Yellow is usually called upon to represent happiness, joy and positive energy. (Think about the bright yellow sunshine.) Both of these references that include yellow happen during the period of time when Emily is being courted by Homer Barron, which must have been a joyful time for her.
In this story, the writer found some symbols reflected a sad life from Emily Grierson. They are: The rose, Emily's hair, watch ticking, black color, and her father.
In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner uses color to describe Emily Grierson's emotional state transitioning from innocence to insanity. Typically in stories, colors provide the current visuals that characters see while helping readers to obtain a better mental image of the scene.
The only person who does get significantly close to her, Homer, she murders. Emily sheds blood, the same color as the red petals of a rose. The rose might also have been part of Miss Emily's bridal bouquet if Homer had married her.
Emily's house also represents alienation, mental illness, and death. It is a shrine to the living past, and the sealed upstairs bedroom is her macabre trophy room where she preserves the man she would not allow to leave her.
Later, after Homer Barron disappears into the Grierson house, Miss Emily is next seen with “iron-gray” hair, “like the hair of an active man.” First, like an iron helmet, the “iron-gray” hair suggests that Miss Emily has something to protect—and indeed she is protecting a dreadful secret: Homer's murder.
The lime is a symbol of a fruitless attempt to hide something embarrassing, and creepy. It's also a symbol of the way the town, in that generation, did things.
Miss Emily suffers from schizophrenia because she shows symptoms of withdrawing from society. Throughout Emily's life, her aristocratic father the townspeople highly respected, kept Emily closed in believing no suitors are worthy enough for her.
In the final lines of "A Rose for Emily," by William Faulkner, we read: "Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. 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."
Things are starting to make sense: here we're talking about the color "rose." From the curtains to the lampshades, rose is the dominant color of Miss Emily's bridal chamber.
Sweet Emily is a soft, bright, periwinkle purple with a distant mountain undertone. It is a perfect paint color for an entry.
She was from an antebellum Southern aristocratic family. Emily seemed to have mental breakdown after her father, and then her potential lover, died. As Emily is a part of an antebellum family, she is likely not black. Additionally, her corpse is described as "pale and swollen."
'A Rose for Emily' promotes feminist ideals by portraying the protagonist, Emily, as a woman who has been oppressed by a patriarchal society to the detriment of her mental health.
Miss Emily
Most of the people at the funeral were part of that young generation, and they could never really accept Emily into their generation. To them she was the classic idea of an old-fashioned southern woman. Miss Emily then becomes a symbol of the old generation's values and the sins of the old fathers.
Emily's Hair
Her girlish appearance is symbolic of her sexual immaturity, which now seems destined to be frozen in time since her father has robbed her of many chances to marry. A few years after Homer "disappears" and her last chance to wed has gone, her hair turns gray, signifying the death of her sexuality.
One might ask, what does Emily stand for? Faulkner drew Emily as a symbol, specifically representing the Old South, and describing her as "a fallen monument" at her death. She had focused on the past, and her longtime traditions were paramount to her.
1935 – Miss Emily dies at 74 years old. Tobe leaves the house. Two days later the funeral is held at the Grierson house. At the funeral, the townspeople break down the door to the bridal chamber/crypt, which no one has seen in 40 years.
She was a martyr of the lost south. Faulkner gave Emily the rose to salute her for her irrevocable tragedy; the readers give her the rose to salute her for her adamancy as well as her suffering. As the above analysis, Emily was deserved a rose.
She faces depression right after her strict dad dies and her sweetheart dumps her. As a consequence, she poisons Homer Barron, her ex-boyfriend, and keeps his body in her room for many years.
Her struggle with loss and attachment is the impetus for the plot, driving her to kill Homer Barron, the man assumed to have married her. She poisons and kills Homer as she sees this as the only way to keep Homer with her permanently.
''I want some poison,'' she demands, though she refuses to tell the druggist the purpose of her purchase. The law requires that the druggist know what the poison will be used for, so he eventually gives in and writes ''for rats'' on the box. Emily actually intends to use the arsenic to kill her suitor, Homer Barron.
Emily lives in an old decaying house, and keeps the bodies of both her father and her friend, Homer Baron, well after they have died. In fact, Emily stores Homer's body in a room until it has fully decayed so that she may pretend that he is still living.
When the city authorities in Jefferson visit Emily in her old age to try to collect her taxes, they notice that the home, which no one had visited in ten years, 'smelled of dust and disuse - a close, dank smell.
Symbolism that “A Rose for Emily” displays is Miss Emily's taxes that represent death. First is the death of her father. The taxes are a symbol of the financial remission her father experiences, but keeps hidden from Miss Emily and the town.
Mr. Grierson, Emily's father, sets the tone for her narrative of solitude and control. He makes himself the central figure in Emily's life, chasing away her suitors with a horsewhip and exerting his influence over every aspect of their home - something that does not ebb after his death.