A Rose for Emily

I thought that the personification of the house in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily described Emily herself as well.  The house was described as being the "only...house left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps -- an eyesore among eyesores" (Faulkner, 281).  Miss Emily was the epitome of stubbornness...and denial...and insanity.  She refused to accept or believe in any change throughout the entirety of the short story.  After her father died, she denied for days that he had, indeed, passed away.  Even when she admitted to his death, she refused to allow his body to be removed from the house.  Emily was in denial that anything could change.  She knowingly insisted that she did NOT need to pay her taxes, because the man in charge of the town (who had been dead for years) informed her that she was exempt from paying them.  Emily refused even the simplest of things, such as accepting a mailbox, allowing numbers to be put onto her house, or receiving any address at all!  The fact that she held onto Homer's body for forty-plus years shows how unreceptive she was of any change whatsoever.