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A Rosefor Emily

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, William Faulkner was a

novelist and short story writer. A writer whose work beautiful-

ly captures the complex social history of the American South,

Faulkner won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as two

Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards. Manyof his works,

including The Sound and the Fury (1929), As | Lay Dying (1930),

and Absalom, Absalom! (1936), take place in the fictional Yokna-

patwapha County.“A Rosefor Emily,” originally published in 1930,

concerns Miss Emily Grierson, a reclusive resident of the county

whose once-stately homefalls into disrepair.

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A ROSE FOR EMILY 351

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to

her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant—a combined gardener and cook—hadseen in at least ten years.

It was a big, squarish frame housethat had once been white,

decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconiesin the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our mostselect street. But garages and cotton gins had en- croached and obliterated even the august namesofthat neigh- borhood; only Miss Emilys house wasleft, lifting its stubborn

and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons andthegasoline pumps—an eyesore amongeyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery amongthe ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care;

a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor—he who

fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron—remitted her taxes, the dispensa- tion dating from the death of herfather on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris

invented an involvedtale to the effect that Miss Emily’s father had loaned moneyto the town, which the town,as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a manof Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believedit.

352 WILLIAM FAULKNER

Whenthe next generation, with its more modern ideas, be-

came mayors and aldermen, this arrangement created some

little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a

tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote

her a formalletter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her

convenience. A week later the mayor wroteher himself, offering

to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note

on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in

faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out atall. The

tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.

Theycalled a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A

deputation waited uponher, knockedat the door through which

no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting

lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the

old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into

still more shadow.It smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank

smell. The Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in

heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the

blinds of one window, a faint dust rose sluggishly abouttheir

thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a

tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait

of Miss Emily’ father.

They rose when she entered—a small, fat woman in black,

with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing

into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold

head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why

what would have been merely plumpness in another was obe-

sity in her. She lookedbloated,like a body long submerged in

motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the

fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal

pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to

another while the visitors stated their errand.

A ROSE FOR EMILY 353

She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and

listened quietly until the spokesman cameto a stumblinghalt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of

the gold chain.

Her voice was dry and cold. “I have no taxes in Jefferson.

Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps oneof you can gain access to the city records andsatisfy yourselves.”

“But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn’t you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?”

“I received a paper, yes,” Miss Emily said. “Perhaps he

considers himself the sheriff... 1 have no taxes in Jefferson.”

“But there is nothing on the booksto show that, you see. We

must go by the—”

“See Colonel Sartoris. 1 have no taxes in Jefferson.”

“But, Miss Emily—”

“See Colonel Sartoris.” (Colonel Sartoris had been dead

almost ten years.)

“I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!” The Negro appeared. “Show these gentlemen out.”

Il

So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had van-

quished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was two years after her fathers death and a short time after

her sweetheart—the one we believed would marry her—had

deserted her. After her father’s death she went outverylittle; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw herat all.

A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not re-

ceived, and the only sign oflife about the place was the Negro

man—a young man then—going in and out with a market

basket.

354 WILLIAM FAULKNER

“Just as if a man—any man—could keep a kitchen properly,”

the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell

developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming

world and the high and mighty Griersons.

A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Ste-

vens, eighty years old.

“But what will you have me do about it, madam?”hesaid.

“Why, send her wordto stopit,” the womansaid. “Isn't there

a law?”

“Pm sure that won't be necessary,” Judge Stevens said. “It’s

probably just a snake or a rat that nigger ofhers killed in the

yard. I'll speak to him aboutit.”

The next day he received two more complaints, one from

a man who camein diffident deprecation. “We really must do

something aboutit, Judge. Pd be the last one in the world to

bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something.” That night

the Board of Aldermen met—three graybeards and one younger

man, a memberofthe rising generation.

“Its simple enough,” he said. “Send her word to have her

place cleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, andif she

dont...”

“Dammit,sir,” Judge Stevens said, “will you accuse a lady to

her face of smelling bad?”

So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss

Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing

along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while

one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand

out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke openthe cel-

lar door and sprinkled limethere, andin all the outbuildings.

