A Rose for Emily Can you imagine being so lonely that you would do something unbelievable to prevent you from being alone? That is just what Miss Emily did. Miss Emily came from a wealthy family with a father who made decisions for her. He did not think the men that tried to date her were good enough for her, so he ran them off. John McDermott states, “In “A Rose for Emily,” Emily Grierson’s overbearing father forces her to live without love.” After her father died, Miss Emily became a loner. In "A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner uses Miss Emily’s funeral at the very beginning to show the separation between Miss Emily and the townspeople when he states, "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.” From there, the house, her servant, and the bad smell are used to symbolize her secluded life. Miss Emily’s inherited her house, but nothing else according to the narrator, “When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad.” She lived alone for many years, except for her servant. People moved out of the neighborhood over the years and finally Miss Emily’s run down house is the only one left on the street. This is noted early in the story, “But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores.” Gary Kriewald also references the isolation when he talks about Miss Emily refusal to accept improvements such as, “…without the address numbers on her door, she can receive no mail, no evidence from the outside world to alert her of the changes…” The fact that Miss Emily inherited only the house and it was the only one left on the street is another reference to Miss Emily’s loneliness. The only person that was allowed in and out of Miss Emily’s house was her servant. He is only described as the Negro, never by his name. He did not talk to anyone; however, he was there when anyone visited the home. The narrator describes his actions when the tax officials visit Miss Emily,
“They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray.”
The servant is also the one who opened the door to let everyone in after Miss Emily died as told at the end of the story, “The Negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.” Throughout the story, the servant is the lone reference to any relationship that resembles a friendship. Every now and then, the town officials visit Miss Emily to collect tax money and describe the smell in her house as “It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell.” This is about being closed in and alone. The women in the town also discuss a bad smell from the house because they assume it is not being properly cleaned. The servant is the only one they see at the store shopping and do not feel that men are good housekeepers as indicated by this conversation, "Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly, "the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.” The bad smell is an indication of loneliness or isolation because it is nature to stay away from something that smells bad. The only house left on the street, only one person in her life who was the servant and a bad smell are symbols of isolation. These things represent the loneliness that Miss Emily felt all of her life. The loneliness she felt led her to murder so that she would have a companion. Even the title of this story represents loneliness and isolation. Laura J. Getty states in her literary criticism, “In another sense, it might be the narrator offering a rose to Emily: either "as a final tribute" by preserving the secret of Homer's murder (Nebeker, "Emily's Rose" 9);…” Maybe that’s just what it is, one final tribute to overcoming her loneliness.

Works Cited
Getty, Laura J. "Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily.'" The Explicator 63.4 (2005): 230.
Kriewald, Gary L. “The Widow of Windsor and the Spinster of Jefferson: A Possible Source for Faulkner’s Emily Grierson.” The Faulkner Journal Fall (2003): 7.
McDermott, John A. “Do You Love Mother, Norman?”: Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Metalious’s Peyton Place as Sources for Robert Bloch’s Psycho.” The Journal of Popular Culture 40.3 (2007): 455.