“She Vanquished them, Horse and Foot:” How Miss Grierson Wrests Power and Creates her own Reality after Suffering Under a Domineering Father” The American south promoted friendly, strong gentlemen supported at home by submissive women. In A Rose for Emily, Emily Grierson’s subordinate position becomes extreme under her father, a controlling and restrictive man. After his death, she seeks to regain some sense of individual authority, but this results in her becoming dangerously similar to her father. To reverse her subordinate position under her authoritarian father, Miss Emily asserts control by hiring a male servant, seizing the respect of others, and murdering and sleeping with a dead man to shift the dynamic of power in her favor. The…show more content… She goes to the druggist and inquires about the strongest poison available to her. When told purchasing arsenic, which could kill an elephant, required the costumer to explain its intended use, Miss Emily does not acknowledge the druggist. Instead, Faulkner writes “Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him in the eye until he looked away and went and got arsenic and wrapped it up” (Faulkner 156). The power Miss Emily has over the druggist when she glares is aweing. The man would rather break the law than upset Miss Emily. Upon her death, the entire town is eager to visit the isolated woman’s home. However, as if to acknowledge Miss Emily’s dominance once more, no one dares open the top bedroom until she is buried. The text states that “they waited until Miss Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it” (Faulkner 158). It’s as if her presence was so powerful, she could still haunt them from beyond the grave. The mourners’ reverence at her funeral further reinforces the power Miss Emily…show more content… She is attracted to Homer, a gay man, who does not have any feelings towards her or marriage. The text reinforces this by stating, “It was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elk’s Club- that he was not a marrying man” (Faulkner 156). Regardless, Miss Emily decides to make him hers by force, killing him with arsenic. His corpse remains in Miss Emily’s house until her death, where the dilapidated body lay undiscovered in the bed until the mourners came for Miss Emily’s own funeral. It appears as if she slept with him until her death, as the text reads, “we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair” (Faulkner 158). To enforce herself as powerful, Miss Emily murders a man who could never love her, and uses his corpse as a