Both the house and the owner are in decay. Shutting herself from the outside world and living in complete self-isolation, Miss Emily seemed like a living corpse.
26. “Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff...” (Para. 10)
Her remark shows that she only acknowledged the authority of Colonel Sartoris, proving that she was a truly proud and stubborn woman.
27. “But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see we must go by the...” (Para. 11) But there is no written document to show that. You see we must be guided by the written documents.
to go by: to be guided or led by
Note: Earlier Miss Emily also admitted, ―Colonel Sartoris explained it to me.‖ Clearly the dispensation was only an oral permission. In the old days, things were done in the old-fashioned way: the verbal permission of Colonel Sartoris was as good as a written document. The new generation acted differently: they wanted to be guided by written documents. on the books: in written documents
28. “See Colonel Sartoris.” (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) (Para. 14) From the novel Sartoris we learn that the Young Colonel died in 1919. So we can infer that the deputation‘s visit to Miss Emily must have occurred in approximately 1928-1929. Miss Emily‘s insistence on their seeing Colonel Sartoris, who had been dead almost ten years, proves how she refused to acknowledge change.
29. How does the narration shift in time in Section II of the story?
In this section, time shifts back to thirty years before the visit of the deputation. There was a bad smell coming from Miss Emily‘s house. That was two years after her father‘s death and a short time after her sweetheart had disappeared.
30. So she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. (Para. 15)
to vanquish: to conquer or defeat in battle; to defeat in any conflict, as in argument horse and foot: a military idiom from the American Civil War, meaning totally 就这样她彻底打败了他们，把他们打得人仰马翻，正如三十年前在气味问题上她击败了他们的父辈一样。
31. That was two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart—the one we believed would marry her—had deserted her. (Para. 15)
Her sweetheart and his deserting her are mentioned here as if casually. Actually this is an important detail. The narrator will come back to it. This is one of the characteristics of Faulkner‘s narrative techniques—throwing out a bit of information here and there for the reader to piece together in order to get a complete picture.
32. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received… (Para. 15)
temerity: foolishness or rash boldness that results from underestimating danger or failing to
anticipate consequences
Translation: 有几位妇女冒失地去探望她，但被她拒之门外……
33. “Just as if a man—any man—could keep a kitchen properly,” the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed. (Para. 16)
What the ladies said meant that they did not in the least believe a man, any man, could keep a kitchen properly. So when the bad smell developed, they believed it was because the manservant didn‘t keep the kitchen clean.
34. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons. (Para. 16)
The Griersons and the townsfolk belonged to two entirely different worlds. After her father died, Miss Emily shut herself in the house, retreating to the world of her past. However, complaints about the smell linked the two worlds and compelled Miss Emily to deal with the other world. gross: vulgar, coarse; lacking in fineness; disgusting, offensive teeming: full of (people and animals)
high and mighty: talking or behaving as if you think you are more important than other people
35. “Why, send her word to stop it,” the woman said. “Isn’t there a law?” (Para. 19)
word: Here it means a command, order or authorization. e.g. They were waiting for the word to go ahead.
“Isn’t there a law?”: The ―law‖ here refers to health or hygiene regulations passed by the town authorities.
36. The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation. (Para. 21)
The next day the mayor received two more complaints. One of them was from a man who pleaded with the mayor in a shy and timid way.
Note: This shows that the smell was bothering everybody and that even a shy man found it hard to put up with the situation any longer.
diffident: timid, shy; lacking self-confidence; marked by hesitation in asserting oneself deprecation: an expression of disapproval
37. “…will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?” (Para. 23)
Judge Stevens, eighty years old, was an old Southern gentleman. He thought it was bad to tell a lady to her face that she smelled bad. So he didn‘t approve of sending her word to clean up the kitchen in a direct way.
38. So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. (Para. 24)
to slink: to move in a quiet, furtive, or sneaking manner, as out of fear, guilt, etc. brickwork: the part of the house built of bricks
于是，第二天午夜之后，四个男人穿过埃米莉家的草坪，像破门入室的盗贼一样偷偷摸摸地绕着房子转悠，在房子的砖石地基部分以及地窖的通风处使劲地嗅着，其中一人从背在肩上的袋子里不时掏出一些药粉，好像播种一样将它撒在地上。
39. As they re-crossed 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. (Para. 24)
Note: This is one of the vivid images of Miss Emily that the author creates in this story. Here Miss Emily sat in the window with the light behind her. What people could see was her silhouette, a dark figure seen against a light background. The fact that she was motionless suited her rigid and stubborn personality. In this image, she didn‘t look like a living person, but like an idol, or a goddess. There are other images of Miss Emily in this story. Pay attention to them and ask yourself why Faulkner portrays her in such a way and how these images change over time.
当他们又穿过草坪往回走时，原先一扇黑洞洞的窗子突然点亮了灯。埃米莉坐在窗口，灯光照着她的背后，她那挺直的身躯纹丝不动，就像一尊神像。
40. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. (Para. 25)
People in the town felt that the Grierson family regarded themselves as more important than they deserved to be. The fact that Miss Emily‘s great-aunt, old lady Wyatt, had gone crazy was believed to have to do with this blind, excessive self-importance.
