Women Exposed In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

“A Rose For Emily” serves to denounce the culture of how women were treated and what was expected of them in the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century and most centuries preceding, it was all but expected for women to stay at home and take care of the house and children. Leaving the house was a liberty reserved only for the rarest occasions. Women were isolated and not treated as equals to men and in some cases, not even as adults. It is now common knowledge that this behavior can be detrimental to the mind and health of a person. If a woman became depressed or developed a mental issue because of this lifestyle, as it is now known is a very common side effect, it was approached as a “woman’s issue” and that their frail minds cannot stand by themselves.

Faulkner makes Emily’s flaws abundantly clear from the start of the story. The first sentence, “the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of the house, which no one save an old manservant-a combined gardener and cook--had seen in the last ten years” (Faulkner 517) serves to describe Emily as an outsider and sort of outcast before the story really even starts. Faulkner uses Emily to capture an extreme version of what he saw a little of in all women. One example of Emily’s differentness is her dating of Homer. Faulkner describes Homer as an outsider the first time we meet him, “Homer Barron-a big, dark, ready man” (Faulkner 520). Emily comes from a very high and mighty family in which it is not expected