gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps – an eyesore among eyesores.

This description is rather unsavory. Miss Emily's home is described as being as ugly as the machinery that now marks the neighborhood as an industrial center. Miss Emily's once beautiful home, on a once affluent and grand street, is a morose reminder of the south after the Civil War. While the rest of the town is changing and adapting to the post-war south, Miss Emily refuses to change.

Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines.

She refuses to even mount an address on her home in order to use the new postal service, choosing to remain grounded in the past. Miss Emily's home is similar to its neighborhood, but only when it concerns the past. Where her home was once a stately example of the grandiose old southern way of life, it is now a symbol of a bygone time. The neighborhood around it has changed, and the home is no longer reflective of the lifestyle of the citizens.