"A Rose for Emily"
By William Faulkner

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by by Students and Staff of The University of Virginia, Veronica Scott
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Sources

New York : Open Court Publishing Co, 1930Text for this digital edition drawn from The University of Virginia's etext center and checked against the first edition text using The Internet Archive. Page images are drawn from The Internet Archive's copy of The Forum

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Citation

Faulkner, William. "A Rose for Emily". The Forum, Open Court Publishing Co, 1930 , Vol. 83 pp 233-238 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthology.lib.virginia.edu/work/Faulkner/faulkner-rose-emily. Accessed: 2024-05-09T15:21:08.917Z

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233 A ROSE for Emily

BY William Faulkner
I

When Miss Emily Grierson died, 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, which no one save an old Negro manservant -- a combined gardener and cook -- had seen in at least ten years.

It was a big, squarish, frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolascupolas 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 augustaugust names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettishcoquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps -- an eyesore among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetry among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

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 edictedict 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. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted charity.

Page 233Page 233

Footnotes

cupolas_A rounded vault or dome forming the roof of any building or part of a building, or supported upon columns over a tomb, etc. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
august_Inspiring or worthy of respect (originally on account of birth or position in society); impressively eminent or respected; imposing, reverend, worshipful. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
coquettish_Befitting or suggestive of a coquette or coquet; characterized by coquetry; playfully and insincerely flirtatious. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
edict_That which is proclaimed by authority as a rule of action; an order issued by a sovereign to his subjects; an ordinance or proclamation having the force of law. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
motes_A particle of dust, esp. one of the innumerable minute specks seen floating in a beam of light. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
temerity_Excessive boldness; rashness; foolhardiness, recklessness. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
spraddled_To sprawl. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
jalousies_A blind or shutter made with slats which slope upwards from without, so as to exclude sun and rain, and admit air and some light. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
cabal_(a) any tradition or special private interpretation; (b) a secret. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
virulent_Violently bitter, spiteful, or malignant; full of acrimony or enmity. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
sibilant_Having a hissing sound; of the nature of, characterized by, hissing. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
bier_ The movable stand on which a corpse, whether in a coffin or not, is placed before burial; that on which it is carried to the grave. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
acrid_Bitterly pungent to the organs of taste or smell, or to the skin, etc.; irritating; corrosive. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.
inextricable_That cannot be escaped or got free from. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.