Emily Mental State Was or Was Not Impaired Miss Emily was referred to as a "fallen monument" in the story (William Faulkner). She was a "monument" of Southern gentility, an ideal of past values but fallen because she had shown herself susceptible to death (and decay). The description of her house "lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps--an eyesore among eyesores" represented a juxtaposition of the past and …showed first 75 words of 913 total…

…showed last 75 words of 913 total…clamorous and curious inhabitants of the world of the present. "When Miss Emily died, [the] whole town went to her funeral...the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant...had seen in at least ten years" (William Faulkner). Now would you say that everybody who went to the home after her death was also a little bit going in the nether-world. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**