Wednesday, October 1, 2014

What is meant by the phrase "remitted her taxes into perpetuity"?

If you are referring to the phrase from A Rose for Emily, it just means that Emily was sparred any obligation to pay her property taxes from the date of her father's death until eternity.


The word 'remitted' means cancelled, and the word 'perpetuity' refers to a lasting or eternal state. In the story, the author states that Emily was a 'tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town,...' when she was alive. Accordingly, in 1894, Colonel Sartoris, then the mayor of the town, coined a story about the largesse of Emily's father in order to spare Emily a financial burden.


Supposedly Emily's father had loaned some money to the town, and Emily's tax remittance was a way of paying her family back for their generosity. However, this was a fabricated story, concocted for the sole purpose of financially aiding Emily, a woman who was too proud to accept charity.

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