In Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," Emily's refusal to let
go of her past is analogous to the South's refusal to let go of its pre-Civil War glory.
Using Emily, her house, and her compact with death as symbols for the South's morbid
denial, Faulkner shows that the Old South is a corrupt and decaying culture with many
skeletons in its closet.
Miss Emily is a victim of the
patriarchal and Southern debutante culture of the Antebellum South. Her father was
aristocracy and paid no taxes; therefore, Miss Emily likewise refuses. In her family's
eyes, taxes are paid to the North, and the South has had a long history of not paying
taxes or labor (slavery) to Washington bureaucrats.
Not
only does Emily want to hold on to her father's legacy and exemptions, but she wants to
hold on to his body--out of fear and denial. She feels protected by the name and
reputation he affords her. Why would she want to get married? She is, effectively,
married to her father (a kind of Electra complex).
As a
Souther woman, however, Miss Emily knows she must get married; otherwise, she will
become an "old maid," the worst moniker afforded to a Southern Belle. So, she marries
the antithesis of a Southern gentleman: Homer Baron, a Northerner who is gay. She
marries him not to escape public rumor, but as a kind of revenge against the North and a
means to seclude herself from society. Again, she hides behind the protection of the
male. This time, however, she refuses to give up his
body.
So, just as the South was reluctant to give up its
institutions (slavery, agrarian culture, Southern belles, patriarchal aristocracy), so
too is Emily reluctant to cede her past.
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