In the exposition which is the beginning of the story, where the author sets up the story including characters, setting, and main conflicts the story. The narrator starts off by talking about the death of Emily Grierson and how the entire town attended her funeral in her home, which no one had been in for more than Ten years. The narrator then goes on to tell how Colonel Sartoris, the town’s previous mayor, had suspended Emily’s tax responsibilities to the town after her father’s death, justifying the action by claiming that Mr. Grierson had once lent the community a significant sum. As new town leaders take over, they make unsuccessful attempts to get Emily to resume payments. When members of the Board of Aldermen pay her a visit, Emily reasserts …show more content…
Thirty years earlier Emily had resisted another official inquiry on behalf of the town leaders, when they started to detect a horrible smell coming from her property. Emily’s father had just passed, and the man whom everyone thought she would soon marry had abandoned her. In order to get rid of the horrible odor the mayor sprinkled lime along the property in the middle of the night. A couple of weeks went by and the town’s people started to pity Emily remembering how her aunt had become insane. Emily had yet to be married, by the time she was thirty she was still single. After the death of her father the women of the town called Emily to give her their condolence, she then told the women that her father was not dead, she continued to go along with the tale for a few days then she finally turned over his body for …show more content…
After Emily had bought the arsenic the town people worried that she would she would use the poison to kill herself. Something happened with Emily and the minister before that he never spoke of and he bowed to never go back to Emily’s house. The minister writes to Emily’s two cousins who are form out of town and ask them to come check up on Emily. Due to Emily ordering a silver toilet set monogramed with Homer’s initials, and Homer being out of town believing to be preparing for the wedding talks of them getting married still lured around town. After Emily’s cousins leave, people seen Homer enter the home one evening and is never seen again. Cooped up in the house Emily begins to gain weight and become gray. Despite the occasional lesson she gives in china painting, her door remains closed to outsiders. Except for the occasional glimpse of her in the window, nothing is heard from her until her death at age seventy-four. Only the servant is seen going in and out of the house.
As the story comes to an end, known as the resolution, Emily’s body is laid out in the parlor and the people of the Town and the two cousins attend the service. After time had passed a sealed upstairs room that had not been opened in years had been broken down by some of the town’s people. The room had been set up with items for an upcoming weeding, including a man’s suit laid out. Homer’s body was laid out as well, in an advanced state