A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a story of a woman with the name of Emily Grierson. Faulkner’s use of this eccentric and bizarre character creates the chilling mood of the story. Emily is a southern spinster who lives a small town named Jefferson. Her father, a very controlling person, soon passes and Emily is left in grief. Emily becomes the town outcast and soon becomes controlling as her father. When a potential husband of Emily comes to town, Emily is determined to not let him out her sight. Throughout the story, Emily’s physiological and mental state clearly are not of an average person’s state. Her erratic motives, controlling attitudes and disturbing traits in Faulkner’s story ties in with the eerie, gothic literary tradition. Emily Grierson is a lonely, stubborn lady who thinks too highly of herself than to what she is actually credited for. Thinking that she was remitted from paying taxes, she persistently denies to pay them. Her house is even described as “stubborn and coquettish” (Faulkner, line 9-10). She also does not like change and chooses to keep traditions. For example, when Jefferson gets a new postal system, Emily refuses …show more content…
She knows that Homer will leave her and decides that even his dead body is enough to fulfill her. Even with Homer dead, Emily still loves him. Her feeling attracted to Homer’s dead body somewhat symbolizes her as a necrophiliac. Long after Emily’s death, the townspeople discover “that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head” and also “a long strand of irony-gray hair”(Faulkner, line 273). Even though there is no proof that Emily had a sexual relationship with Homer. Thomas Robert Argiro from the Mississippi Quarterly suggests that “her morbid behavior suggests a profound pathology that naturally raises serious doubts about her sanity.” She did sleep next to his dead body, which infers that she could have suffered from