How did miss Emily change over the course of her life?

A Rose for Emily" opens with Miss Emily Grierson's funeral. It then goes back in time to show the reader

Emily's childhood. As a girl, Emily is cut off from most social contact by her father. When he dies, she

refuses to acknowledge his death for three days. After the townspeople intervene and bury her father, Emily is

further isolated by a mysterious illness, possibly a mental breakdown.

Homer Barron's crew comes to town to build sidewalks, and Emily is seen with him. He tells his drinking

buddies that he is not the marrying kind. The townspeople consider their relationship improper because of

differences in values, social class, and regional background. Emily buys arsenic and refuses to say why. The

ladies in town convince the Baptist minister to confront Emily and attempt to persuade her to break off the

relationship. When he refuses to discuss their conversation or to try again to persuade Miss Emily, his wife

writes to Emily's Alabama cousins. They come to Jefferson, but the townspeople find them even more

haughty and disagreeable than Miss Emily. The cousins leave town.

Emily buys a men's silver toiletry set, and the townspeople assume marriage is imminent. Homer is seen

entering the house at dusk one day, but is never seen again. Shortly afterward, complaints about the odor

emanating from her house lead Jefferson's aldermen to surreptitiously spread lime around her yard, rather

than confront Emily, but they discover her openly watching them from a window of her home.

Miss Emily's servant, Tobe, seems the only one to enter and exit the house. No one sees Emily for

approximately six months. By this time she is fat and her hair is short and graying. She refuses to set up a

mailbox and is denied postal delivery. Few people see inside her house, though for six or seven years she

gives china-painting lessons to young women whose parents send them to her out of a sense of duty.

The town mayor, Colonel Sartoris, tells Emily an implausible story when she receives her first tax notice: The

city of Jefferson is indebted to her father, so Emily's taxes are waived forever. However, a younger generation

of aldermen later confronts Miss Emily about her taxes, and she tells them to see Colonel Sartoris (now long

dead, though she refuses to acknowledge his death). Intimidated by Emily and her ticking watch, the aldermen

leave, but they continue to send tax notices every year, all of which are returned without comment.

In her later years, it appears that Emily lives only on the bottom floor of her house. She is found dead there at

the age of seventy-four. Her Alabama cousins return to Jefferson for the funeral, which is attended by the

entire town out of duty and curiosity. Emily's servant, Tobe, opens the front door for them, then disappears

out the back. After the funeral, the townspeople break down a door in Emily's house that, it turns out, had

been locked for forty years. They find a skeleton on a bed, along with the remains of men's clothes, a

tarnished silver toiletry set, and a pillow with an indentation and one long iron-gray hair