“A Rose for Emily” is a short story by William Faulkner centered around Emily Grierson and her town’s perceptions of her. The story is split into five sections, each of which focuses on Emily’s life in different parts of her life, according to what the townspeople have seen and perceived of her. Throughout the sections, we learn that Emily and her home are remnants of a time long past when the town was grand and old-fashioned.

Emily is essentially infamous in town for her tendency to “live in the past,” caused by what the townspeople believe to be the same insanity that affected Emily’s great aunt. When her father passed away, she didn’t acknowledge his death for three days, during which she kept his body in the house. Soon after, she had a relationship with a newcomer named Homer whom the townsfolk believe to be far below Emily’s social status, ruining her reputation. As town speculations and comments continue, Emily purchases arsenic, for which she provides vague reasoning. Emily’s partner Homer is gone for quite some time after, during which the townsfolk once again speculate, assuming that their relationship is over. So, they call in the town minister to talk to her, who quickly refuses to ever reenter Emily’s home again; Emily’s cousins are called in next to live with and take care of her for some time. After they leave, Homer returns to the home for an evening but is never seen again.

The final section of the story occurs after Emily’s death; her death was the first time the townspeople have seen Emily in decades, and some time after, they step inside her home for, again, the first time in decades, apart from the annual day of painting lessons she gives to the children in town. The nosy townspeople reopen a room that hasn’t been entered in several decades, and they find a section of town that, like both Emily’s house and Emily herself, is frozen in time. They find a groom’s wedding suit and other items used in a wedding, as well as the long-decayed body of Emily’s old lover Homer in the bed. On the pillow next to him, they see a head-shaped depression and a gray hair.

Emily is a personified double of a time long gone. She clings to the old ways, and when they inevitably leave her, she creates a space for herself in her own home that allows her to live in the society she’s stuck in, in her own mind. She even keeps the body of her old lover in an attempt to freeze a time when she was happy, following the grief she underwent in her father’s death. Likewise, the townspeople are the personified doubles of the newer society, one that lives less in grandeur and more in rumors, contemplations, and assumptions.

Emily also has a double in her public self, the version known and created by the townspeople, as opposed to the true Emily, of whom the reader can only speculate (like the townspeople). We got a glimpse into Emily’s true self in the townsfolks’ discovery at the end of the story, but it was clouded by what we know through the townspeople’s own perceptions of her.