Clearly Miss Emily is one of literature's unforgettable
characters, and in "A Rose for Emily" Faulkner presents her development through the eyes
of the townspeople where she lives, leaving us to deduce much about who she really
was.
Whilst her father was alive it is clear that Miss
Emily was victim to his tyrannical power. Note the lasting impression of the townspeople
of this part of her life:
We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss
Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in
the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the
back-flung front door.
The
description of her father as "a spraddled silhouette," clutching a horsewhip with which
to scare away any suitors clearly reveals the kind of father that he was and how he
forced his daughter to be remote and isolated from the rest of the
community.
The description of Miss Emily when the board
arrives is worthy of attention:
They rose when she entered - a small, fat woman
in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt,
leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare;
perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in
her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that
pallid hue.
Note how the
description of her confirms her authority, for the Board rose when she entered, but also
emphasises the sense in which she has been stranded in some past time which she is still
trapped in - she is compared to a corpse that has been in the sea for a long
time.
After the "disappearance" of Barron, this is when
Miss Emily begins to age:
When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat
and her hair was turning
grey.
Note that now Barron,
her true love, is dead, it is almost as if she has no need to live in the same sphere as
the townspeople any more - she has her beloved next to her, after
all.
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