This is the second story by Faulkner I’ve read. I thought it much better than the first.

Emily Grierson is a small, fat woman who refuses to pay her taxes: She says she does not owe any taxes and tells the authorities to ask Colonel Sartoris about the matter, though he has been dead for nearly ten years. She seems to have no sense of reality.

She has a Negro servant.

Shortly after her sweetheart had deserted her, a smell developed. Some people broke open her cellar door and sprinkled lime there and in all the outbuildings, and after a week the smell went away.

(How can lime remove smells?)

Emily’s great-aunt had gone “completely crazy”, and Emily herself does not seem to me to be completely sane.

At thirty Emily was still single. When her father died, all that was left to her was the house.

For three days Emily claimed her father was not dead, but eventually she confessed he was.

He had driven away many young men.

A Yankee called Homer Barron came, in charge of the work for paving the sidewalks. He and Miss Emily drove together in a yellow-wheeled buggy on Sunday afternoons.

She was the last Grierson.

At one point she bought arsenic at the druggist’s. She wanted the best they had but refused to divulge what she wanted it for, though the law required her to.

Some said Emily would marry Homer. But he liked men, and himself said that he was not a marrying man.

Later the townspeople saw that Emily had grown fat and her hair eventually turned iron-grey.

Homer was not to be seen again.

Emily died at the age of seventy-four in one of the downstairs rooms. She had shut up the top floor of the house.

After Emily’s death, the Negro servant disappeared.

Two female cousins came and held the funeral.

There was one room above stairs which would have to be forced. When Emily was buried, they did so.

I won’t divulge the ending – your will have to read the story yourself.

One member of the Good Reads’ Short Story Club suggested that necrophilia was involved, but I myself see no reason to think this, and I wouldn’t know if it was possible for a woman to do this to a man. Another states that, knowing Faulkner, this could have been what he meant. But I do not know Faulkner.

All in all, I found this to be a very readable story with a somewhat shocking ending. I recommend that you read it. ( )