Plot summary "A Rose for Emily" is a story divided into five sections: the first section opens with a description of the Grierson house and its setting in Jefferson. The narrator states that over the past 25 years Miss Emily's house has fallen into despair and become "an eyesore among eyesores." The first sentence of the story sets the tone of how the citizens of Jefferson felt about Emily: "When Miss Emily Grierson died, all our town went to the funeral: the men out of a kind of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly driven by curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one except an old servant - once a gardener and cook - had seen for at least ten years had guests at her house. After her father's death, Colonel Sartoris had made sure that Miss Emily never had to pay taxes. However, when a new council took over, they began to tax her once again. She never paid taxes and refused to appear before the sheriff, so the city authorities took it upon themselves to go to her house further problems to speak with Colonel Sartoris, who had died ten years earlier is a very proud Southern family that has had its fair share of unusual characters. The audience learns that Mr. Grierson, Emily's father, being a proud man, never believed anyone was good enough for his daughter and would chase them away. When he died, Emily did not allow the authorities to remove his corpse for three days, claiming that he was still alive also mentions that two years later her father's... medium of paper... revealed throughout the story. This style of writing was not common in Faulkner's time. Southern Aristocracy Southern aristocracy is a major theme in many of Faulkner's stories, including "A Rose for Emily." Many of the same upper-class characters appear in many of Faulkner's works. Death and Necrophilia The two elements of this story that make it a gothic narrative are death and necrophilia. Although death is almost a given in any Gothic work, necrophilia, the sexual attraction to corpses, is the outstanding grotesque element in this tale. Gothic Traits This tale shows many factors of the Southern Gothic style. For example, the helpless damsel in distress (Emily) meets her white knight (Homer) and, instead of being saved, actually dooms her fate. Homer shows some signs of racial bigotry, a common trait of Southern Gothic.