Why does "A Rose For Emily" seem better told from the unamed narrarator's point of view than if it were told from the point of view of Emily?Having...

rrae79,

Everything we know of Emily is derived from the narrator, who does not identify himself even though he keeps his eyes and ears open for details about her. He speaks to people in the town who have made their own observations, and he acquires details rapidly and fully, as we learn from the scene between Emily and the druggist (paragraphs 34–42). Even though the narrator reports rumors and misapprehensions about Emily, it seems clear that Faulkner intends that these rumors and reports be taken as true details about Emily’s life. At the story’s conclusion the narrator has joined the group ("they") who break down the door to the upstairs room that had been Emily’s bedroom. It is then that the narrator uses "we" to indicate that he has been an actual first-hand observer of the scene of decay that the people discover on Emily’s bed.

Faulkner makes Emily something of a mystery by the ways in which he always keeps her at a distance. No personal acquaintances are mentioned as sources of information. When she is seen, she seems intransigent and resolute, and she seems successfully to ignore the importunities of the townsfolk. Later, when she is together with Homer Barron, she is also seen at a distance. When the men sprinkle lime around her property and in the basement, she views them at a distance from an upstairs window. The narration of the story make the ending even more a surprise, definitely, even though the clues for the surprise have been carefully planted by Faulkner throughout the story.

The plot, of course, is gothic fiction: a decaying mansion, a mysteriously silent servant, a corpse, necrophilia. And one doesn’t want to discard the plot in a search for what it symbolizes, but it is also clear that the story is not only “about” Emily Grierson but also about the South’s pride in its past (including its Emily-like effort to hold on to what is dead) and the guilt as well as the grandeur of the past. Inevitably much emphasis of the story centers on Miss Emily’s character, but a proper emphasis of her character entails an understanding of the narrator. A first-person narrator, would make the Gothic nature less effective, interfere with the un-chronological plot, and make the ending less dramatic.