Stubborn Miss Emily In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

Stubborn Miss Emily What can you do with a person who is stubborn to a fault? In "A Rose for Emily," author William Faulkner shows that the townspeople come to pity Miss Emily, the stubborn, unchanging main character in this classic short story. Miss Emily, a spinster whose father abjured every possible suitor, is an individual who cannot changer her prideful stubbornness. Faulkner uses several different methods to show this, such as descriptions of Miss Emily's house, changes in the town that occur over time while Miss Emily lives there, and her relationships with close people, such as her father and Homer, to give the reader a better understanding of Miss Emily's lack of ability to change. One of the simplest ways to see the way Faulkner …show more content…
When the town adds a Post Office and everyone gets free mail delivery, Miss Emily is the only person who refuses a mailbox. As the neighborhood is torn down to make way for garages, cotton gins, and gas stations, Miss Emily's house looms above the modernization, which Miss Emily refuses to embrace. She and her house stay the same as the leadership of the town changes--young men become the new leaders. As the individuals forget who Miss Emily is, she becomes more pitiful to them. Her refusal to do any different than she always has alienates her from the generation of leaders and her relationship with …show more content…
Miss Emily's relationship with her father is not described lengthily. He is described as "a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to [Emily] and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door." This seems to suggest that her father was a rough, loud-spoken, harsh man, and as such, had harsh rules. Though there is no proof, the towns-people come to believe that Miss Emily's supposed refusal of all her suitors is false. They begin to believe that her father was the one who turned all potential marriage partners down. He was a controlling man. When he died, Miss Emily seemed to reverse. She could not let him go. He lay dead in the house for three days before Miss Emily let officials take him to be buried. She might have been afraid to be alone. When Homer entered her life, he was a breath of fresh air. He is described as being the center of any laughing crowd. He was popular with people and good natured. The townspeople were elated to see Miss Emily with a beau, even if they did not believe that an individual as proper as Miss Emily's family was would marry Homer, a lowly street worker. The townspeople were not very surprised when Home disappeared. Later, the reader finds out that Miss Emily poisoned Homer, and laid him on a bed in the upstairs room. The townspeople, who find