rustling: making an irregular succession of soft sounds, as of leaves being moved by a gentle breeze
silk and satin: the silk and satin dresses worn by the ladies
“Poor Emily”: Note the absence of the word ―Miss‖. This reveals the change of attitude of the townspeople toward Miss Emily after her dating Homer Barron. Instead of respect, they now felt pity for her.
礼拜天的下午，当拉车的马踏着轻快的步子哒哒驶过时，女人们站在遮阳的百叶窗后窥视，她们的绸缎长裙沙沙作响，人们交头接耳：“可怜的埃米莉。
54. …with cold, haughty eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eye-sockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper’s face ought to look. (Para. 34) A lighthouse keeper lives an extremely lonely life, and that terrible loneliness and solitude would show on his face. Here, Miss Emily is compared to a lonely lighthouse keeper.
55. “I want some poison,” she said. (Para. 34)
The narrator does not tell us why she wanted some poison at this point. From paragraph 43 we know that the townspeople thought she would kill herself. But will she kill herself? Why or why not?
56. Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. (Para. 42) 埃米莉就那样瞪着他，她的头向后仰，以便能与他对视，一直看得他回避了她的犀利的目光，走进去取了砒霜并将其包好。
57. …and we said it would be the best thing. (Para. 43)
Why did the townspeople think it would be the best thing for her to kill herself? The answer can be found in the next paragraph.
58. “She will persuade him yet…” (Para. 43)
This remark means he was not willing to marry her, and the reason is given in the following ―because‖ clause.
59. Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. (Para. 44)
These ladies represented the traditional code of the American South. When Miss Emily was first seen with Homer Barron, the townspeople could hardly believe that a member of the Grierson family would think seriously of marrying a Northerner, a day laborer. Then when Miss Emily continued her relationship with Barron without seeming to be in a hurry to get married, they began to accuse her of being a disgrace and a bad example. We can see here how Miss Emily‘s father had ruined her life, and how the whole town also played a role by interfering with her private life.
60. ...but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister—Miss Emily’s people were Episcopal—to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again. (Para. 44)
Episcopal: a member of the Episcopal Church(圣公会),which is governed by bishops. In the town where Emily lived, people with prestige belonged to the Episcopal Church.
the Baptist: The Baptists(浸礼会教派) are associated with more enthusiastic, less cultivated modes of Christian worship. The town‘s middle-class ladies belonged to the Baptist Church, and forced their minister to call upon Miss Emily on behalf of the town.
He would never divulge what happened during that interview: He would never disclose what happened during his talk with Miss Emily. But readers can infer that Miss Emily must have treated him with disdain when he came to express the community‘s disapproval of her public relationship with Homer Barron. That is why he refused to have another talk with Miss Emily.
61. We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’s toilet set in silver… (Para. 45)
a man’s toilet set in silver: a set of toilet articles made of silver, used for grooming
62. We were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been. (Para. 45)
The townspeople were glad because they had been annoyed by the arrogant attitude of Miss Emily and saw now that the two cousins were even more stubborn and self-important than Miss Emily. They believed that the cousins would succeed in persuading Miss Emily and Homer Barron to get married quickly so that their relationship would come to an appropriate conclusion.
63. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off… (Para. 46) blowing-off: a loud quarrel that would signal the end of the relationship
The people in the town guessed that the relationship had turned sour, causing Homer Barron to leave; they expected to see a quarrel between them. When nothing of the kind happened, they were a little disappointed. Then they began to think that perhaps he had gone to prepare for the wedding.
64. By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily’s allies to help circumvent the cousins. (Para. 46)
By that time, the cousins had completed their mission and it was time for them to leave Jefferson. Now the townspeople were taking Miss Emily‘s side and making secret plans to help her deal with her cousins.
65. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one evening. (Para. 46)
We can feel that the author is hinting at something here. Did Homer Barron agree to marry Miss Emily? Did he go away to prepare for Miss Emily‘s coming as the townspeople had supposed? Why did the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door instead of the front door? Why did he come at dusk? Let‘s keep these questions in mind and try to answer them as we read on.
66. And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. (Para. 47)
What did the townspeople think when Homer Barron disappeared? They supposed he had deserted her (―after her sweetheart—the one we believed would marry her—had deserted her‖ in Para.15).
We should be alert to the possibility that the author knows something that the narrator is not aware of yet.
67. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime (Para. 47)
The author wants us to think of the possible connections between the disappearance of Homer Barron and the smell that the townspeople complained about.
68. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman’s life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die. (Para. 47)
thwarted her woman’s life so many times: We knew that she could be expected to behave this way, as if that quality of her father, who had repeatedly prevented her from living a normal woman‘s life, was so strong, negative and furious that it would not disappear completely.
Note: Why did the townspeople expect this? They believed that Homer Barron‘s disappearance meant that he had deserted Miss Emily. This was a heavy blow to poor Emily, whose woman‘s life had been already thwarted by her father so many times. So they were not surprised when she did not appear on the streets for six months. They had expected her to behave this way.
我们明白这也是意料之中的事，似乎她父亲那使她作为女性的生活屡遭挫折的性格太恶毒、太厉害了，很难消失。
69. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man. (Para. 48)
The vigorous and iron-gray hair symbolizes her strong and stubborn personality, like that of an active man - such as her father and Homer Barron.
