Symbolism In A Rose For Emily

A Rose for Emily: The Heart of Southern Gothic On the backs of slaves, generations of Southern planters lived and died in opulence. After the Civil War, the wealthy plantation families of the South began to crumble and decay during the period known as Reconstruction. In A Rose for Emily, the reader witnesses the fall from grace by Emily, the last daughter of the once wealthy Grierson family. The Griersons were a slaving family and part of the ruling class in the antebellum South. The Griersons, especially Mr. Grierson, refused to understand or acknowledge their loss of power and status after the Civil War, ensuring the destruction of their own house and name. Emily was traumatized growing up under the will of a man who enacted psychological …show more content…
In the fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, they owned an elaborate house that was very symbolic of their status and importance in the area. The house falls into disrepair some time after the Griersons have spent the last of their remaining wealth. They would not downgrade or live differently after their slaves were freed, and continued to live as they had before. Exhibiting utter ignorance to their material situation, the family went broke. The patriarch of the family, Mr. Grierson died some three decades after the war. He left only his daughter Emily to survive him, and with her the Grierson name would die. The Mayor of Jefferson, an old confederate named Colonel Sartoris, remits her taxes because he is too proper and old-fashioned to allow Emily to be bankrupted and lose what little she has left to her. “When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.” (1275) The only other occupant of the house who remained was a servant named Tobe who was undoubtedly too traumatized to leave with the other slaves when they were emancipated. Tobe and Emily had Mr. Grierson in common, and they died shells of human beings for

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