Noteworthy Quotes from A Rose for Emily

A Rose for Emily is a hauntingly beautiful story that weaves together love, loss, and the passage of time.

She carried her head high enough—even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.

And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her.

Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced.

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray.

So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell.

He might miss a lot. But perhaps he meant that he literally couldn’t put up with a woman, a woman who drank whisky and played poker and told him he was a disguise.

Only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it.

So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments.

Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china painting.

She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water and of that pallid hue.

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.

So the next night, we waited for her, and when she came out, we all rushed forward to see her at last.

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

She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.

None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such.

And that was the last we saw of Miss Emily. And that was the last anyone saw of Homer Barron.

They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to come to the sheriff’s office at her convenience. An order, by the way, that’s never been rescinded.

So the next day we all said, ‘She will kill herself’; and we said it would be the best thing.

And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

Just as they were about to move it, we noticed that the valance in the front of the bed was dustier than the rest.

But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps.

I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me.

But there was a vague fleshiness about her face; the eyes had lost their lustre and were dull and vacant.

When we saw Miss Emily again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl.

At last the doctors found him another bed.

With nothing further to say, we- this time, with the town, the old and the young, black and white- watched her going.

Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people.

It smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank smell.

It was 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, set on what had once been our most select street.

So the next day we all said, ‘She will kill herself’; and we said it would be the best thing.

Colonel Sartoris explained it to me.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.

But there was a vague fleshiness about her face; the eyes had lost their lustre and were dull and vacant.

At last the doctors found him another bed.

I want some poison,’ she said.

She carried her head high enough—even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson.

And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her.

Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced.

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china painting.

She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water and of that pallid hue.

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.

So the next night, we waited for her, and when she came out, we all rushed forward to see her at last.

She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl.