The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

Homer Barron is the "big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face" who comes to Jefferson to to oversee the workers paving the town's sidewalks (124). When he and Emily Grierson begin appearing in public together in "the yellow-wheeled buggy . . . from the livery stable," the town is soon scandalized that "a Grierson" woman might think "seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer" (124). Homer tells the "younger men in the Elks' Club . . . that he is not a marrying man," which has led a few modern commentators to suggest that he may be gay (126).

The narrator describes Tobe as "an old man-servant - a combined gardener and cook" (119), and never refers to him except as "the Negro" or "the Negro man" (120, 122, etc.). The only time we hear his name is when Emily calls him to her (121). He appears to have been in her employ since he was "young man" (122), and at least since the time her father died. Earlier drafts of "A Rose for Emily" include an extended conversation between him and Emily. His role in the published version of the story is entirely silent and elusive.

Miss Emily, as the narrator of "A Rose for Emily" explains, is “a tradition, a duty, and a care, a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (119). In other words, she is a recluse and a source of fascination for the townspeople of Jefferson, who keep a constant eye on her doings. She never married, but once upon a time in the past she had a potentially scandalous relationship with one single suitor, a Yankee stranger named Homer Barron. Although no specific birth date is available, it is likely she was born on or around 1850 - in any case before the Civil War.