Social hierarchy was important among the wealthy of the south. Male dominance among southern living led daughters and wives to be more of a trophy for their fathers and husbands. They dressed and lived to display their social class and were not to associate with people less than themselves. A woman’s job was to please the male figure of the house and often time this was never enough. Throughout adolescence and your growing years you long for relationships both through friendship and romantic interests. Lacking in these can leave you emotionally downtrodden and yearning for attention. Isolation and retreating from social activity can occur when one has been disconnected from society. William Faulkner’s portrayal of the quickly changing southern lifestyle in the short story, “A Rose for Emily,” poignantly describes Emily's isolation and eventual social and physical decline through the use of symbolism.
Throughout the short story, “A Rose for Emily” a gradual change in Mrs. Emily’s character can been paralleled with t
There are several key symbolic events that lead to Emily’s eventual downfall. The first of these events would be that of her father’s death. Emily’s father did not allow her to court with the young men of Jefferson. Though Emily seemed to be just a trophy of her fathers, she loved and respected him. When he died she kept his lifeless body in her house for three days, trying to cling to the past. Mrs. Emily knew that without her father her social standing among the community would decline and waste away to nothing. A second key event was when Mrs. Emily discovered that she would never be wed to Homer for it was know that “…he was not a marrying man”(535). Once again Mrs. Emily was denied the love of another man and as a result she poisoned him to keep him in her grasp. She did not want to loose him as she had lost her father years before. With the death of Homer, Emily refused to leave her house. The people of Jefferson never saw her in public and she slowly began to waste away among the confines of her rotting estate.
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