In “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily is shown to have more power than frailties. Miss Emily’s power is first seen with her not paying her taxes. During Colonel Sartoris lifetime, Miss Emily was “remitted” for her taxes (Page I, p.3). However, a decade had passed since the Colonel’s death and she still believed his made up story of her father “lending money to the town” (Page I, p.3). When tax notices were sent to her from a new generation of state officials, she refused to pay. The city authorities also came to her home to confront her for her unpaid taxes but she denied the charges and drove them out of her home by stating that “she had no taxes in Jefferson” (Page I, p.8). The taxes were meant for negro women that refused to wear an apron on the streets of Jefferson (Page I, p.3), however, in the time period this story was written, I do not believe Miss Emily could get away with not paying her taxes without getting arrested by the city officials. If Miss Emily was an African American in that period of racial divide and tension, she would be severally punished for not paying her taxes. However, Faulkner addressed Miss Emily as “Miss Emily,” he never called her a “negro or nigga” woman except for the black man that was her housekeeper/maid. So, a question still remains on whether Miss Emily was an African American? Because she got away with not paying taxes until the day she died.

Another way of seeing Miss Emily’s power is when her home started to reek of an unpleasant odor (Page II, p. 3-10). The smell was so bad that people in her town, including her eighty-year-old neighbor would complain to the town’s Judge (Page II, p.4). However, the state officials refused to confront Miss Emily openly, so, four unknown men living in the town secretly sprinkled lime in her cellar door and in all the outbuildings of her home to deodorize the smell (Page II, p.11).

Therefore, I am still unsure whether Miss Emily was an African American because the town did not treat her as an outcast of society (which African Americans were seen as in that time period) but of “a duty; a care, and a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Page I, p.3). The town officials never threaten her with imprisonment, fines, or violations; they saw that they were coming on her territory and they were not allowed to cross. She was so impervious, that she even got away with murdering her unknown suitor (which I believe to be Homer Barron) with poison and keeping the dead corpse as her sense of disillusioned comfort. The only frailty that Miss Emily exhibits in the story was her father refusing her to have a mate. Her father would “drive every young man away from her,” (Page II, p.12) “causing her to still be single at age thirty” and all alone (Page II, p.12).

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