A Rose For Emily- William Faulkner - 269 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

A Rose For Emily

It was Faulkner's first short story published in a national magazine. A Rose for Emily recounts the story of an eccentric spinster, Emily Grierson. An unnamed narrator details the strange circumstances of Emily's life and her odd relationships with her father and her lover, the Yankee road worker Homer Barron


The story is divided into five sections. In section one, the narrator recalls the time of Emily Grierson’s death and how the entire town attended her funeral in her home, which no stranger had entered for more than ten years. In a once-elegant, upscale neighbourhood, Emily’s house is the last vestige of the grandeur of a lost era.


In section two, the narrator describes a time thirty years earlier when Emily resists another official inquiry on behalf of the town leaders, when the townspeople detect a powerful odour emanating from her property. This part of the story is to elicit a sense of doom and suspense.


In section three, the narrator describes a long illness that Emily suffers after this incident.

In section four the narrator describes the fear that some of the townspeople have that Emily will use the poison to kill herself. Her potential marriage to Homer seems increasingly unlikely.


In section five, the narrator describes what happens after Emily dies. Emily’s body is laid out in the parlour, and the women, town elders, and two cousins attend the service. After some time has passed, the door to a sealed upstairs room that had not been opened in forty years is broken down by the townspeople. The room is frozen in time, with the items for an upcoming wedding and a man’s suit laid out. Homer Barron’s body is stretched on the bed as well, in an advanced state of decay. The onlookers then notice the indentation of a head in the pillow beside Homer’s body and a long strand of Emily’s gray hair on the pillow.



‘A Rose for Emily’ was originally published in Forum in 1930 before being collected in Faulkner’s collection, These Thirteen, the following year.



Adapted from faulkner archive