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Miss Emily Grierson is the titular character of the short story A Rose for Emily by the author William Faulkner. She represented the "Old South" clashing with the modern world.
In PBS' 1983 adaptation of Faulkner's story, Emily was portrayed by Anjelica Huston, who later played the Supreme Leader in the 1986 3D film and theme park attraction Captain Eo, the Grand High Witch in The Witches, Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent in Ever After, Gothel in Barbie as Rapunzel, Miss Harridan in Daddy Daycare and Miss Battle-Axe in the film adaptation of Horrid Henry.
Biography[]
Emily is introduced as a senile, mean-spirited old woman who is disliked, but pitied, by the residents of the fictional Yoknapatawpho County. She came from a wealthy family with roots in the community reaching back generations, and seemed stuck in the old world of the pre-Civil War South. For example, she avoids paying her taxes, still believing that she had no taxes in Jefferson. She still firmly believed this even when her financial representative died.
When she was younger, her strict, old-fashioned father essentially ran her life, forbidding her to have friends or boyfriends. However, she still loved him, and had a rather unhealthy attachment to him; when he died, she convinced herself that he was still alive and kept his body in her house for three days. When the undertakers came and tried to advise her to give them the body, she broke down and gave it to them after those three days. This left a huge impact on her.
To the town's surprise, Emily fell in love with Homer Barron, a Northern laborer with a dark complexion, and they assumed that she would marry him. However, much to her displeasure, Homer was more interested in other men. Emily then went to the store to buy arsenic, but did not tell the clerk what she would use it for. After this, no one saw Barron again nor did they see that much from Emily. It should be noted later on that most of the denizens of the town complained of a wretched smell from Emily's residence. They assumed that her servant probably killed a rat or any other pest. Emily spent the rest of her life as a spinster and a recluse, rarely leaving her house.
Several years after Homer's disappearance, Emily grew sick and died. After her lavish funeral, a group of townspeople went into her house to see what belongings were left. They found a locked door, and broke it down to find it was the entrance to Emily's bedroom. The townspeople discovered Homer's skeletal corpse on Emily's bed, with a fresh dent in one of the pillows. They also noticed a long strand of gray hair on the pillow that belonged to the deceased Emily, thus leading to the implication that she had sex with the corpse.