What is Kept too Long

There are largely two kinds of rule-breakers or convention-shakers in the world, those who are too ahead of their time, and those who are too behind. In A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, it's the story of a person stuck in the past, which causes problems with modern convention and reality. Miss Emily lives unbound by rules of current society. She doesn't want to pay her taxes because she hadn't had to before: "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves." She says with a stern, dry voice. The mention of the city records implies that this was a long-ago established write-off, probably not one that exists for her anymore. She doesn't even consider the town Sheriff really the Sheriff. She probably only associates the job title with the previous Sheriff, the Sheriff of her prime. Miss Emily refuses to comply with convention not because she believes there needs to be a change, but because she hates the change that has occurred.

Emily hides from life after the death of her father and the mysterious "disappearing" of her sweetheart. She locks herself in her house, a relic in itself of the past, and clings to whatever memories she has stored in there, whatever routines, untarnished by the slowly modernizing outside world. In her neighborhood, which was once the finest neighborhood, only her house remains among the newly sprouted gins and mills. This historic, immaculately built place is isolated, cut off from the surrounding town. It's arrogant in this way, but also sad, lonely. Like Emily herself, who refuses to conform. The house being a manifestation of her ideals, she has chosen to remain standing immaculate among the newness, as an old relic.

Faulkner then takes this motif and puts a spin on it. If we are to see Emily's house as a manifestation of her ideas, than we have to take note of that hideous smell, the product of a dark secret. We find out that Emily has kept her "sweetheart" in her house rotting away for years. Perhaps she didn't want to be alone, maybe she was obsessed, but either way, there's a body in a bed in a room that hasn't been opened in forty years. Two old relics, Miss Emily and her home, are the keepers of a dead man; the cradlers of death itself. Sure, the house is filling up with the stench of a dying body, but Faulkner wants to imply that so is Emily. This obsession that has led Emily to keep the body in a locked-off room, is the same obsession that keeps her from interacting in a forward-moving world. There's not just a hint of Emily's past life within her, it's dead inside her, and she reeks of it.

This all may sound disgusting, and Faulkner probably intended it to in some way, but in another, we have to take note that this "stench" is not coming from someone who was an evil person in Emily's eyes, it's coming from a body that held a soul that Emily loved. In some way, we all hold on to some form of nostalgia. Some people talk about "the good old days" some talk about "the glory days" some talk about college days, some about childhood, but whatever the day or moment of life or time period people subscribe to, they are ignoring the present. The constant ignorance of present only leads to stagnation, to decay, wether or not the love for it is sweet and true.