41. 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. (Para. 25)
tableau: a striking scene or picture, frozen in time for dramatic effect; a theatrical device in which a group of people who do not speak or move are arranged on stage to show a famous event or a dramatic moment
to spraddle: colloquial or dialect to spread the legs in a sprawling or straddling fashion back-flung: 向后开的
Note: This sentence depicts a central image that reveals several facts about the relationship between the father and daughter in the Grierson family. First, the positions of the father and daughter are meaningful. The father was standing in the foreground while Miss Emily was standing in the background. This shows the father‘s dominant position and the daughter‘s subordinate role. The father‘s spraddling adds to his image as a stern patriarchal figure. Second, the father turned his back to her. This shows that he refused to listen to her, denying her wishes. Then Mr. Grierson was clutching a horsewhip, which is clearly a symbol of power, authority, and strict control. Miss Emily‘s slender figure suggests vulnerability, and her white dress symbolizes purity, the most valued quality of Southern white women. The fact that the two of them were framed by the back-flung front door may be interpreted in different ways. One interpretation is that the father was blocking the door, suggesting Miss Emily was unable to walk out of the house and choose her suitor freely. Another interpretation is that the door was open for suitors but the suitors were driven away by the father holding a horsewhip. Apparently the author intends to imply many meanings with this image. Also we should compare the image of Miss Emily in this
picture with other images of her at different times, such as how she looked after her father‘s death.
42. So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized. (Para. 25)
When she got to be thirty and was still single, people in the town would have denied that they wanted such an outcome but it did confirm their predictions—Miss Emily was still single because the Griersons held themselves too high for what they were, and all the young men who had come to court Miss Emily had been driven away by her father (See Para. 28). They knew that even though there was insanity in the family (the great-aunt Wyatt), Miss Emily wouldn‘t have turned down all of her chances if they had really existed.
因此，当她30岁仍未嫁人时，确切地说我们并不觉得高兴，只是觉得这证明了我们原来的想法；就算她的家庭有精神失常的家族史，她也不至于拒绝所有的机会，如果真有那么多人向她求婚的话。
43. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. (Para. 26)
Without her father‘s over-protection and without much money, she had become an ordinary person， like other townspeople.
44. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less. (Para. 26)
Ordinary people often become excited or worried by having a penny more or a penny less. Being poor, now she, too, would learn to appreciate the value of money, like other people in the town. old: familiar, experienced, heard or seen many times before
45. How did Miss Emily behave when her father died? (See Para. 27)
She told the ladies who came to see her that her father was not dead. She refused to let anybody in her house. She behaved in this way for three days. Then she broke down. They buried her father quickly, because otherwise the body would begin to smell. This detail sets us up for what is going to happen later to Homer Barron.
46.… and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will. (Para. 28)
Miss Emily refused to let the townspeople take away her father‘s body for burial. She tried hard to hold onto it as long as possible. Note that the narrator says, ―... she would... cling to that which had robbed her‖, rather than ―her father who robbed her‖. The implied meaning is that what robbed her of love, marriage and freedom was not only her father as an individual, but the traditional social force he represented. Even so, she would cling to these same conservative values.
47. 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. (Para. 29) It is obvious that there is something else beneath Miss Emily‘s change in her appearance. In the essay Changing Portraits in “A Rose for Emily”, Janice A. Powell points out, ―The images in this
passage reveal a woman stripped of her sexuality. In this portrait, Emily assumes the semblance of a girl instead of a sexually mature woman of thirty. Her cut hair is especially important. Since ancient times, a woman‘s hair has symbolized her sexuality. Emily‘s hair, along with her sexuality, has been cut short through her father‘s pride. The cut hair also introduces religious imagery, for an initiate into a nunnery shears her hair as a symbol of her chastity. In addition, the adjectives ?tragic and serene‘ envisage a Madonna, a holy virgin, as an addendum to the primary image of angels who, although often depicted as women, are asexual.‖ However, the symbolic meaning of Miss Emily‘s short hair is rather ambiguous. It could also indicate that, with her hair cut short, Emily has become a liberated woman, determined to abandon her former role as a genteel, upper-class lady. Short hair usually makes a woman appear stronger and more independent in character. This quality can be seen in the fact that she engages in a relationship with Homer Barron, a Yankee foreman, despite the town‘s traditional social prejudices.
48. …and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee—a big, dark, ready man… (Para. 30) Yankee: Homer Barron is a man from the victorious North who, after the Civil War, came to South in the hope of making money. Though the word does not appear in the text, these men were commonly called ―carpetbaggers‖, and were objects of scorn or suspicion to most Southerners. ready: clever and skillful mentally or physically
49. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable. (Para. 30) livery stable: a stable where horses and carriages can be hired 不久，礼拜天下午我们常看到他和埃米莉小姐驾着一辆从马车店租来的轻便马车出门，车轮是黄色的，配套的马是红褐色的。
50. a day laborer (Para. 31): an unskilled worker paid by the day临时工
51. 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. (Para. 31)
But there were still others, older people, who said that no matter how sad Miss Emily was (over her father‘s death), she should not forget that she had certain obligations as a member of the nobility, though a real lady would not describe her self-restraint using the expression ―noblesse oblige‖.
Note: The implied meaning is that it should be unthinkable for Emily as part of the local ―nobility‖ to consider marrying a man so far beneath her.
52. They had not even been represented at the funeral. (Para. 31) 甚至举行葬礼时这家都没派人出席。
53. This behind their hands; rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: “Poor Emily.” (Para. 32)
behind their hands: People were whispering, talking in private with their hands over their mouths.