A Rose for Emily -

A women who once was beautiful, later became obese and bloated. Homer is "Miss Emily’s gay beau"(75). At one point, the house is described as stubborn, as if it were ignoring the surrounding decay. Through lack of attention, the house has evolved from a beautiful representative of quality, to an ugly holdover from another era. She was a monument, an ideal of past values but fallen because she had shown herself subject to death and decay.

Through descriptions of the house that resemble a description of Miss Emily Grierson, "A Rose for Emily" stresses the way that beauty and elegance can become repulsively distorted through neglect and lack of love. The similarity between the inside of the house and Miss Emily extends to the mantel, with the portrait of her father and Miss Emily sitting there.

The interior of the house also reflects Miss Emily’s increasing degeneration and the growing sense of sadness that accompanies such decay. Similarly, Miss Emily overlooks the deterioration of her once-ground residence. The darkness and the smell of the house connect with Miss Emily, "a small, fat woman in black" with a voice that is "dry and cold"(76) as if it were dark and dusty from disuse like the house.

Finally, the townspeople’s description of both the house and the resident reveal a common stubborn arrogance. Like the house, she has lost her beauty. Both the house and the occupant have suffered the ravages of time and neglect. Just as the house seems to reject progress and updating, so does Emily, until both of them become decaying leftovers.