Denying Change in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

William Faulkner’s, “A Rose for Emily,” is a short story about a woman of enduring character. Miss Emily uses the past to exert her will over the townspeople of Jefferson. She possesses an unrelenting outlook towards life, and she refuses to change. Miss Emily is from a well to do family, which has long since lost its fortune, but not its aristocratic thinking and bearing. She holds herself aloof from the rest of the …showed first 75 words of 753 total…

…showed last 75 words of 753 total…hard for the townspeople to accept this because they live in the present and think that change is good. By Miss Emily’s refusal to accept the town’s modernization, she has kept them from fully leaving their pasts behind. With her death comes an end to an era that will soon be long forgotten. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town...” (29).