In the Old South and times only known in history book, women were involved with courtship love and faithfulness to only one lover. This is the reason why Miss Emily has a great fear of rejection and abandonment. Because of this time period, she was attached to her father until the day he died. It is probably because her father is the only person she is closed to. She does not understand death, a literally and figuratively theme throughout the story ("A Rose for Emily-). The narrator carefully reveals that Miss Emily keeps her father's body for three days before she finally breaks down and "just as they were about to resort to law and force- to remove his body (Faulkner 94/ P28). This scene foreshadows the horror discovery at the end of the story when "they- found her lover's corpse ("A Rose for Emily-). After her funeral, the townspeople have an opportunity to access her bedroom above the stairs which no one had seen in forty years. There, they found the "fleshless grin- of "the body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace,"" the corpse of her lover Homer Barron (Faulkner 98/ P59). Next to it is the second pillow with indentation of a head and "a long strand of iron-gray hair- (Faulkner 98/ P60). Although Faulkner did not write straight out, readers automatically understand that Miss Emily has been sleep with the corpse for years. With several flashbacks, the confusion between obsession and love have motivated Miss Emily to poison her lover. Perhaps, this is the only way she can keep a Yankee construction foreman beside her for forty years. Why does Miss Emily behave that way? The answer revolves around the resistant of time and memory (Akers 2). Like Miss Emily, women around that historical time period were very formidable and obsessed with love. An example is the great American female poet Emily Dickinson, who was born a generation before Miss Emily.
