So what's this I hear about a rose for Emily?

Told through the eyes of what's understood to be the townsfolk, "A Rose for Emily" can be considered basically a collection of gossip stories accumulated through different periods of Emily's life. In the first paragraph Faulkner writes, "...our whole town went to her funeral: the men...for a fallen monument, the women...to see the inside of her house..." Emily was framed up and forced by the people of her town to be the picturesque symbol of the "Old South." In a way it was as if she was born into this life that was already laid out in front of her step by step; through the eyes of the townsfolk that is. In paragraph 25 Faulkner voices through the women of the town, "So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly." Emily refused to lead the life her local society so strongly thought she ought to have. She secluded to a private life in her home to get away from her judgmental neighbors. Consequently too long of a secluded life destroyed her social skills and slowly sent her into a quiet psychotic bliss. She was unable to keep a stable relationship and when it seemed as though the love of her life was going to leave her she, in her state of psychosis, poisoned him and preserved his body to spend with her night after night :-)