Although damaged by the past, the turn-of-the century South had a tendency to look back toward a familiar era rather than face a future of change. The fear of change often kept the South from progressing. In "A Rose for Emily,"" William Faulkner explores a similar unwillingness to change with the character of Emily Grierson. For Miss Emily, there is no progression. She is the last vestige of an old and rapidly disappearing way of Southern life. She lives in the small, Southern town of Jefferson that is rapidly changing, but she stands immovable "unwilling to go along with the changes around her. Miss Emily refuses to pay taxes, denies her father's death, and locks herself away in her house with her dead lover's body in an attempt to keep out the changes in her life.
The first evidence of Miss Emily's unwillingness to change is seen in her confrontation with the town of Jefferson's Board of Aldermen over her taxes. Miss Emily is adamant that Colonel Sartoris, the mayor of Jefferson in 1894, pardoned her taxes. However, "When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction- (Faulkner 242). The arrangement Miss Emily has with the dead Colonel is suddenly unacceptable, and the townspeople attempt to collect their money. Yet, as shown in the passage below, Miss Emily is unwilling to change her previous arrangement:.
On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and .
there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter asking her to call at the .
sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her .
himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a .
note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded .
ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also.
enclosed, without comment. (242).
