hip she has with the men in her life. Because of her familyÆs background and because of the townÆs background, Miss Emily and her home are a living shrine. Like the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper, however, Miss Emily lives an isolated existence. Miss Emily is isolated from her fellow townspeople. To them she is little more than a living monument, a silhouette in the window and a subject for gossip. The Grierson name is one of the august names of the past, one the town remembers with nostalgia. However, while it manifests respect for Miss Emily, the name also causes fear and resentment among the townspeople. In death Miss Emily attracts the ôrespectful attention for a fallen monument,ö but in life she was a ôtradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town,ö (Faulkner 1934, 119).
In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is also isolated from friends and even family. Confined to her room, she resembles Miss Emily in her stubborn refusal to accept the dictates of the man in her life, her husband and doctor. However, if the narrator in Wallpaper is stubborn like Miss Emily, she is stubborn for a different reason. Miss Emily is stubborn and proud, refusing to accept the loss of an era that is no more. Like the houseÆs description in the story, Miss Emily stubbornly refuses to accept changing times or conditions, ôIt was a big, squarish frame house that had once been whiteàset on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; and only Miss EmilyÆs house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps,ö (Faulkner 1934, 119). Because she no longer lives in a culture where men protect, love, and defend w
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