The Grierson house was abandoned and left in fiction, inside the house Emily was more or less the same, alone and unstable. The people in her community behaved towards her while she stood back, apart, and watched what happened. Emily's best kept secret is revealed after her death. It becomes obvious that the contents of the room above her stairs caused her an unimaginable amount of pain and was the final straw that led to her isolating herself from the outside world. This lifelong sadness undoubtedly occurred as a result of using a coping strategy to deal with difficult life situations such as death and dying.