A Rose for Emily: The Heart of Southern Gothic When Miss Emily Grierson died, so did the last generation of the antebellum South. She was Old Dixie’s last true daughter. Her family, once wealthy and proud, is now gone and all that remains is a house, a decaying monument to the former stature of the Griersons. The town of Jefferson treats her as a tradition, and while there may be rumors among the townspeople, there is a pervasive feeling of uneasiness in how they relate to Emily. The narrator seems to hold a certain respect for Emily that is possibly borne out of this uneasiness, or perhaps fear of her. At the end of Emily’s life, the fear is fully realized. Her corpse is the corpse of the Southern aristocracy, of families who lived on the
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She is clearly bereft of anything resembling social tact or graces, and leads a solitary and sedentary life, seen out even less now that ever before. The lack of social interaction with anyone but her long-time servant, Tobe, only serves to amplify the emotional issues Emily had previously exhibited. Decades pass with few rumors about Miss Emily Grierson. “And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows…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.” (1278) The townspeople come to the funeral, some men in their Confederate military attire and talk about Emily as if they knew her, as if she was some dear departed friend; yet it is apparent that they are there simply to say they were there at Emily Grierson’s funeral. What can only be assumed is a party of funeral-goers (referred to as “we”) breaks down the door into the second-floor bedroom, and finds Homer Barron’s decayed corpse lying on the bed in his nightclothes. The toiletries and clothes bought for him for Emily decades before are uniformly displayed around the room, or tomb, as it were. A single grey hair, which can only be assumed to be Miss Emily’s, lies on the pillow in the bed next to Homer. As is plain to many who read the story when Emily bought the poison and Homer disappeared, Emily murdered Homer because it was the only way she knew how to love him. If she could not have him close in life she would have him close in
She is clearly bereft of anything resembling social tact or graces, and leads a solitary and sedentary life, seen out even less now that ever before. The lack of social interaction with anyone but her long-time servant, Tobe, only serves to amplify the emotional issues Emily had previously exhibited. Decades pass with few rumors about Miss Emily Grierson. “And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows…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.” (1278) The townspeople come to the funeral, some men in their Confederate military attire and talk about Emily as if they knew her, as if she was some dear departed friend; yet it is apparent that they are there simply to say they were there at Emily Grierson’s funeral. What can only be assumed is a party of funeral-goers (referred to as “we”) breaks down the door into the second-floor bedroom, and finds Homer Barron’s decayed corpse lying on the bed in his nightclothes. The toiletries and clothes bought for him for Emily decades before are uniformly displayed around the room, or tomb, as it were. A single grey hair, which can only be assumed to be Miss Emily’s, lies on the pillow in the bed next to Homer. As is plain to many who read the story when Emily bought the poison and Homer disappeared, Emily murdered Homer because it was the only way she knew how to love him. If she could not have him close in life she would have him close in