A Rose for Emily

A Rose for Emily tells of a woman named Emily Grierson who lived in the south where rigid class structure determined the expectations regarding a person’s behavior and society’s treatment of them. Emily was the daughter of a rich upper class man who was quite influential in the community of Jefferson, so it was expected that the community respect his daughter, Emily. She did not pay property taxes because of the past favors …

…upon her and she did not attempt to change her lifestyle. Eventually she sunk deeper and deeper into a world of insanity. The discovery that she had kept the bodies of her loved ones in the house did not diminish the townspeople’s feelings of obligation so they attended her funeral in numbers and buried her among the “ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.” ( p. 28)