e of the town's first families, Emily for a brief time after her father's death appeared to have been on the brink of marrying a Yankee foreman named Homer Barron. It was not expected that this fine lady of the provincial South, would marry a Yankee working man from a Northern city. Anyway, he disappeared; Emily never explained why. Over the years, Emily secluded herself from society, and the town gossip was that she was impoverished. But true to her first-family roots, she se cluded herself in an imperious manner, more or less consistent with the expectations of a small Southern town and more than once going so far as to brush off appeals from city fathers to pay her taxes or otherwise accommodate the city fathers. Upon her death, the townsfolk discovered in her upstairs bedroom the decomposed body of Homer Barron--and evidence that she had been the bed partner of the body for many years.
Much of the action of "A Rose for Emily" turns on the town's unwillingness to challenge Emily. She is unapproachable, above the rest of the world. The narrator, along with fellow townsfolk, sees her framed forbiddingly by an upstairs window from time to time, especially when they sprinkle lime around the house to allevi ate the bad smell coming from there: "As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol" (Faulkner 11). Emily's forbidding personality is perceived as madness by some, but this is the madness of aristocracy. Emily's craziness and ex treme dignity are equally mysterious, their substance never quite known because she shares no secrets with others. She refuses to be at home to the few ladies of Jefferson who "had the temerity to call" after the disappearance of Homer; she is unmoved by the aldermen's investigation of the smell; she will pay no taxes because she will not pay them Brooks and Warren cite her "tremendous firmnes...