How is the story "A Rose for Emily" a conflict between North and South?

William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” contains several different conflicts. One of those is the tension between the North and South in the post-reconstruction era United States. This conflict is primarily realized in the story through the character of Homer Barron, Emily Grierson’s love interest.

In the story, we can see Emily’s father as representing the Old South and its traditions. His daughter, when we first meet her, seems to embody those same characteristics. However, once her father dies, she begins what is at least an infatuation, and what may be a love affair, with a man from the North.

Homer Barron, Emily's love interest, is a northerner who has come to town as foreman of a sidewalk paving project. Thus, Homer is not only a carpetbagger – a term used for northerners who came to the South to make money during and after reconstruction – he also represents forces trying to change the town. He embodies the unwanted changes that the South saw as being imposed on it by the North.

Emily’s relationship with Homer is surprising to the townspeople, and many disapprove to the point of seeking help from her relatives to force Emily to end the relationship. The narrator emphasis the difference between Emil and Homer, and in those differences we can see the tensions between the traditions of the Old South and the modern practices of the North that were being brought to the South during and after reconstruction.