Meghan Vidrine
Dr. Fontenot
English 1002, Section 05
30 April 2013
Miss Emily Grierson William Faulkner makes it very clear in his short story, “A Rose for Emily,” who the protagonist of his story is. Within the first few paragraphs of the story, we can tell that Miss Emily Grierson was not an ordinary woman of her times. It is said in paragraph two that “no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron.” However, Miss Emily was not like the other women. The mayor of the town had “remitted her taxes.” From this moment, it is known that this is an eccentric woman. According to Random House Webster’s Dictionary, eccentric simply means “unconventional, as in behavior; odd” (223). As the story continues, it becomes known …show more content…

Not long after Miss Emily bought the arsenic, it seemed that Homer Baron had returned home. Many thought Miss Emily was going to kill herself. At this time, it was thought that it was better for a woman to be dead rather than be “fallen” (94). As weeks passed, people continued seeing her servant Toby bringing goods to her home, so they knew that she had not killed herself. It is not known what Miss Emily used the poison for until the end of the story after she died at seventy-four. When the townspeople went to her home to have the funeral, they began looking through the house. They found a room decorated ornate as if for a wedding. This is when it became known what Miss Emily’s last illegal act was. In the bed, they find Homer Baron’s dead body, which looks like it had been there for forty years and she had been sleeping with it. In Faulkner’s story, “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily was always thought of as a very different person compared to the culture in the south. According to Charles Hannon in Faulkner and the Discourses of Culture, “Faulkner’s novels are all deeply saturated with the contingencies of southern history” (21). She was able to get away with things her entire life that not even a white male was allowed to do. Miss Emily always thought she could do as she pleased and was above social and legal laws in Jefferson. She refused to pay her taxes, purchased poison without saying what it was for, and got away with murder. Miss Emily is one