The contrast the narrator draws between changing reality and Emily’s refusal and ability to recognize change.

The theme of the gap between generations is clear in this story. Miss Emily is stuck in the time of Colonel Sartoris and his contemporaries. Her inability to adapt to change is demonstrated not only in her refusal to pay taxes after Colonel Sartoris remitted them, but by her refusal to have a mailbox when free postal delivery becomes available to the town. "Thus she passed from generation to generation - dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse."