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“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.”
This quote occurs in Section 2, during the incident in which Judge Stevens has men sprinkle lime throughout the foundation of Emily’s house to address the foul odor rather than confront her directly. In a window above—the window in the room in which the town will, decades later, find Homer Barron’s corpse laid out on the bed—the silhouette of Emily watches. That the narrator describes her as an “idol” is indicative of the way the town objectifies her, treating her as myth-like, less a human than the idea of one. Indeed, the town projects its opinions and assumptions about Emily onto her character throughout the text, the result being that the reader doesn’t know much, or anything, about Emily’s true thoughts and feelings.
“We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.”
This quote, also from Section 2, describes the sympathy the town has for Emily in the wake of her father’s death, and also their lack of willingness to interfere. They profess to understand her; with no father, no romantic prospects, and no money, Emily has “nothing left,” so it’s understandable to them that she would cling to the one thing she did have—her father—even if he was the reason she now finds herself in the unenviable position of being poor and alone. Her refusal to bury her father, and indeed to accept that he is dead at all, foreshadows the culmination of Emily’s madness, when the town discovers she killed Homer Barron and slept beside his corpse for decades. There is a certain defensiveness to this statement; “we did not say she was crazy then” is an acknowledgment that they would say she was crazy later, and reads almost like an excuse, a justification for why nothing was done even when it was clear Emily was deeply unwell.
