In addition to her servant Tobe, Miss Emily's house was depicted as a "big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies" (532) and had also been set on Jefferson's "most select street." (532). The vivid and striking description of the Grierson house is the identifying mark among the few houses belonging to the aristocratic society. Along with the grandeur that the Grierson house posed, came power and prominence with the Grierson name. Over time, the streets were transformed and "garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names- (523). Amidst all of this, "Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps - an eyesore among eyesores" (532). The transition from the Old South to the New South marked a change in all of society adapting to new standards and leaving behind the old. Miss Emily, however, refused to follow the inclination of changing her beliefs and her lifestyle in order to match that of society that is apparent through the declining physical appearance of her house. .
The Grierson house, in the eyes of Miss Emily, was a living representation of all the morals, lifestyles and memories of the Old South. Whether or not she is wrong, she is determined to cling to it as her lifeline to the past as she knows it. One of the more apparent signs of her questionable lucidity happens after the passing of her father. She held on to her deceased father's decaying body for three days, not allowing the town minister and the doctor to dispose the body. The sad and painful truth is too hard for Miss Emily to accept, and her refusal to accept her father's death is just another example of her stubbornness. She rejects change out of cowardice and fear of losing her only reality, the lifestyle of the Old South.
