The short story "A Rose for Emily" is set in the fictional town of Jefferson MS. This place exists only in the genius of William Faulkner. The story itself is the classic Southern Gothic horror story. The tale spans a period of thirty years and focuses on the fading youth, middle, and old age of Miss Emily Grierson. The story revolves around her character-one that is essential to all Southern Gothic horror stories-the insane, off-kilter individual, and she is revealed to be one of, if not the most insane characters essential to the plot.
Her family, the Griersons, is a once aristocratic Family of the old South, though now fallen on hard times and much decayed. “When her Father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper” (Faulkner 796). Their descent into extinction and madness is revealed in the narrative of Miss Emily’s Father driving away her would-be suitors with a horsewhip. “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip” (Faulkner 796). Her father dies in 1894 while she is still young but unmarried and has for once in her life faced penury.
Faulkner delves into and develops the theme of her decayed, unrealistic existence by incorporating into the story the tale of her unpaid taxes, which after her Fathers death she now owes but cannot pay. “ Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily’s father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying” (Faulkner 796). Colonel Sartoris, the mayor, has remitted them through this contrived tale, to save Miss Emily’s “honor.” Colonel Sartoris represents the mindset and values of an older, chivalric, ante-bellum generation. One which regarded Miss Emily as a “tradition...