The main character of this story is a woman named Emily Grlerson. The story takes place a little after the civil war, and the town she lives in is in the South. She wasn’t very social with the other townspeople, so nobody knew her well. The story is about how Emily died, and some other stories about her.
The town that Emily lives in is corrupt. The mayor and authorities let Emily not pay taxes, because she is nobility. She ignores their letters, and when they visit her home, she tells them to go away and refuses to pay taxes. They don’t want to displease her, so they just leave her alone. This shows that even if a rich person breaks the law, they don’t do anything about it.
Later in the story, Emily’s house starts to leak a bad smell. The mayor wants to deal with it, but doesn’t want to confront Emily. They don’t confront her because she is a lady and they think telling her that her house smells would be rude. Even though they receive a complaint from one of her neighbours, they don’t talk to her about it. So they sneak around the house and try to fix it. This shows that they go to great lengths to not bother someone who they think is superior to them.
Near the end of the story, Emily goes to a druggist to buy some poison. She wants to kill the man she’s courting because he recently came out as gay. The druggist asks why she wants to buy the poison, and she just stares at him. He gets intimidated by her and makes up an excuse to himself of why she’s buying arsenic. He gets scared by her and feels overpowered. So he hands over the poison without asking any questions.