By Any Other Name

The narrator in William Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily" reflects the views the story's community holds of a town spinster.  Emily Grierson was raised a member of Southern gentility.  The Civil War damaged the family fortunes, however, so that the Grierson house is left to "stubborn and coquettish decay...an eyesore among eyesores". <1>  Their fortunes may have declined, but the old Grierson pride still won't allow Emily, or her father, to accept marriage proposals for Emily they consider beneath them.

Thus, Emily is still without a husband at thirty.  Then her father dies.  The town that already felt that the Griersons "held themselves a little too high for what they really were", now savours a little schadenfreude.  "When her father died...in a way, people were glad. Being left alone, and a pauper she too would know...of a penny more or less".

II.

Without her father to wield a horsewhip (literally) to keep unmarital male advances in check, Emily develops an "interest" in a local labourer, Homer Barron.  The town is taken aback by Emily's actions, but really does not take them too seriously.  "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer".

Homer's not been taking his relations with Emily too seriously, either.  The town hears him remark "that he was not a marrying man".  Emily buys some poison, for "rats".  And the town chorus is, "She will kill herself; and we said it would be the best thing".  But Emily does not kill herself.  Homer Barron disappears.

III.        

Emily Grierson is first bound by the strictures of her upbringing, through the authority of her father. After her father's death, a binding in an other name follows, from a town community that considers her a "hereditary obligation", a "duty, and a care".  As Emily's been raised to internalize certain codes of conduct, so also  she is held to standards the community has set for a member of her class.  There is shrewd insight, and much artistry in Faulkner's treatment of this kind of double bind, as elsewhere, in "A Rose For Emily".
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<1>Faulkner, William. "A Rose For Emily". The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (1986).