The Importance Of A House In Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

A Rose for Emily; A House Lost in Time In Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily”, the character Emily lived in a house that was described as once being a grand house that once brought pride but now it is an “eyesore among eyesores”. Faulkner described this house suffering from “coquettish decay”, he wrote it in such a way that the reader can only imagine a beautiful southern home that is falling apart. With scratches in the floorboards and the windows cracked, and cobwebs everywhere. You could almost imagine the columns on the front porch that were once painted whiter than a piece of paper fading and rotting away, no longer able to bring smiles to the faces of people passing by. The moss, hanging from the trees almost touching the overgrown grass,

Faulkner wanted the reader to see the aging in the house because he wanted for it to resemble the rise and fall of slavery itself. The resemblance was more prominent near the end of the story when Miss Emily dies and the house is at its worst. Residents of the town rush in and uncover the secrets that lay within the old house. Just as when the south lost in the war and citizens of the nation started to uncover the secrets of slavery in the south. As stated in Tell about the south; voices in black and white, there were 2 blacks to 1 white person in the south and now they had to figure out how to live as equals throughout their lives. The house also resembles the ideology of slavery and as long as the house stands there are still people within Faulkner's town. The country that still believe in the old southern ways. Faulkner’s attitude towards this is that the house gives off a sense of desperation while the townspeople look down on the house with a sense of