Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that is why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes lost in fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand" (Faulkner 522). So to the tax authorities she was as a fat woman and it sounds like they were being funny about it. This makes it sound like the authorities were really looking around in her home to maybe find out something nobody else knew about Miss Emily. The townspeople were always watching Miss Emily to see if she was going to come out; "The townspeople watched Miss Emily constantly for fifty or sixty years" (Stone 79). That sounds kind of creepy but, her mysteriousness must have made her interesting to watch like she was hiding something. The townspeople watched as she was given the house "when her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had to become humanized" (Faulkner 523). That is an example of being a symbol when the townspeople are happy that finally the house was given to her. Another proof that she was a symbol, the day after her dad died all the ladies prepared to call the house and offer condolence and aid as that was there custom and Miss Emily answered the door with no trace of grief on her face (Faulkner 523). This shows that the townspeople respected her and felt sorry for her, which is a sign that she was a symbol to them.
In addition, another symbol of Emily in Faulkner's "A rose for Emily" is Emily's house. .
"It was 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, set on what had once been our most select street.
