Gothic North-South Relations in A Rose for Emily Anonymous College

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” consists of two stories working simultaneously. The first story is a gothic story about a woman who kills her husband and spends decades sleeping with the corpse. The second story is about the collapse of the Old South and the inability of the South to cope with the changes which are coming upon it. Both stories center on Emily Grierson. In the first story, Emily is a monstrous person who plays out the crazy woman in the attic scenario. In the second story, Emily is a symbol of Southern history which cannot adapt to the time and only grows steadily more insane.

In the gothic story, Emily is the classic woman with the secret. The story begins with her death after ten years of hiding away in her house with only her man-servant as company. In the first chapter, Emily is described as an “obligation on the town” (1273) and the narrator gives over an anecdote about her refusing to pay her taxes and not even comprehending that she needs to pay taxes. Her man-servant (who is never named anything but “the Negro”) shows them out.

This leads the narrator to the second vignette where the woman and her man-servant lead an isolated life that is disturbed by a rank odor coming from the house. “They broke...