The Importance of Time in "A Rose for Emily"
In "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, the author gives the reader a finished puzzle, and then allows the reader to put the pieces together and examine the puzzle piece by piece. George L. Dillon writes, "it seems possible to establish a chronology of the story that orders all of its major incidents, though it is very difficult to do so" (551) refering to Faulkner's style of randomizing the events of Miss Emily's life. By doing so, he uses the element of time to enhance the details of setting and Miss Emily's life.
Faulkner begins the story with Miss Emily's funeral, where the men see her as a "fallen monument" and the women are anxious to see the inside of her house. The house is set on what had once been the most select street. The narrator describes the house as "...lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps" (532). The cotton gins and garages have long obliterated the neighborhood, but Miss Emily's house remains. A further look at Miss Emily's life, we realize the importance of the setting in which the story takes place. The house in which she lives remains static and unchanged as the town progresses. Inside the walls of her home, Miss Emily conquers time and progression. In the first section, Faulkner takes us back to the time when Miss Emily refused to pay her taxes. She insists that she has no taxes in Jefferson and completely rejects her responsibility to the town by telling them, "I have no taxes in Jefferson" (533). The men are "...brought to a stumbling halt and can do nothing when confronted with her refusal to engage in rational discourse" (Judith Fetterley 562). As the town changes and its people change, Miss Emily has been able to put a halt on time. In her mind, the Colonel is still alive although he has been dead for almost ten years. When the deputation waits upon her, we get a glimpse of her decaying house. "It smelled of dust and disuse…It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture….On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father" (532). The description of Miss Emily's house is very haunting. There is no life or motion in the house, everything appears to be decaying. The picture of her father is just another symbol of immobility and no sense of time. When he died, Miss Emily refused to acknowledge his death. Miss Emily stopped time, at least in her mind.
