Miss Emily and Her Home

Linden “Kelsey” Napier
Mrs. S. Aiken
English 1102-50
September 30, 2009
Miss Emily and Her Home
In “A Rose for Emily”, the author William Faulkner describes a woman named Emily Grierson who was loved and cared for by all of her fellow townspeople in the city of Jefferson, Mississippi. Miss Emily was an old, deteriorated, sad, and insane woman, and so was her home. Miss Emily’s home was left to her by her father, of who passed many years before her death.
Miss Emily’s house was described as a “big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies” (526). This quote could also have an underlying description of Miss Emily, of whom had once been a more attractive woman, until her father’s death and her homicide of Homer Barron.
Her home was described as “an eyesore among eyesores” (526), and this is exactly what her appearance was after the poisoning and death of Homer Barron. Homer Barron was an ascribed homosexual of whom Miss Emily was in love with. After not proposing to her in a certain amount of time, Miss Emily traveled to the drugstore and purchased arsenic and ultimately killed Homer Barron. After his death Miss Emily’s appearance and mind went into a steady decline until her death.
Her mental state was not well, Miss Emily had not been paying her taxes, because Colonel Sartoris declared to her that her father had given the town so much money that she did not have to pay her taxes. However when authorities came into her home she told them what Colonel Sartoris told her and told them to go see him, but Colonel Sartoris had been dead ten years.
Miss Emily had been through a lot and the great amount of stress on her body and mind continually beat her up and sent her to a place of no return. Miss Emily loved her father and she loved Homer Barron, but after losing both of them, she lost herself and her home. She didn’t feel the need to continue to keep up her home, even with a servant there to help her.