I. The chronological order of the events in the text
1. Homer's arrival in town
2. The aldermen's visit
3. Emily's purchase of poison
4. Colonel Sartoris's decision to remit Emily's taxes
5. The development of the odor
6. Emily's father's death
7. The arrival of Emily's relatives
8. Homer's disappearance
II. Questions
1. Why weren't there suitable suitors for Emily?
2. Why does Emily take up with Homer Barron?
3. What happened when he left? Did he abandon her? Why did he come back?
4. Why did she kill him?
5. Why did the smell disappear after only one week?
6. How did the hair come to be on the pillow?
7. Did she lie beside the corpse? How often, for what period of years?
8. Why did she not leave the house for the last decade of her life?
9. How crazy was she (unable to distinguish fantasy from reality)?
10. Why does she allow so much dust in her house?
III. Textual Analysis
1. Exposition
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. 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-an eyesore among eyesores.
A Setting of the Story. Showing the relationship Miss Emily had with the townspeople.
Question: how could Miss Emily’s house be described as having “stubborn and coquettish decay”? What does it mean? And what does it show about the following story?
2. Miss Emily as a Tradition
Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity.
When Mr Grierson, Emily’s father was alive, that is, before the Confederate army was defeated by the Union army, Miss Emily was a noble lady, unreachable for the common people. Now she became something else. And what is it? Why did she became “a duty and a care” rather than someone to look up to. What story did Colonel Sartoris invent and why?
3. Emily's Appearance
They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.
Emily looked like a dead body from the beginning. The only part alive was her black eyes eerily sparkling. Why was she described in that way? How did she beat off the delegation’s demand to pay tax. What does it mean, having to pay tax? It means that she does no longer belong to a privileged class that have no tax to pay. Demanding her to pay tax means that they are now going to treat her as a normal citizen like everybody else, Emily of course resolutely rejected it. Emily refuses to accept the reality where there is no privilege for them. In that sense, she is like a dead body, which is why she is here described as a drowned body.
4. People's changed attitude
That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.
People, particularly those of old generation, tend to keep a traditional respect to pay to the person like Emily who reminds them of the old times. But even those people realized that the world had changed. Emily, who refuses to accept such change, became an “eyesore” even to the people who used to be sympathetic to her. Seeing that Emily is growing old as a spinster, they are now able to “feel really sorry for her” But why weren’t they pleased with Emily’s misfortune of growing old as a spinster? What does it mean that they were “vindicated”? Vindicated about what?
5. People's capriciousness
At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige- -without calling it noblesse oblige.
People felt sorry for Emily who could not find a suitable match, but when she found one, they were disappointed. They were happy with the fact that Emily came down in social hierarchy, low enough to be an object of “charity”. Now they became more aristrocrat than Emily herself blaming her for her choice of husband from Northerners, people with no background!
Who is the narrator? A third person limited, perhaps of one of the townspeople, but a bit aloof from all of them, Assuming a neutral position, but a little bit sarcastic, but slightly towards Emily.
6. Final Scene: uncovering Emily's secret marriage
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
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.
What does the final scene disclose? What does it mean that “the long sleep” “cuckolded” him? Why the second pillow has the “indentation” What does it mean that they found “a long strand of iron-gray hair?”
I. The chronological order of the events in the text
1. Homer's arrival in town
2. The aldermen's visit
3. Emily's purchase of poison
4. Colonel Sartoris's decision to remit Emily's taxes
5. The development of the odor
6. Emily's father's death
7. The arrival of Emily's relatives
8. Homer's disappearance
II. Questions
1. Why weren't there suitable suitors for Emily?
2. Why does Emily take up with Homer Barron?
3. What happened when he left? Did he abandon her? Why did he come back?
4. Why did she kill him?
5. Why did the smell disappear after only one week?
6. How did the hair come to be on the pillow?
7. Did she lie beside the corpse? How often, for what period of years?
8. Why did she not leave the house for the last decade of her life?
9. How crazy was she (unable to distinguish fantasy from reality)?
10. Why does she allow so much dust in her house?
III. Textual Analysis
1. Exposition
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. 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-an eyesore among eyesores.
A Setting of the Story. Showing the relationship Miss Emily had with the townspeople.
Question: how could Miss Emily’s house be described as having “stubborn and coquettish decay”? What does it mean? And what does it show about the following story?
2. Miss Emily as a Tradition
Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity.
When Mr Grierson, Emily’s father was alive, that is, before the Confederate army was defeated by the Union army, Miss Emily was a noble lady, unreachable for the common people. Now she became something else. And what is it? Why did she became “a duty and a care” rather than someone to look up to. What story did Colonel Sartoris invent and why?
3. Emily's Appearance
They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.
Emily looked like a dead body from the beginning. The only part alive was her black eyes eerily sparkling. Why was she described in that way? How did she beat off the delegation’s demand to pay tax. What does it mean, having to pay tax? It means that she does no longer belong to a privileged class that have no tax to pay. Demanding her to pay tax means that they are now going to treat her as a normal citizen like everybody else, Emily of course resolutely rejected it. Emily refuses to accept the reality where there is no privilege for them. In that sense, she is like a dead body, which is why she is here described as a drowned body.
4. People's changed attitude
That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.
People, particularly those of old generation, tend to keep a traditional respect to pay to the person like Emily who reminds them of the old times. But even those people realized that the world had changed. Emily, who refuses to accept such change, became an “eyesore” even to the people who used to be sympathetic to her. Seeing that Emily is growing old as a spinster, they are now able to “feel really sorry for her” But why weren’t they pleased with Emily’s misfortune of growing old as a spinster? What does it mean that they were “vindicated”? Vindicated about what?
5. People's capriciousness
At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige- -without calling it noblesse oblige.
People felt sorry for Emily who could not find a suitable match, but when she found one, they were disappointed. They were happy with the fact that Emily came down in social hierarchy, low enough to be an object of “charity”. Now they became more aristrocrat than Emily herself blaming her for her choice of husband from Northerners, people with no background!
Who is the narrator? A third person limited, perhaps of one of the townspeople, but a bit aloof from all of them, Assuming a neutral position, but a little bit sarcastic, but slightly towards Emily.
6. Final Scene: uncovering Emily's secret marriage
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
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.
What does the final scene disclose? What does it mean that “the long sleep” “cuckolded” him? Why the second pillow has the “indentation” What does it mean that they found “a long strand of iron-gray hair?”
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