Essay On Gender Roles In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

William Faulkner is a complex writer who knows how to set a great pace in his stories. He is also a very flexible writer which allows the openness of many topics to write on because of his unconventional style. In his short story, "A Rose for Emily", you can interpret how times are so different from today. Although it was not during slavery times, things were not much more advance than that. The dominance of gender or social roles shown on women, particularly Miss Emily, may be seen as harsh or unfair.
In the story, the role of women in society was that men were their superiors, better than they were. Faulkner believes that women should take the backseat to men. At the very beginning of the story Faulkner makes the statement, "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women out of curiosity to see the inside of her house" (99). He makes the readers beliefs of gender roles clearer by basically saying men attended with honor and respect but the women only went to be nosey. This ultimately characterize women as having less decency.
During the life of Emily's Father, he doesn't allow her to date. Emily father thinks their family is

Emily is judged for loving a man who is less fortunate than her . In the following line the townspeople’s reactions to their relationship is obvious, “’Poor Emily’, the whispering began. ‘Do you suppose it’s really so?’ they said to one another” (102). The townspeople did not to much care for the relationship between the two because of the barriers set up by social class saying poor date the poor and rich date the rich. Homer worked for a construction company with niggers while Miss Emily came from a fortunate family. The reaction of the community is that she is better than him, not realizing that they should be able to love whoever they want, without any rules or social