Essay On A Rose For Emily Grierson

Miss Emily Grierson, one of the most interesting characters the town of Jefferson has ever known. The story begins at her funeral, the town grieving over their beloved Miss Emily, but they’re mainly only there to discover what secrets have been hidden in the walls of her home for so many years. Emily came from a troubled home, she had no mother around and her father held their family to such esteem that he never thought any of the men who came to court Emily were good enough. So, leading a lonely life with only her butler around, Miss Emily rarely went out or contacted many people. She became an “obligation” with the town when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor in 1894, remitted her taxes. Emily never had to pay taxes again in her life even though the new generation of aldermen who followed knew she owed years of taxes. “I have no taxes in Jefferson,” she continually proclaimed to the new generation.

Despite the slaves being emancipated and the North winning the Civil War, the south still hung on to their old traditions. “The South’s outdated plantation economy, based so long upon slave labor, was devastated by emancipation. Northern opportunists, known as ‘carpetbaggers,’ came in droves to take advantage of the economic chaos” (“A Rose for Emily”). Miss Emily still had a black servant named Tobe, which is somewhat representative of the South’s need to hang on to the past. The tension between North and South is shown in the town’s reaction to Homer and Emily’s relationship. Miss Emily’s opinions can be inferred in what the townspeople were saying about her and Homer Barron. “At first, we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, ‘Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer’” (A Rose for Emily). This demonstrates the thought process of the town as an older, aristocratic woman who is stuck in her antebellum beliefs would not think to even be acquainted with a Northern carpet