70. …where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris’ contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. (Para. 49)
…where the daughters and granddaughters of the older generation who lived in Colonel Sartoris‘ time were sent to Emily to learn china-painting regularly and piously just as they were sent to church on Sundays with a small sum of money as a donation.
the collection plate: a plate passed around during a church service for collecting offerings of money
71. When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. (Para. 50)
This sentence says a lot about Miss Emily‘s negative attitude toward change and the progress of time. Refusing to have numbers fastened to her door can be seen as a refusal to acknowledge the passing of time.
72. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. (Para. 51)
This shows that Miss Emily simply ignored the tax notice.
unclaimed: 未被领取的
73. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs windows—she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house—like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. (Para. 51)
torso: the main part of the body, not including the head and limbs
Note: Now Miss Emily no longer went out. From time to time the townspeople would see her in one of the downstairs windows. She had evidently shut the top floor of the house. The word ―evidently‖ shows that the townspeople were supposing that she had shut the top floor, since they could not go into the house. In the final section of the story we shall learn that the corpse of Homer Barron was lying on her bed in the upstairs bedroom. Sitting in the window, Miss Emily looked like the carved torso of an idol for worship placed in a niche. Whether she was looking or not looking at us we could not tell, and it was not important because she had ceased to be a real human being, and had become a sort of monument, a symbol of a tradition and a hereditary obligation. (Para. 3)
不时地，我们在楼下的一个窗口能见到她的身影，显然她已封闭了顶楼。她的身影就像供奉在壁龛里的一尊神明的躯体，也许她在看着我们，也许没有，我们也不清楚。
74. Thus she passed from generation to generation—dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse. (Para. 51)
The author uses five adjectives to describe how the townspeople felt about Miss Emily. The words are precise, but these are adjectives that do not fit comfortably together. They reflect the townspeople‘s ambivalent attitude toward Emily. She was ―dear‖ because she represented the Southern heritage to a certain extent. She was ―inescapable‖ because she was ―a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town‖. She was ―impervious‖ in that she would not be affected by changes taking place in the town, and she demonstrated her imperviousness by ignoring the tax notice and refusing to pay taxes. She was ―tranquil‖. Though she was tragic, she remained calm and undisturbed. Her tranquility, as well as her rigidity, are signified by her motionless silhouette in the window. She was certainly ―perverse‖, always behaving in an unreasonable way and doing the opposite of what people expected her to do.
75. …and the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years. (Para. 55)
The very old men, who were even older than Miss Emily, came to the funeral. Some of them were veterans of the Civil War, and they had put on their old Confederate uniforms to pay their last respects to this Southern lady from an aristocratic family. Standing on the porch and on the lawn, they talked of Miss Emily, mistakenly thinking of her as someone their own age, born around 1840 or so whereas, actually, born around 1855, she was considerably younger than they were. They imagined they had danced with her, possibly even courted her. As old people do, they mixed up the dates and years of past happenings. One might think that in people‘s memories, the past is
like a road that becomes less defined as it reaches further back. But instead, the recent past – the last ten years or so - is a bottleneck. Beyond that narrow passage, the remote past is a huge meadow where things are pleasantly and fondly confused. To these old Southerners, like green grass never touched by winter, their memories of the remote past remained blurred, sweet, romanticized, and unchanged.
Note: This is a good example of using long sentences, which is a typical characteristic of Faulkner‘s writing.
some in their brushed Confederate uniforms: Some of them had fought in the Confederate Army in the Civil War. They had put away their army uniforms and now brushed off the dust and put them on for this special occasion.
mathematical progression: sequence or succession of happenings in time, marked by numbers diminishing: making sth., or making sth. seem, smaller in size
meadow: an area of grassland; a field of low, level land grown with wild grass and flowers
bottleneck: any place, as on a narrow road, where traffic is slowed or halted; any point at which movement or progress is slowed
而那些耋耄老人——有的身穿掸去灰尘的南军制服——站在房廊里和草坪上，谈论着埃米莉小姐，似乎她是他们的同龄人，他们觉得仿佛和她跳过舞，或许曾向她求过爱。他们混淆了往事发生的年月，这是老年人的通病。对于他们来说，过去不是一条逐渐变窄的道路，而是一片辽阔的、没有冬季的芳草地。只是最近十年才像狭窄瓶颈般，把他们与遥远的过去分割开来。
76. Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in forty years... (Para. 56)
The narrator tells us that there was a mysterious room upstairs which no one had seen in forty years. The author is hinting that something must have happened forty years ago that made Miss Emily shut the room.
77. What is paragraph 57 about?
This paragraph describes vividly the details of the mysterious room upstairs. Earlier in the text, we have already encountered some elements of Gothic fiction. From paragraph 57 to the end of the story we see how perfectly Faulkner is able to create an atmosphere often found in Gothic novels. The Gothic novel is a type of novel characterized by horror, violence, supernatural effects, and a taste for the medieval, usually set against a background of Gothic architecture, especially a gloomy and isolated castle. ―A Rose for Emily‖ contains some elements of Gothic fiction. The author‘s purpose is to create an atmosphere best suited for portraying the perverse character of Miss Emily and telling her story.
78. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that monogram was obscured. (Para. 57)
acrid: sharp, bitter, stinging, or irritating as to the taste or smell
pall: an overspreading covering, as of dark clouds or black smoke, that cloaks or obscures in a