Setting

Physical setting

The events presented in the short story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner take place in the Southern town of Jefferson, US, which was one of the battlegrounds of the US Civil War: “ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson” (p. 1, ll. 14-15). 

Emily’s house is an important part of the physical setting and could be seen as a symbol of the past: “It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street” (p. 1, ll. 6-8). As the town develops, Emily’s house deteriorates but maintains its aristocratic air, highlightin...