The Anguish of Miss Emily Grierson

            
            
             The anguish of a southern lady who lives a strange and unhappy life was written by William Faulkner in a short story entitled "A Rose for Emily". Faulkner sets the story during the 1930's with the death of Miss Emily Grierson, who is the protagonist, in a small southern town named Jefferson. Miss Emily represented a time in history for Jefferson where a woman's appearance was perceived as a direct reflection of their husband or father. The Grierson's were of southern culture and high social standing in Jefferson, to the point where they felt they were superior, and did not have to follow the rules such as paying their taxes. The townspeople now refer to her as a "Fallen Monument" (28), for she is the southern lady with values that has succumbed to death and putrefaction.
             Miss Emily's anguish began with the death of her father. (The man who had driven so many young men away which leads her to still being single and the age of thirty). Because of the death of her father, Miss Emily has become a hermit of sorts. She has lost interest in her home which now "smelled of dust and disuse" (29). There have been no visitors in her home for the "last ten years" (28). Her appearance has changed, now she is "bloated like a body long submerged in motionless water" "perhaps that is why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her". (29).
             The changing of times has also caused anguish for Miss Emily. The new "Board of Aldermen" (29) are trying to collect on taxes she owes the town of Jefferson, but she insist that she owes "no taxes in Jefferson" (29) because Colonel Sartoris, the mayor of Jefferson when Miss Emily's father was alive, said that her taxes had been taken care of. .
             This incident shows her insanity because the Colonel has been dead almost ten years now. Just as Miss Emily refused to acknowledge the death of her father by keeping his body in the house with her until the town's people "were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and buried her father quickly" (31), she is now refusing to accept the death of Colonel Sartoris.