Grierson House (Location Key)

The popularity of "A Rose for Emily" among anthologists and educators has made the Grierson house one of the most frequently visited sites in Yoknapatawpha. The story describes the house where Emily spends her whole life as "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 [i.e. the 1870s], set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and gasoline pumps - an eyesore among eyesores" (119). At one point it also offends the noses of the people in the neighborhood. Geographically, we can't be sure about exactly where it stands in Jefferson. Thematically, it exists at the intersection of the Gothic castle and the Southern plantation house.