In the short story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, the reader recognizes the harsh reality of a woman's inability to open up to a new world and constantly evolving. world. Emily Grierson is a lonely and mysterious woman who lives with her father in a large post-Civil War house. Emily's father was a controlling man and dismissed every man who tried to woo Emily. All Emily inherited after her father died was the house. However, the city believed it had the right to “cling to what stole it.” (Faulkner 311) Things began to improve for Emily when she met a handsome northerner. Homer Barron led a Northern task force. The crew was hired to pave Jefferson's sidewalks. Homer and Emily begin seeing each other on Sundays, traveling in a "yellow-wheeled buggy." (Faulkner 311) Homer appears to be light and sturdy. His interest in Miss Emily is strange because her personality and his are extremely different. “Very quickly, he knew everyone in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughter in the square, Homer Barron was at the center of the group. » (Faulkner 311) Homer makes friends easily and enjoys being the center of attention. The town was gossiping about the marriage between the Northerner and Miss Emily. One day Miss Emily went to the general store to buy poison. Many thought she was going to commit suicide. Homer is then seen entering Emily's house late at night and is never seen again. Everyone in town thought Homer had left Emily and returned to the North. After that, Emily stays at home and is not seen often. Emily ages over time and dies. At his funeral, the town's curious find Homer Barron's decomposed body in a bed upstairs and a long strand of...... middle of paper ...... matches the correct side perfectly of humanism when she was finally humanized after her father's death. Although Emily seems lonely and stubborn, she takes on a whole new persona once the story ends. “We didn’t say she was crazy at the time. ” (Faulkner 311) The author is basically saying that Emily was not considered crazy until Homer Barron's corpse was found in her bed upstairs. We realize that something was seriously wrong with Emily. By connecting the dots, the reader can discover that Miss. Emily was mentally unstable. Emily's general upbringing for tradition, her father's controlling behavior, and her inability to become self-reliant and cope with death lead to her mental instability. Works Cited Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays. “A rose for Emily.” Norton's Introduction to Literature. 5th ed. New York: WW Norton &, 2011. 308-315pg. Print.