A Rose for Emily Timeline

Age 60

Age 70

A deputation actually went to her house to speak with her about her taxes,

Age 40 - 50

She died at age 74, to be exact.

"A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier."- ¶ 5, Part I

"Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have believed it." - ¶3, Part I

...and she vanquished them.

"And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; ------------

She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight." -¶10, Part IV

"Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves."

"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?"

"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson."

"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see We must go by the--"

"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."

"But, Miss Emily--"

"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these gentlemen out."- ¶ 8, Part I

"Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man."- ¶ 6 ,Part IV

Miss Emily gave lessons in china-painting .

"A deputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier"- 5, Part I

"From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted." -7, Part IV

However, those children didn't grow up and send their children, so she stopped.

"Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for good. " -8, Part IV

After Her Death

The newer generations mayors and Aldermen sent her a tax notice on the first of the year.

After Miss Emily was buried, they opened the locked room to reveal Homer Barron's corpse.

The Negro, Tobe, lets the first of the women in, then leaves out the back door before they find the body, and is not seen again.

"The negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again."- ¶1 ,Part V

"Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it." - 3, Part V

"The man himself lay in the bed." -4, Part V

He's probably scarred or ashamed. Who knows why he stayed with her?

" On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment." - ¶4,Part I

"--with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get any information from the Negro.

He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse.- ¶9, Part IV

Mid - 30's to Death

Due to evidence, it can be assumed that after Homer Barron's death (which had a high chance of being caused by Emily Grierson), Miss Emily had a necropheliac phase and slept with him. All that time locked up in that house- this is all we can really conclude about her activities.

"The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.

The man himself lay in the bed.

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." -4, Part V

30's

Miss Emily's annoying cousins came, and Homer left.

"We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.

So we were not surprised when Homer Barron--the streets had been finished some time since--was gone."- 4, Part IV

There were complaints about her house reeking, to the point where Judge Stevens ordered 4 men to sneak in there and sprinkle lime.

Miss Emily ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H.B. on each piece, from the jewelers. Then 2 days later, she bought a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt.

"A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old." - 4, Part II

"Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler's and ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, "They are married." " -3, Part IV

"So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. " -11, Part II

Miss Emily intimidated the druggist into selling her arsenic.

"Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two female cousins were visiting her." - 6, Part III

"Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: "For rats." - 15, Part III

Homer came back within 3 days of her cousins leaving.

"--but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along, within three days Homer Barron was back in town." - 4, Part IV

And that was the last anyone saw of him.

"A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one evening.

And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron." -4, Part IV

1894

In Emily's 20's

Emily Grierson's father dies, and she holds on to the body for 3 days.

"The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly."- ¶ 14, Part II

Homer Barron

He comes to town as a construction worker around the time Emily stops being so sick, and they are seen together on Sundays.

Colonel Satoris remits her taxes as a method of payment for what her father had done for the town when still alive.

"SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene." - -¶1, Part III

"The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron"

"Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable." -¶3, Part II

"Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying." -¶ 3, Part I

A Rose for Emily

By Salwa Marzan P5