As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was

lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her

upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly

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A ROSE FOR EMILY 355

across the lawn andinto the shadow ofthe locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.

That was when people had begunto feel really sorry for 25 her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselvesa little too high for what they really were. Noneof the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thoughtof them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back- flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and wasstill single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned downall of her chances if they had really materialized.

Whenherfather died, it got about that the house wasall that wasleft to her; and in a way, people wereglad. Atlast they could pity Miss Emily. Beingleft alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny moreorless.

The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss

Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with notrace of grief on her face. She told them thatherfather wasnot dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her,

and the doctors, trying to persuadeherto let them dispose of the body. Just as they were aboutto resort to law andforce, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly. We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to

do that. We remembered all the young menherfather had driv- en away, and we knew that with nothingleft, she would have to

cling to that which had robbedher, as peoplewill.

356 WILLIAM FAULKNER

She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her

hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague

resemblance to those angels in colored church windows—sort

of tragic and serene.

The town hadjust let the contracts for paving the sidewalks,

and in the summerafter her father’s death they began the work.

The construction company came with riggers and mules and

machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee—a

big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyeslighter than his

face. Thelittle boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss

the riggers, and the riggers singing in timeto therise and fall

of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody in town. Whenever

you heard a lot of laughing anywhere aboutthe square, Homer

Barron would bein the center of the group. Presently we began

to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoonsdriving in the

yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the

livery stable.

At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have aninter-

est, because the ladies all said, “Of course a Grierson would

not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.” But there

werestill others, older people, who said that even grief could

not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige—withoutcalling it

noblesse oblige. They just said, “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should

cometo her.” She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her

father had fallen out with them overtheestate of old lady Wyatt,

the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the

two families. They had not even been represented at the funeral.

And as soon as the old people said, “Poor Emily,” the whis-

pering began. “Do you suppose its really so?” they said to one

another. “Ofcourseit is. What else could

.

. .” This behindtheir

hands; rustling of cranedsilk and satin behind jalousies closed

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A ROSE FOR EMILY 357

upon the sun of Sunday afternoonas the thin, swift clop-clop- clop of the matched team passed: “Poor Emily.”

She carried her head high enough—even when webelieved that she wasfallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson: asif it had wanted that touch of earthinessto reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she boughttherat poison,the arsenic. That was over a year after they had begunto say “Poor Emily,” and while the two female cousins werevisiting her.

“I want some poison,” she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual,

with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper’s face oughtto look. “I want some poison,” she said.

“Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? Pd recom—” “I want the best you have. I don’t care what kind.” The druggist namedseveral. “They'll kill anything up to an

elephant. But what you want is—” “Arsenic,” Miss Emily said. “Is that a good one?” “Is... arsenic? Yes, ma’am. But what you want—” “IT want arsenic.”

The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him,

erect, herface like a strainedflag. “Why, of course,” the druggist said. “If that’s what you want. Butthe law requires you totell what you are goingto useit for.”

Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in or-

der to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and gotthe arsenic and wrappedit up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package;the druggist didn’t come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: “For rats.”

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IV

So the next day weall said, “She will kill herself”; and we said

it would bethe best thing. Whenshehad first begun to be seen

with HomerBarron,we hadsaid, “She will marry him.” Then we

said, “She will persuade him yet,” because Homer himself had

remarked—heliked men, and it was known that he drank with

the younger menin the Elks’ Club—that he was not a marrying

man. Later we said, “Poor Emily” behind the jalousies as they

passed on Sundayafternoonin theglittering buggy, Miss Emily

with her head high and HomerBarron with his hat cocked and

a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.

Then someof the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace

to the town and a bad example to the young people. The

men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the

Baptist minister—Miss Emilys people were Episcopal—to call

upon her. He 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

ministers wife wrote to Miss Emilyrelations in Alabama.

So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back

to watch developments. At first nothing happened. Then we

were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss

Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’toilet set

in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two dayslater we

learned that she had bought a completeoutfit of men’s clothing,

including a nightshirt, and we said, “They are married.” We

werereally glad. We were glad because the two female cousins

were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.

