Secondly, William Faulkner uses symbolic imagery to define and characterize Miss Emily Grierson. Faulkner uses symbolism to compare the Grierson house with Emily’s life. This is emphasized throughout the story by the description of her decayed environment, which represents Miss Emily’s growing physical deterioration her mental disintegration. Miss Emily’s life, like her decaying surroundings, suffers from the lack of progression and inadequate love and care. The external characteristics of Miss Emily’s house parallel her physical appearance to show the damage brought about by years of neglect. For example, the house is located in what was once a prominent neighborhood that has deteriorated. Originally white and decorated in “the heavenly lightsome style” of an earlier time, the house has become “an eyesore among eyesores” (Faulkner 75). Through lack of attention, the house has advanced from a beautiful representative of eloquence to an ugly holdover from another era. Similarly, Miss Emily has become an “eyesore”. For instance, she is described as a “fallen monument” (Faulkner 74) symbolizing her former beauty and later ugliness. Like the house, she has fallen from grace. It was apparent that “when she was young and part of the world with which she was contemporary” (West 149) she was described by the narrator as “a slender figure in white” (Faulkner 77). Later, she is described as obese and “bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water with eyes lost in the fatty ridges of her face” (Faulkner 75). Incidentally, both the house and Miss Emily have suffered the ravages of time and neglect.

story, but they are symbolic to American life in the South in that time.

William Faulkner presents a number of significant symbolic figures in the story. The one of most importance is none other than Emily Grierson. It is so, because, she symbolizes “the postbellum South which inherited the monstrous code of values, glossed over by fine words about honor and glory” (Madden 1988). Being part of the privileged aristocracy, she was proud of the status that her family name upheld; plantation owners, wealthy, high class and respected by all the towns people. Anyhow, it was evident to her that this era was fading and her life as well. The narrator, who is a representative of the townspeople, informs the reader that “She carried her head high enough—even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson;”(78) After analyzing the narrator’s words, the reader begins to understand that she has convinced herself that she still belongs to this non-existent privileged class and is deserving of its concession. Miss Emily believes that she does not have to abide by the new laws and codes that govern the town because she “is the conscious aristocrat and is consciously better than other people” (Brooks and Warren 158). This is proven when she lets the new Board of Aldermen know that she does not have to pay taxes because of Colonel Sartoris’s promise to her; a privilege that died along with him ten years before their visit to her home. Like many of the defeated upper class of the Deep South, “Miss Emily withdraws from the chronological time of reality into the timelessness of illusion” (Madden 1987). Again

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