With a further look at Miss Emily’s life

With a further look at Miss Emily’s life, we realize the importance of the setting in which the story takes place. The house in which she lives remains static and unchanged as the town progresses. Inside the walls of her abode, Miss Emily conquers time and progression. In the first section, Faulkner takes us back to the time when Miss Emily refused to pay her taxes. She believes that just because Colonel Sartoris remitted her taxes in 1894, that she is exempt from paying them even years later.
The town changes, its people change, yet Miss Emily has put a halt on time. In her mind, the Colonel is still alive even though he is not. “It smelled of dust and disuseIt was furnished in heavy, leather covered furniturethe leather was cracked.On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily’s father.”
The description of Miss Emily’s house is very haunting. Everything appears to be decaying, just as Miss Emily herself. The picture of her father is just another symbol of immobility and no sense of time.
When he died, Miss Emily refused to acknowledge his death. She stopped time, at least in her mind. From this point, Faulkner makes a smooth transition to a period of thirty years ago, when Miss Emily “vanquished their fathers about the smell.” A smell develops in Miss Emily’s house, which is another sign of decay and death. Miss Emily is oblivious to the smell, while it continues to bother the neighbors. This town’s people are intimidated by Miss Emily, and have to squeeze lime juice on her lawn in secrecy. They are afraid to confront her, just as the next generation is afraid to confront her about the taxes. Her strong presence is enough for her to surpass the law. The scrambling of time throughout the story is a great demonstration of the scrambling of time in Miss Emily’s mind and in her house. Perhaps if the story of Miss Emily had been set in a different place, her life would have turned out differently. With all the pressures from her father and the town’s people, she became a very closed up and rather frightening person.