Isolation In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is an exceptional, if not unprecedented tale that stems from the Deep South and shows just how isolated one woman can truly become. Miss Emily Grierson was a monument to the town that she resided in. The whole town was intensely yet often indirectly involved in her life, putting up many barriers for her to abide by. Emily’s father, the town of Jefferson, and Emily herself were the three reoccurring conflicts that provoked her downfall and isolation (man v. man, man v. society, and man v. himself).
Miss Emily Grierson’s father was an overbearing man, known to have instilled many not-so-pleasing values in Emily; ones that she would always struggle to surpass. Due to his character, the town thought of Emily as “a tradition, a duty and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 75). They believed her to have thought so highly of herself that she would not converse with just anyone, which is a completely false misconception. Her father secluded her to the point where she became totally dependent on him, never really socializing with any member of Jefferson, especially not “all the young men her father had driven away” (77). By isolating her from common folk nearly all her life, Miss Emily Grierson was put in a direct line of failure which snowballed rapidly after her father’s death, leading her to “cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (77).
The town of Jefferson played another very important conflict in