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What happens when the Baptist minister visits Miss Emily?
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In "A Rose for Emily," the Baptist minister failed at his attempt to end Miss Emily's relationship with Homer Barron and left her home feeling humiliated and ashamed. Miss Emily more than likely treated him with the same contempt and disdain she showed the local aldermen, who attempted to collect her taxes. The Baptist minister was too embarrassed and distraught to ever divulge what happened during his visit.
In section four of the story, the local women begin criticizing Miss Emily Grierson for openly courting Homer Barron, who is a popular Northern laborer. As a member of the Southern aristocracy, Miss Emily is expected to only associate with Southern gentlemen from the same social class, which is why the local women believe that she is forgetting her "noblesse oblige." The highly critical community members resent Miss Emily for proudly riding through town with Homer and consider her actions a disgrace. The townsfolk are portrayed as narrow-minded traditionalists, who feel that Miss Emily is setting a bad example for the younger generation.
Eventually, the local ladies intervene in Miss Emily's personal affairs by forcing the Baptist minister to address the issue. The minister reluctantly follows their instructions but completely fails at his task to end Miss Emily's relationship with Homer Barron. Faulkner writes,
He [the Baptist minister] would...
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never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again.
Judging by the way Miss Emily treated the local aldermen when they attempted to collect her taxes, one could surmise that she treated the Baptist minister with the same contempt and disdain. Miss Emily is not concerned with the perception of others and is determined to have her way. Miss Emily more than likely bullied the Baptist minister when he brought up the subject of Homer Barron, and he left her home feeling embarrassed and distraught, which explains why he never divulged any information regarding his visit.
If only we knew! Faulkner writes this piece of the story enigmatically, so we can guess that the conversation between the Baptist minister and Miss Emily would make so very juicy gossip for the townspeople of Jefferson. All we know is that the minister
"would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, and the following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's relations in Alabama."
Recall that the women of the town persuaded the minister to visit Miss Emily after she had done several things to rebel against the antebellum spinster role the townspeople had fit her into: she was cavorting with a man, a Northern day laborer beneath her station at that! They also assumed that she had had sex with him: "She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen." The Baptist minister is then sent to visit her, presumably to convince her to get herself married or stop riding around in a carriage with Homer Barron.
How Miss Emily took such a request is impossible to say for certain, but not hard to imagine, having seen her reaction to the alderman who came for her taxes. Certainly she would have been haughty and rude. Likely she would have been offended at the presumption of the minister (not even of her denomination – remember, "her people" are Episcopal) and not afraid to voice her outrage at his visit and the subject. For a man who was not inclined to broach the subject at all with her, it wouldn't take much to scare off the minister and have him outsource the problem to her Alabama relations.
What occurs when the Baptist minister visits Miss Emily?
When Miss Emily's relationship with Homer Barron begins to excite comment in Jefferson, some of the ladies in town force the Baptist minister to call on her. The Griersons are Episcopalian, which suggests a class difference as well as a religious one, so it is not at all clear what the Baptist minister would say to Miss Emily in such a case.
The matter remains unclear, since the minister "would never divulge what happened during that interview." He also refuses to return to the house, and his wife writes instead to a branch of the Grierson family in Alabama, resulting in the arrival of two female cousins to stay with Miss Emily and presumably to act as chaperones.
Judging from Miss Emily's interactions with other people in Jefferson and her haughty refusal to be judged by the same standards as other people (or, indeed, to submit to any form of judgment at all), the reader will probably surmise that the Baptist minister had a frosty reception. Miss Emily's modus operandi tends to be a complete refusal to listen as well as a display of astonishment that anyone could be so impudent as to question her rather than outright anger. It seems clear that, whatever she said or however she acted, she made the minister feel very foolish, enough so that he wished to avoid discussing what happened or repeating the experience.