The story's opening lines announce the funeral of Miss Emily, to be held in her homenot in a churchand the reasons for the entire town's attending-the men out of respect for a Southern lady, the women to snoop inside her house. Her death symbolizes the passing of a genteel way of life, which is replaced by a new generation's crass way of doing things. The narrator's description of the Grierson house reinforces the disparity between the past and the present: Once a place of splendor, now modern encroachmentsgas pumps and cotton wagonsobliterate most of the neighborhood and leave untouched only Miss Emily's house, with its "stubborn and coquettish decay."
This clash between the past and the present is evidenced by the different approaches that each generation takes concerning Miss Emily's taxes. In the past, Colonel Sartoris had remitted them for her, believing it uncivilized to remind a Southern woman to pay taxes, which Miss Emily does not do after her father dies. But......
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Approximate Word Count: 455
Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |