A rose for Emily is a symbolic short story about love and death that depicts Emily’s life and the life of the old South. Murder, necrophilia and gradual decay of the old south are used in the story to symbolize Emily’s life, to be similar to that of the South after it was defeated in the civil war. She loved the dead, and her life became desperate, her love for Homer made her murder him ending up sleeping with his corpse for years just so she would not lose him. She was not happy; the same way a plantation life withers dies and becomes a memory, she faded from real life, even though she was still living physically, everything that mattered in her life had passed away. The way Emily 's father stands in the doorway is described as "Amid the pointing and the horror, the clean flame.” Her father stood by the door’s path blocking Emily’s would be suitors from accessing her because he believed they were not good enough for her daughter. This sets the stage for his daughter loneliness. Throughout William Faulkner’s “a rose for Emily” he uses the house, Emily’s hair, and the rose to portray change and decay.
The house in which she lives with her father embodies decay and was like a prison in which she was locked and suitor bared from accessing her. The house was their family monument, a representation of the old south depicting bet of the days gone and how change gradually took place (Magher, 2018). Just like Emily, the house is used to describe Emily 's inner state as fresh,