Town's Treatment Of Miss Emily example essay topic

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant a combined gardener and cook had seen in at least ten years. This is the first sentence in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily, in it he sets up the main cross-cultural relationship that is portrayed in this short story. Below I am going to discuss this cross-cultural relationship that Faulkner illustrates in this story and show how he illustrated it. The main cross-cultural relationship depicted is the old south vs. the new south. As pointed out above, Faulkner sets up this cross-cultural relationship in the first sentence of A Rose for Emily. In the first sentence, as with the entire short story, the old South is personified in the character of Emily Grierson and the new South in the men and women of the town of Jefferson.

Emily is the last person alive from the era of the old South, and since she was isolated from early childhood, she has retained all of the ideals from that period. She was born into a wealthy plantation owning family shortly after the Civil War, where her father maintained that she was only to be wed to another person of their stature. The problem was though, that by the time she was of age there were no other plantation owning families around, and in fact their own plantation had dwindled and her family was in financial difficulty as well. She was a true southern bell.

What Faulkner does here to illustrate this cross-cultural relationship is he juxtaposes Emily's character to the growing town of Jefferson. Jefferson is a town that has moved on from the days of slavery, and in fact has moved onto the former sight of the Grierson's plantation. During the period of this story, sometime near the turn of the nineteenth century, this small town is in the process of becoming a growing city, complete with sidewalks and all. Faulkner uses mainly the interaction of these two entities to illustrate this cross-cultural relationship. For instance, in the opening sentence of this short story we have the entire town at the scene of Miss Emily's funeral, and half of it is there in reverence to a fallen monument. The new South, the town, is fascinated with the old South.

It is not that they would like to return to the way things were, but they miss the ideals and pride exhibited by Miss Emily. This relationship is also portrayed, and maybe more so, in the town's treatment of Miss Emily. When her father dies the town is very sympathetic towards her position. And when Emily begins her relationship with Homer Barron, the town looks down upon it at first, since Homer is just a common man and a Northerner, but as time goes on they support her and hope for her happiness in marriage. But these attitudes of the town can be contrasted with its feelings towards her when she refuses to pay her taxes, and they wanted to get rid of the awful smell that was emitting from her house. In both cases the town's opinions of her were very negative.

But like the mayor at the time of the stink said, what were they to do. They couldn t just go and tell her. So in conclusion Miss Emily and the town of Jefferson personify the cross-cultural relationship of the old South and the new South, and Faulkner uses this juxtaposition of personifications to enrich and bring meaning to his short story, A Rose for Emily.