give up her traditional Southern ways as
they have had to do in order to survive. They have to pay taxes, get their streets paved, and learn
how to live without slavery, but Miss Emily refuses to do this and they secretly admire her for
this determination.
Miss Emily refusal to pay taxes is a throwback to the older traditional values of Southern
society. She continues to believe that she does not have to pay, even when the alderman
(politician) comes to her house and tries to explain that what Colonel Sartoris told her is no
longer valid. This move to make her pay represents a change in the character in the town, which
mirrors the changes that were happening in society. The South was trying to hold fast to its
traditional ways of chivalry and protecting its values but as generations change, so too does their
willingness to go along with the old ways of society.
In the late 1800s, women were considered property of the town. Women could not own

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property, the husband was the only one able to own property. An example of this is when Gary L.
Kriewald cited Ray B. West, Jr. when he wrote, Emily is the common property of the town, but
in a special way- as an ideal of past values. Ray B. West Jr., quote shows how Miss Emily,
being a women of a town in the late 1800s is considered property. According to Faulkner,
"Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the
town, dating from the 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.
Faulkner uses words like "tradition," "duty," and "obligation" to emphasize how the town
treated Miss Emily and to focus our attention on her defining qualities as a character. She should
have paid taxes like everyone else, but because the town felt obligated to take care of her, they
"invented an involved tale" so that she wouldn't suspect them of giving her charity. 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"(Faulkner 1).
Emily is attracted and courted by a man, Homer, sent to build sidewalks. The
construction is representative of the growth and change in the south. Because he is from the
North, he is not considered suitable as a suitor and, once again the two societies clash, as the
South struggles to let hold onto it traditional values of elitism and social rules and class
structures.
In conclusion, looking at this short story from the historical lens, the reader starts to see
how Miss Emily was the norm for most women in the late 1800s. Women did not hold normal

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jobs, they worked in the house or walked the streets with their friends. Miss Emilys father
decided what guy would be appropriate for Miss Emily to date. After her father died and left her
the house, Miss Emily married Homer Barron, a man that her father never would have approved
of.

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Works Cited
Kriewald, Gary L.. The Widow of Windsor and the Spinster of Jefferson. The Faulkner
Journal 9 (Year). Medium of Publication.