So we were not surprised when Homer Barron—thestreets

had been finished some time since—was gone. We were a

little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but

we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's

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A ROSE FOR EMILY 359

coming, or to give her a chanceto getrid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we wereall Miss Emily’s allies to

help circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And,as we had expectedall along, within three days HomerBarron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Ne- gro man admit him atthe kitchen door at dusk one evening.

And that was the last we saw of HomerBarron. And of Miss

Emily for some time. The Negro man wentin and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men

did that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six

months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that

this was to be expected too; asif that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman'slife so many times had beentoovir- ulent and too furiousto die.

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the nextfew years it grew grayer

and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron- gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-fourit was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save for

a period of six or seven years, when she was aboutforty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a stu- dio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and

grand-daughters of Colonel Sartoris’ contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the samespirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.

Then the newer generation became the backbone and the

spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up andfell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and

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360 WILLIAM FAULKNER

tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines.

The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed

for good. When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily

alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her

door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.

Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and

more stooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each

December wesent her a tax notice, which would be returned by

the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then werwould

see her in one of the downstairs windows—she had evidently

shut up the top floor of the house—like the carven torso of an

idol in a niche, looking or not lookingat us, we could nevertell

which. Thus she passed from generation to generation—dear,

i le. impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

are ste died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and

shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We

did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up

trying to get any information from the Negro. Hetalked to no

one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown hars

and rusty,as if from disuse.

She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut

bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow

and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.

V

The negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let

them in, with their hushed,sibilant voices and their quick, curi-

ous glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through

the house and out the back and was not seen again.

The two female cousins cameat once. They held the funeral

on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily

beneath a mass of boughtflowers, with the crayon face of her

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A ROSE FOR EMILY 36]

father musing profoundly abovethebier and theladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men—somein their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believ- ing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the pastis not a diminishing road but, instead,

a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now bythe narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decadeofyears.

Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one hadseenin forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they openedit.

The violence of breaking down the door seemedto fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemedto lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’toilet things backed with tarnishedsilver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was ob- scured. Amongthemlaya collar andtie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in

the dust. Upon a chair hungthesuit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.

The man himself lay in the bed. For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the

profound andfleshless grin. The body had apparently oncelain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that out- lasts love, that conquers even the grimaceof love, had cuckold- ed him. What wasleft of him, rotted beneath what wasleft of

the nightshirt, had becomeinextricable from the bed in which

362 WILLIAM FAULKNER

he lay; and upon him and uponthepillow beside him lay that

even coating of the patient and biding dust.

Then wenoticed that in the second pillow was the indenta-

tion of a head. One of uslifted something from it, and leaning

forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nos-

trils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

NAVIGATING THE WATERS:Reading Closely

1. Why didn't Miss Emily have to pay taxes?

2. Why wouldn't the town confront Miss Emily about the smell

around her house?

3. What adjective would you use to describe Miss Emily?

Provide some examples from the story to support your claim

about her character.

4. How would you describe Miss Emily's relationship with the

townin general andits people in particular?

EXPLORING THE DEPTHS: Rhetorical Strategies and Structures

1. How does Faulkner create suspense throughoutthis story?

2. This story is split into five parts. Give each of the parts

a

title

and explain whyit is an appropriate title for that section.

3. Whatis the implication of the strand of iron-gray hair on the

pillow (paragraph 60)? Why end with such a circumspect

observation? Why nottell the reader directly what had

happened?

4. Develop an argumentas to the meaning of the title and its

relationship to the story. Support your claim with examples

from the story and explain how these support your claim.

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A ROSE FOR EMILY 363

SHARING THE DISCOVERIES:Discussion and Writing

Identify and discuss the clues and foreshadowing that Faulk- ner places throughoutthe story aboutits ending. How doesthe townfigure as a characterin this story?

. Write a missing chapter of this story that tells an anecdote that matches with Miss Emily's character as seenin the rest of the story. | Describe a curious or notorious character from your neigh- borhood when you were growing up. What washe or she like? What made him or her so interesting or scandalous?