A Rose For Emily

Emily’s Solitude In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner creates a lonely character, Emily Grierson, separated from her community by her wealth, her status as a single woman, and other differences. Emily’s isolation played a role in her destruction. "A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight of ten years earlier," is what the townspeople gossiped about (Faulkner, 716). "We …

…forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting,"(Faulkner, 721). This shows that most of her life Emily was alone and once she had someone the townspeople wanted her to be confined again. This could be why she killed Homer and slept by his decomposing body for over forty years. It also shows that during this long period of isolation she must have lost her mind and that drove her to her sad and lonely ending.