After Homers disappearance Emily is seen now and then in the windows of her house. After the death of her father and the disappearance of her sweetheart, Emilys house began to develop a smell for which a few of the townsmen sprinkled lime around her house on night and the smell went away. Faulkners narrator then notes about her hair that [u]p to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray like the hair of an active man (224). Critic John F. Birk says, Notably, the new-found quality of Emilys hair hints that, first, she is playing a more aggressive if unseen role behind the scenes, and, second, she is somehow adopting a male role (210).Faulkner later describes Miss Emily by saying Thus she passed from generation to generationdear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse (225). Davis does not believe that this is simply a list of adjectives Faulkner chose to catalog but that he uses to:Describe Miss Emily with some care and for a specific purpose. It could be argued that they are intended to refer to the successive sections of the story, each becoming as it were a sort of metaphorical characterization of the differing states through which the townspeople of Jefferson (and the readers) pass in their evaluation of Miss Emily. (35) Another critic, Robert Crosman, comments that in his reading of the story he found Miss Emily to be menacing and even grotesque and stupid while one of his students describe Miss Emily as having endurance, faith, [and] love (208-209).After the adjective description Faulkners next line states, And so she died (Faulkner 225). Miss Emily fell ill and died with only her Negro to wait on her. The town then waited for Miss Emily to be decently in the ground to open the one upstairs room that they knew had been closed for forty years. The scene next seen was completely unexpected. Homer Barron was in the bed. The town stood staring looking at the body. Then we noticed tha...
