"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

Sibilant

“The negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared.” p.94

“They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men—some in their brushed Confederate uniforms—on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road, but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decade of years.” p.94

Sibilant - [sib-uh-luh nt] 

–adjective

1. hissing

2. Phonetics . characterized by a hissing sound; noting sounds like those spelled with s in this

noun

3. Phonetics . a sibilant consonant.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sibilant

The word sibilant is used twice near the ending of A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner to describe the way the town ladies’ gossiped quietly together when they entered Emily’s home after she had passed. Emily lived disconnected from everyone in her town still her issues were no secret to them, it was well-known her father had controlled her personal life, his influence for the most part had prevented her from marrying and she lived basically in complete solitude. Emily was a focal point for the town ladies’ babbling rumors and nosy opinionated views. The curiosity of how she lived, of what she had was their main interest when attending the funeral. The word sibilant is used in this context because the town ladies were judging and criticizing under their breath to one another. They tried to gossip quietly together but the “s” sounds of their words were frequent and obvious. Using sibilant illustrates how rude and disrespectful the town ladies had presented themselves at Emily’s funeral and for additional emphasis on their improper conduct sibilant was used twice concerning their behavior.  Knowing the definition helped with understanding how harsh the town ladies’ attitudes were towards Emily and how they could have helped reinforce her already established alienated personality.