um and rigid rules of the old traditions thwarted Emily and caused her to commit murder.This idea of past decorum is also noticed in the attitude of Judge Stevens, who was eighty years old. When a younger man came to the judge to complain about a bad odor at Emily's house, the younger man expected that solving the problem would be a simple matter because of the health regulations that were on the books, but it was not so simple for the judge, who was reared in an earlier time. He could not bring to Emily’s attention a matter so crude. In his own words he asked, “Dammit, sir...will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?” ( 355). Of course, the younger man would have no qualms about doing so but gentlemen of earlier generations find that task abhorrent. Again, the difference between the past and present culture is personified in Faulkner’s characters. The post civil war “new south” expressed through the words of the narrator, the new Board of Aldermen, Homer Barron (the Yankee), and in what was called “the next generation with its more modern ideas” is contrasted with Emily and all those who could not accept the loss of the Civil War and the beginning of new ways ( 354). Emily, and the old south in general did conquer time briefly by retreating into the "rose-tinted" world of the past. This sort of retreat is hopeless since everyone, even Emily, was finally vulnerable to death and to the invasion by the inhabitants of the world of the present. Faulkner expressed this inevitable invasion at the very beginning of the story when the narrator claims, “When Miss Emily died, [the] whole town went to her funeral” ( 353). The whole town of Jefferson eventually must lay to rest the ways of the past and Miss Emily’s funeral is the perfect setting for a collection of outdated values....
