When Miss Emily was young and in her prime, she was desirable and she had many suitors, “the young men her father had driven away” (90). She was slender, as she appeared on the portrait with her father, and projected the image of pride of the old south. She represented the elite of the south. When she was young she carried her head high and was living with luxury and style, protected under a strong hand of her father. And in these years Faulkner describes the Grierson’s house in the same manner. It is described as a beautiful, majestic house situated on the prominent street of the town, which stands out as an icon to aristocratic

Both the house and Emily are described as uninviting, aged, and icons of an old impressive era that have taken on the appearance of being old, tired and unwanted. Emily had become “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (88) and her house was a representation of it. The house’s “garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of the neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores.” (87-88) As Miss Emily was an obligation to the town and an old weight nobody wanted to carry but had to, her house also deteriorated and became “ an eyesore among the eyesores.” (88) The presence of the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps in the description of the house also indicates that while new life styles and modernization was developing in the town and replacing the old southern ways, Miss Emily’s house was an icon of an old south with its old garages with the cotton wagons and an old lavish architecture that has deteriorated after many years. And Emily is a representation of the old aristocratic south; before she was well known and respected - now she had became an obligation.

As the reader reads on and places the events in its chronological order we notice that as physical and emotional characteristics of Miss Emily change, the description of the house cha

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