At abroad, like many writers at home are evaluated less than their proper evaluation, Faulkner is also same. When American critics are also not sure how to estimate Faulkner, in early thirties, Sutter and Marlo, two French authors, thought highly of Faulkner. In Britain, the old writer Richard Hughes, in the preface of the book The Sound and the Fury, do high evaluation of the book writing skills.
In Italy, after World War II, Faulkner became an example to imitate some of the emerging writers.-H.B.Barry Jef J Ki thought that he recreated the realism, and made great achievements in the development and regeneration of realism.
George Marion O'Donnell, Faulkner Myth (1939), explores symbolism in Faulkner’ novel, he says, the fight against traditional values that is the struggle between representatives of humanism and naturalism, but he tried to explain this in all his novels, emphasis too much in the" symbolic "
Robert Pam VO in William Faulkner (William Faulkner, 1946, P.23), from a sociological perspective, pointed out that the novel written by Faulkner is not only the southern legend, but also is the suffering of us and problem of our legend. He further commented Faulkner's creation from nature, humor, poor whites, blacks, creative skills, images and symbols.
2. The Traditional Maintenance and Rebellion
Emily, the protagonist of the novel, is a complex character of a contradiction. In her body, she is not only representing for the traditional southern left traces, but also for the dream to revolt. She struggled in the shackles of the traditional, made great efforts, but still did not escape from the tragic fate. Through the analysis of the protagonist's image and identity, we can reveal the state of southerner’s contradiction of the spiritual world, and to explore the causes of contradiction.
2.1 The Conflicts of The South
Firstly, Emily represents the tradition and the past, she is the maintenance of the southern tradition, is a noble monument. The outbreak of the civil war opened the south from prosperity to decline the new historical page. People in the south, before the civil war, enjoy their rich life from the slavery institution and pay attention to the elegant noble civilization. After the war, the south economy broke down, was taken place by the mechanical characteristics of the production of modern capitalist economy, the old southern traditional values and ideology that based on the material basis have collapsed. However, in the face of the new economic mode and culture concept of value like gangbusters, many southern conservative, not willing to withdraw from the stage of history, the southern aristocratic culture is struggling in the shadow of defeat in despair.
The Old South is declining. The old and the new conflicted greatly there. All the southerners wanted to change the whole situation, but it was absolutely impossible. Miss Emily was an aristocratic descendant, a noble lady. The social environment and her aristocratic family forbad her to be a normal lady, thus, she became arrogant, proud and aloof. It is just the kind of character that made her isolated from society and goes extreme. To some extent, we may say that Miss Emily’s twisted humanity led to the social environment and her family background.