Emily’s family history by allowing that Miss Emily’s great-aunt, old lady Wyatt, had finally gone completely insane. A second reference to old lady Wyatt’s insanity is made in the third section as follows: “. . .but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman” (91). These minute details are perfect examples Faulkner uses to foreshadow the final scene of this short story.It is also mentioned in the third section of the story that Miss Emily was reluctant to part with her father’s corpse for three days following his death. Faulkner writes “Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them her father was not dead” (90). Her statement is the first clue that Miss Emily has a strange way of dealing with death. In the resolution of “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily has relations with Homer Barron, and then purchases arsenic. It is at this point that the reader might suspect Miss Emily has foul intent. Homer Barron disappears in the following section and Miss Emily ages, with reference to her iron-gray hair (92). Section four goes on to provide the information that, prior to his death, Miss Emily’s father “thwarted her woman’s life so many times” (Faulkner 92).As defined by Funk & Wagnalls: Standard Encyclopedic Dictionary, “Necrophilia is an abnormal reaction, especially of an erotic nature, to corpses” (435). While there is no indication of an erotic interest on Miss Emily’s part to her father’s dead body or that of Homer Barron as it lay dead in her bedroom for years, it could be concluded that sleeping beside a dead body, even while it reeks of decay, is most likely psychotic in nature. It is in the final section, after Miss Emily’s death, when the townspeople burst into the room which had been untouched for forty y...
