Acceptance In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

Letting go in life is one of the hardest tasks to overcome. In A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner takes readers back in a journey through time through the eyes of the citizens of a small and decaying Mississippi town, post- Civil War. Miss Emily is a woman of the town who seems to be stuck in her own concept of time, and refuses to let go of her past. A Rose for Emily is a tale of a woman who refuses to accept change, and the refusal of acceptance is shown through the death of Homer Barron, the death of Miss Emily’s father, and the decay of Miss Emily’s house that she simply will not leave. In A Rose for Emily, Emily Grierson was courting with a man named Homer Barron, and readers can see her refusal to accept time through her relationship
with Homer Barron and the way Miss Emily acts after Homer so mysteriously disappears. Miss Emily had been dating, or courting Homer Barron for quite some time, and all of the townspeople just knew for sure that they would get married. Miss Emily and Homer Barron would go on horse and buggy rides every Sunday afternoon. “Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove,” (Faulkner 304). In this scene, the readers can envision a beautiful couple who is not afraid to flaunt their money, and they are simply enjoying their fine life riding in the buggy every Sunday. Miss Emily, at this time, is the talk of the town and the picture of a beautiful life: the handsome and rich boyfriend, the beautiful house, and of course, the horse and buggy. This is until she decides to go out and buy a monogrammed men’s toiletry set with H.B. initials on it, and a nightshirt. This is when suspicion arises that Miss Emily and Mr. Barron are getting married. Shortly thereafter, Homer Barron disappeared for about a week, then returned. Homer returned, and one of Miss Emily’s neighbors saw “the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one evening,” (Faulkner 304). After the admittance, Homer was never seen again. This is when Miss Emily had killed Homer and it was found out later on that she had been sleeping with Mr. Barron’s body for nearly thirty years. This shows audience that Miss Emily is so far out of touch with time that she is sleeping with the corpse of her almost lover right next to her every night. This also shows that Miss Emily did not want to change the fact that Homer was gone, so instead of letting others know and having a funeral, she decided to have their own wedding and killed him, that way she would for sure have him forever. “The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt…” (Faulkner 306). Basically, Miss Emily did not want Homer to ever leave her so she bought him the suit, nightshirt, and toiletry set and had her own personal wedding, then killed him so that they could be together for the rest of her life. Miss Emily wanted nothing to change and she refused to accept the change, so she took matters into her own hands so that Homer Barron would be hers until the end of time. The death of Miss Emily’s father had also shown that Miss Emily did not want to accept the change of time, and she refused to admit it for three whole days that her father was gone.
Everyone in the town just whispered and said “Poor Emily,” because her father had left her with the house, but no money at all. “She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance of those angels in colored church windows- sort of tragic and serene,” (Faulkner 302). Miss Emily cut her hair, which the townspeople describe as it making her look younger, like her youth days when her father was still alive. When her father passed away, all of the ladies of the town called her and told her that they were sorry for her loss, and her response was that he was not gone. The people had to wait three days for her to come to realization that her father was gone, just so that they could take his body and bury him quickly. Miss Emily was living in the shadows of her overbearing father the entire time that he was alive, and once he was dead and gone, Miss Emily was beside herself. This is showing that Miss Emily is once again in denial and not wanting to accept reality and
change. The final example of Miss Emily not having a concept of time and not wanting to accept the change in her life is her house which she lives in.
Once, the house was the most beautiful house on her street. After Miss Emily’s father had passed away, her house grew up with ivy and started to decay. Miss Emily was basically a hermit, so she did not keep up on the maintenance of her own home. “It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street,” (Faulkner 299). Time and life happened, and Miss Emily did not keep up on this house, so “Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps- an eyesore among eyesores,” (Faulkner 299). Emily did not care about the way her house looked after her father had passed away, although it was the only thing that he had left to her. She was basically confined into her home, and she was comfortable because she did not have to step out and face time passing or see all of the change that she knew was happening in the town. Her home was her safe haven, but eventually time took its toll on even the white spires and balconies. A Rose for Emily teaches readers that change is one of the hardest things in life to except; especially the change of time. Miss Emily Grierson had struggled with the change of time with her relationship
with Homer Barron, her father’s death, and time taking over her own home. It is so difficult to accept the fact that time does not wait for anyone and that life will fly by if you don’t stop and take it in. Miss Emily had issues grasping this subject, and through A Rose for Emily, readers realize that there comes a time to let everything go and that it is okay to accept change.