English II
Period X
9/12/2023
“A Rose for Emily” Sample Essay
Social conservatism is the belief that the traditions and moral values of the past should be
uplifted, while any sudden social or cultural changes should be viewed with suspicion– naturally,
many Americans with generational wealth often subscribe to social conservatism as an ideology.
After all, if one has accumulated money from parents, grandparents, and ancestors, any social
change could lead to economic change, and why change if society and its economy are already
benefiting them? In this way, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” demonstrates how Miss
Emily’s former-elite status influences her downfall: because Emily stubbornly refuses to
contribute to her town as it evolves into the 20th century, and instead litters her home with aging
relics of the past, both living and dead.
Even when the townspeople attempt to involve Miss Emily through economic and social
tasks, she firmly refuses to help the town grow and change. When city officials visit her property
to inquire about her missing tax payments, Emily proclaims that she “[has] no taxes in
Jefferson”, and refers them to Colonel Sartoris for any questions (Faulkner 10-15). Unbeknownst
to her, Colonel Sartoris died 10 years prior, and the text implies that Sartoris remitted these taxes
for biased reasons, as he was the mayor who “fathered the edict that no Negro woman should
appear on the streets without an apron” (Faulker 3). Her family benefitted from clear institutional
racism for years, and now that the town wishes to remedy this via her contributing payments for
her taxes, she chooses to ignore her tax notice in December, letting it be returned to the post
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office “unclaimed” (Faulkner 52). Miss Emily, through her behavior, believes that her social and
economic status in Jefferson are the same as they were in 1894, despite the town moving forward
towards modernity with fair taxation and a standardized postal service. The townspeople, in turn,
begin to pity her and gossip about her relationships– the exact opposite of the reverent respect
that the Griersons received in the past, and thus she falls from grace into a town “obligation”
(Faulkner 3). With her name in the mud, Emily Grierson retreats into her ancestral home to rot
away.
Her ancient plantation house, too, allows the reader insight into her previous status and
eventual fall from grace. The outside of her house and its “once been white” walls sit among a
sea of “cotton wagons and… gasoline pumps”, those fixtures of a modern era highlighting how
truly bygone her family’s heyday is (Faulker 2). The innards of her locked rooms tell the same
tale in more macabre detail. Her father’s “crayon portrait” still hangs on the wall, once beautiful
silver is now “tarnished” , and, most importantly of all, her former lover’s corpse lays “rotted” in
Emily’s bed where she sleeps beside him every night (Faulkner 57-59). Rather than let Homer
Barron disappear from her life, Emily Grierson chooses to instead poison her ‘lover’ with arsenic
and let him degrade by her side until she too passes away. Both the external and internal features
of her plantation home speak to Miss Emily’s inability to accept her status change from wealthy
to impoverished, and, rather than adapt, her upbringing as a wealthy man’s daughter influences
her to let all she holds dear decompose.
Through a combination of Miss Emily’s intense reluctance to involve herself with her
fellow townspeople and her desire to preserve artifacts of the past in her home, her fixation on
her social and economic status brings about her downfall. When people begin to prioritize what
is comfortable for them rather than adapt to adversities, they will either live isolated lives adrift
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from their neighbors and peers, or worse, act on harmful desires to reinforce their own
worldview. Conservative impulses to halt progress never truly succeed– time continues to march
on into the future. Faulkner, through the character of Miss Emily, represents the dangers of
longing for a ‘simpler time’ in the South: pre-war society will never return, while the plantation
era that rich whites benefited from remains in shambles. Attempting to return to those times
compares to lying in bed with a corpse of a former companion: their body will never leave you,
yet their soul, the warmth of the Old South, will never return.
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