"A Rose for Emily"

In the short story by William Faulkner, the main character is referred to mostly as "Miss Emily." This is partly because of her Southern family's wealth, but it also emphasizes that she's an unmarried woman whom the narrator (speaking for the town) knows only from a distance. Find out more about the character through this list to decide whether you'd also whisper, "Poor Emily."

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 12 Unit 2's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Pygmalion and the Statue, Pygmalion, Talkin' 'bout a Revolution, Cinderella, the Legend, Why Women Always Take Advantage of Men, The Giving Tree, A Rose for Emily, The Story of an Hour, The Chaser
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. monument
    an important site marked and preserved as public property
    When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.
  2. obligation
    a personal relation in which one is indebted for a service
    Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron--remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity.
  3. obesity
    the condition of being excessively overweight
    Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her.
  4. pallid
    pale, as of a person's complexion
    She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue.
  5. vanquish
    defeat in a competition, race, or conflict
    So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell.
  6. torso
    the body excluding the head and neck and limbs
    As they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol.
  7. tableau
    a group of people attractively arranged
    We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door.
  8. pauper
    a person who is very poor
    Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized.
  9. despair
    the feeling that nothing will turn out well
    Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.
  10. serene
    not agitated
    When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.
  11. noblesse oblige
    the duty of the privileged to be honorable and generous
    But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige--without calling it noblesse oblige.
  12. imperviousness
    the quality of being impenetrable
    It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness.
  13. haughty
    having or showing arrogant superiority
    She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look.
  14. erect
    upright in position or posture
    She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag.
  15. circumvent
    beat through cleverness and wit
    (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.)
  16. thwart
    hinder or prevent, as an effort, plan, or desire
    Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.
  17. attain
    reach a point in time, or a certain state or level
    During the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning.
  18. contemporary
    a person of nearly the same age as another
    She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate.
  19. tedious
    so lacking in interest as to cause mental weariness
    Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies' magazines.
  20. niche
    an enclosure that is set back or indented
    Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows--she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which.
  21. perverse
    marked by a disposition to oppose and contradict
    Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
  22. acrid
    strong and sharp, as a taste or smell
    A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured.
  23. inextricable
    incapable of being disentangled or untied
    What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
  24. indentation
    a concave cut or depression in a surface or edge
    Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head.
  25. strand
    a very slender natural or synthetic fiber
    One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
Created on Fri Mar 06 10:53:28 EST 2015 (updated Fri Mar 06 12:20:34 EST 2015)

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