South, an idol and an icon. Although she has almost thirty years to bury Homer Barron in the ground she simply does not. She keeps him in the bed and either sleeps with him throughout these years, or she artfully leaves the hair and crafts a pillow indentation to signify the possibility that she could have done so behind the backs of the community and behind the discourse that symbolized her. Another example, that shows that the community would rather just turn their heads to Miss Emily's problems comes just a short time after her father's death, when people begin to smell the rotting corpse. When the intimate goings- on inside Emily's house threaten to waft out into the neighbourhood, the community wants it covered with words, and wants a word to stop what they reluctantly sense. Faulkner and the judge stop the smell and the scene with lime, the word and the substance. Interestingly enough, the word "lime" has as one of its variant meanings "to paint or cover a surface". Not only do the stealthy men rid the community of the smell; they eliminate a sense. They protect their "idol" standing in the window, and thereby conspire in the night to comply with and shield a lady and a murder just as Faulkner protects himself from knowing a woman like Emily by limiting her murderous activities to those that take place behind the doors he masterfully describes but refuses to enter. It is safe to say that there are a large number of factors that help contribute to Miss Emily's madness. Her father's over controlling relationship, is not a healthy one and does not really prepare her for dealing with relationships in the future. However, when her father dies she does not receive the support she deserves from the community, simply because of her high patriarchal status. She is not regarded as a real person, who has feelings just like anyone else, instead she is put on a pedestal that she can not live up to and like an old fallen monument she leaves the...
