William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

In A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner talks about Emily, a southern woman from a rich family and her struggles in keeping tradition over the radical change that her area and her life is going through. Also, Faulkner expresses how trying to live in the past while the world is in development can lead to mental diseases like the psychologically disease that Emily developed through her life. The story is a reflection of the gothic fiction which is full of mysteries, assumptions, and transformations and that makes the story a good example of the gothic literature. Throughout the story, many gothic elements are represented to support and strengthen the story. The gothic element that is over take the story is Death. Faulkner success in presenting Emily’s life through flashbacks where first

He equals her to a drowned woman by saying “She looked bloated, like a body long sub-merged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue” (Faulkner 34). Also, Emily’s house is just like her, a dying monument that represents the shadows of southern aristocracy. The narrator describes it as an extension of the past and is the only one that is left in a present neighborhood where cotton gins and garages take place. Moreover, death continue to appear through the story, however this time with the mental disorder that Emily developed. Faulkner description of Emily’s mental disorder is completely mysterious and it is till the end of the story where the reader can understand it and that reinforce the story. Her illness perhaps started when her father died because she denied his death. She refuses to give up his body and the narrator explained that “Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly” (Faulkner 36) and this was the first sign of necrophilia diseases which develop a bizarre relationship to dead bodies. Moreover, her mental disorder worsen with time and that what leads her to kill Homer, a man