When reading through Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" you as the reader are taken through the town's perspective of the life of a very private woman. The responses that were written go into more detail about the differences between the privacies and public areas of her life, but why would he want to write the entire short story from the perspective of a third-person narrator, without any personal connection to the main character?
As a reader, one might not feel any emotional connection to Emily. There were no really telling quotes from her, just a few actions that might give us more insight into who she was; like refusing to pay her taxes and telling the aldermen to see a dead man to exempt her from paying. As an author, Faulkner may have done this to purposely remove the reader from emotion. The story had a very solemn tone, but he may have not wanted that feeling to creep into the reader's mind as they went through the story. If the reader got too close to Emily, they wouldn't see the perspective of the townspeople and how they never really got to now Emily. The people of Jefferson never knew her, never really got anything besides gossip and a few actions to give them a hint into what kind of person she really was.
This was a specific tactic of Faulkner to give depth and reasoning to "A Rose for Emily." The people of Jefferson never knew her and neither do the readers, and I think that was the point.
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Charlotte,
You offer some interesting insights as to why Faulkner may have chosen this distant, third person narrator. I especially think this observation is insightful: " If the reader got too close to Emily, they wouldn't see the perspective of the townspeople and how they never really got to now Emily." It's a bit ironic, though, that you make these observations about the cold and removed tone of the narrator considering how many people in the class admitted to feeling sympathy for Emily. I think I had a similar approach to the text as you; I didn't really sympathize with the character. I thought the distant "we" point of view helped emphasize just how "outside" the community Emily really was.
I think it's interesting how you said that the point of the story was that no one ever knew Emily, not the people of Jefferson, or the readers. We really did not know Emily at all until that very last paragraph. The townspeople thought she was strange, and a little bit crazy at most, but never that she would take someone's life. In the end of the story, we finally begin to comprehend the magnitude of Emily's insanity.
Maybe this could have been helped had the town of Jefferson shown Emily a little bit of appreciation or respect, maybe Emily should have been more courteous to them. What we do know is that she was a very sick woman who needed to be in an institution.
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