Faulkner begins the story with Miss Emily's funeral, where the men see her as a ?fallen monument? and the women are anxious to see the inside of her house. He gives us a picture of a woman who has ?fallen?, yet is as important and symbolic as a ?monument.? The details of Miss Emily's house relate to her and symbolize what she stands for. It is set on ?what had once been the most select street.? The narrator (

Faulkner ?fast forwards? many years and the "newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town." The newer generation makes Miss Emily feel even more isolated. "When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it." Miss Emily refuses to let any change affect her life and her house. "Thus she passed from generation to generation-dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse."

The scrambling of time throughout the story is a great demonstration of the scrambling of time in Miss Emily's mind and in her house. By setting the story in an upscale, post Civil War town, he uses both the details of the setting and time to show what happens to women such as Miss Emily, the ?fallen monument.? Perhaps if the story of Miss Emily had been set in a different place, her life would have turned out differently. But with all the pressures from her father and the town's people, she became a very closed up and a rather frightening person. There were too many expectations of women in those days and Faulkner demonstrates the consequences of such a life through Miss Emily. Miss Emily's world was always in the past. As the town changes and progresses, grows and modernizes, Miss Emily's ?stubborn and coquettish? house remains the same. When she is threatened with desertion and disgrace, she not only takes refuge in that world but also takes Homer with her in the only manner possible--death. As a conclusion of Miss Emily's life and the story, her position in regard to the specific problem of time is suggested in the scene where the old soldiers appear at her funeral. ?The very old men-some in their brushed Confederate uniforms-on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as is she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression.? These men have lost their sense of time as well as Miss Emily. They hallucinate; they imagine events that may not have occurred; there is no sense of time in their minds. In a sense, this story tells us we should try to remember the past, not try to live in the past or the present may leave us behind. Miss Emily in some ways is a link to the past not to be forgotten. It is a past that the community is proud of. But because she is so out

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