A Rose for Emily" opens with Miss Emily Grierson's funeral. It then goes back in time to show the reader
Emily's childhood. As a girl, Emily is cut off from most social contact by her father. When he dies, she
refuses to acknowledge his death for three days. After the townspeople intervene and bury her father, Emily is
further isolated by a mysterious illness, possibly a mental breakdown.
Homer Barron’s crew comes to town to build sidewalks, and Emily is seen with him. He tells his drinking
buddies that he is not the marrying kind. The townspeople consider their relationship improper because of
differences in values, social class, and regional background. Emily buys arsenic and refuses to say why. The
ladies in town convince the Baptist minister to confront Emily and attempt to persuade her to break off the
relationship. When he refuses to discuss their conversation or to try again to persuade Miss Emily, his wife
writes to Emily’s Alabama cousins. They come to Jefferson, but the townspeople find them even more
haughty and disagreeable than Miss Emily. The cousins leave town.
Emily buys a men’s silver toiletry set, and the townspeople assume marriage is imminent. Homer is seen
entering the house at dusk one day, but is never seen again. Shortly afterward, complaints about the odor
emanating from her house lead Jefferson’s aldermen to surreptitiously spread lime around her yard, rather
than confront Emily, but they discover her openly watching them from a window of her home.
Miss Emily’s servant, Tobe, seems the only one to enter and exit the house. No one sees Emily for
approximately six months. By this time she is fat and her hair is short and graying. She refuses to set up a
mailbox and is denied postal delivery. Few people see inside her house, though for six or seven years she
gives china-painting lessons to young women whose parents send them to her out of a sense of duty.
The town mayor, Colonel Sartoris, tells Emily an implausible story when she receives her first tax notice: The
city of Jefferson is indebted to her father, so Emily’s taxes are waived forever. However, a younger generation
of aldermen later confronts Miss Emily about her taxes, and she tells them to see Colonel Sartoris (now long
dead, though she refuses to acknowledge his death). Intimidated by Emily and her ticking watch, the aldermen
leave, but they continue to send tax notices every year, all of which are returned without comment.
In her later years, it appears that Emily lives only on the bottom floor of her house. She is found dead there at
the age of seventy-four. Her Alabama cousins return to Jefferson for the funeral, which is attended by the
entire town out of duty and curiosity. Emily’s servant, Tobe, opens the front door for them, then disappears
out the back. After the funeral, the townspeople break down a door in Emily’s house that, it turns out, had
been locked for forty years. They find a skeleton on a bed, along with the remains of men’s clothes, a
tarnished silver toiletry set, and a pillow with an indentation and one long iron-gray hair
