A Rose For Emily
When Miss Emily was younger, she was looked up to by the other townspeople. At one point, she was even engaged. However, after the marriage proposal fell through and her father died, she never talked to people as much as she had earlier. Then Homer Barron came into town, and suddenly Miss Emily was seen everywhere with him. The townspeople thought she would marry him until he "abandoned" her, never to be seen again. She went back into hiding for awhile, becoming reclusive as a hermit. She did not go into town, instead sending her Negro manservant, Tobe, to shop for her. In this she bears a resemblance to Louisa in "A New England Nun." Both women prefer their own company, and both are agitated when they are around others. Miss Emily slowly fades out of the public eye until the next time she is spotted: she has "grown fat and her hair [had turned] gray." This is the crucial point for Faulkner to set up the ending.
This scene is disgusting and disturbing. Earlier, everyone smelled a rotting scent coming from Miss Emily's house, and so the men go to find out what it is. Thinking that it is the carcass of a snake Tobe killed, they sprinkle lime powder all around the house. But at the very end of the story, we find out that it was not a decomposing animal causing the smells. At Emily's funeral, some of the townspeople break into one of the rooms in her house, which had been locked for 40 years. On the bed is the body of Homer Barron, fleshless and entirely decayed. On the pillow next to his body lay "a long strand of iron-grey hair." Apparently Miss Emily had been sleeping next to the corpse; in fact, maybe that is how she "fell ill" and died. After her father's death, Miss Emily never interacted with people as she had before, except for with Homer. She rode in his buggy, laughing. She must have fallen in love with him, but when she found out he was going to leave her, she poisoned him with the arsenic she bought from the druggist. This...
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