While arguments can be made for each of the literary elements as significant in "A Rose for Emily," character seems essential to setting both as a gothic tale and as an allegory for relations between the North and the South, the themes of Death, Community vs. Isolation, the Old South vs. the New South, the sequence of events in plot, and, finally, as a symbol herself.
Emily, a character both tragic and gothic, is symbolic as her persona has meaning beyond that of a personage in the plot. She is tragic in her desperate and forlorn clinging to the vestiges of the old world that she has known, the world in which her patriarchal father wielded power not only his family, but withing the society of Jefferson. The townspeople describe Emily as "decaying"; like her house, she is "a fallen monument" who seems mentally deranged (she thinks her father is alive), suggesting both gothic characteristics and symbolism. The physical description of Emily indicates that she has already "decayed":
A small fat woman in black...She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water...and of that pallid hue.
As a symbol the character of Emily represents a vestige of the Old South, a lady who teaches china painting; her solitary life with an "old Negro manservant" who leaves upon her death suggests the disintegration of this Old South as also does her acceptance of the Northern Homer as a suitor. As the gothic "fallen monument," Emily murders this suitor and the townspeople make this grotesque discovery.
Indeed, it is the character of Emily Grierson that gives meaning to all other elements of "A Rose for Emily."
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