"A Rose for Emily" and Deception

Paper Summary:

This paper explores several different facades of the Southern town in William Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily". It discusses Emily's mask in the face of the townspeople and their own blind ignorance of her past and activities.

From the Paper:

"Fearfully venerated by the populace of this small Southern town, Emily presents a strong, independent front at all times, whether being waited on at the drugstore while purchasing arsenic or refusing to pay the town taxes. "We had long thought of them as a tableau"(77), says the narrator. "Thus she passed from generation to generation dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse" (80). Rather than tell her to take care of the putrid smell emanating from her house, a group of men snuck around after dark, sprinkling lime in an attempt to combat the odor; rather than force her to pay taxes, they bent to her belief that Colonel Sartoris had forever waived them. Half the town turned out for her funeral, due as much to curiosity about seeing the interior of her mysterious house than any harboring of warm feelings for the deceased. She presented a united front, a formidable front, a false front."

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