A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a short story in which it could see reflected the influence of the author's life. Faulkner spent the major part of his life in the South of United States of America, thus; his writings were about people and issues that took place there (Towner 2008). Although the story is fictional, the setting, the characters and the context which are developed are a portrayal of the time and place in which the author grew up. Therefore, the analysis of this story is going to be focused toward a biographical and historical approach. According to "A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature: Fourth Edition", the Historical-Biographical approach: ".sees a literary work chiefly, if not exclusively, as a reflection of the author's life and times or the life and times of the characters in the work" (Guerin, 22). Understanding the social life of a certain time can give the reader a greater knowledge base to understand the story. Since there is a connection between "A Rose for Emily" story and the Author, the author's biography is going to be briefly reviewed in this work.
William Cuthbert Faulkner was a writer who was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897. He belonged to a wealth family that lost its richness after civil war like other prospers southern. Faulkner moved to Oxford, Mississippi where he grew up and developed as a writer (The European Graduated School web site 2012). Teresa Towner in her book "The Cambridge Introduction to William Faulkner" states that Faulkner's great grandfather, called for many people as "the Colonel" had a great influence on Faulkner's imagination and perception of the South, she also states: "in his fiction, subconsciously and on purpose, Faulkner used the materials of his life in very subtle, often tertiary ways" which is something it could be noticed in the short story "A Rose for Emily".