William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily Essay

As the story progresses, the author decides to jump all the way to the beginning when miss Emily was still a young woman and her father was still alive. During that time, the town felt bad for poor miss Emily and thought that she was going to die with out a husband by her side, since her father didn’t like any men that liked his daughter.

„A Rose for Emily”, a story of horror first published in 1930, is considered by many scholars one of the most authentic and the best narratives ever written by William Faulkner. It is a story of a woman, Emily Grierson, and her relationships with her father, the man she was in love with and the community of Jefferson, the town she lived in.

Throughout the story, the actions of Emily are very absurd. However, Faulkner’s setting helps the audience understand how Emily was able to live the way she has for so long and understand the actions of the town. Emily is very reclusive after the death of her father. She has never been without her father’s constant control. Emily’s father thought no one was worthy of his daughter. As a result, she was been kept away from the rest of the world by her father. When Emily’s father died, she could not

The way the town constantly treats Miss Emily as though she is not responsible for her actions and coddles her just encourages her “I’m the last Grierson” mentality. This is shown when the narrator says, “We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that” (58). She refuses to let a rotting corpse be taken out of her house and they do not think she is crazy! Another example of this is when she buys the arsenic. She will not tell the druggist what she plans to use it for. The town learns of this and their response is “ “She will kill herself”; and we said it would be the best thing” (59). Living in a town who says things like that would drive anyone to the point of wanting to be a recluse. After Emily kills Homer Barron she feels no need to go into the town and becomes a recluse. She shuts herself in her house for forty years, and the town does nothing, but talk about her.

Towards the latter of her life, she had no friends, no close relations, and no co-dependency. During the years when Miss Emily was only attuned to her thoughts and emotions, it created an unhealthy environment in the way she thinked and lived. Take into account that year after year, she would sent back the notice of tax, unpaid. Her tenacity in not paying the notice decade after decade is so persistent that it makes sense why Miss Emily would resort to murderous methods to go against the judgments of the townspeople. This lifelong loneliness, “...it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized” (32). is an unhealthy factor to her mentality. When the townspeople witnessed a woman lose her father, they viewed it as “humanizing” instead of a tragedy and rejoiced in “pitying” her. The townspeople’s reaction was shallow, it lacked depth and understanding to Miss Emily, but it cannot be helped because Miss Emily made herself impossible to be understood by the

William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily” begins and ends with death. The death of Miss Emily Grierson, the main character in the short story that takes on the role of a person with an abnormal personality. The narrator tells the tale of Miss Emily’s life following her departure at age seventy four. Although, Miss Emily lived a long life she remained secluded for decades without any human contact. Miss Emily’s mental health is certainly a questionable matter considering the life she leads in this fictional short story. “Human beings have enormous potential to strive toward a higher plane of emotional life” (Brenton 2). With this being said individuals who encounter chronic stress and lack the basic human relationships compromise their mental health. By examining Miss Emily’s mental status, behavior, interactions and personal relationships, it is possible she would have been diagnosed with a form of mental illness according to today’s standards.

William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” narrates the life of Emily Grierson as seen by the villagers. Controlled by her father and her family background, Emily is a woman deprived of the opportunity to live life at its fullest and experience human passions such as love. Furthermore, she lacks a “sense of self” that causes her confusion and makes it difficult for her to form relationships. Due to the lack of identity and isolation presented all throughout her life, Emily suffers from psychological problems related to schizophrenia.

Through the subjective perceptions of an obsessively, voyeuristic narrator he critiques their myopic and patriarchal traditions. These traditions attempt to render Miss Emily needy by stripping away her ability to be independent. Emily is a product of her environment, which hopes to conceal any indiscretions in order to present their view of a proper Southern woman. The misguided concessions of the townspeople, created in an effort to protect her, only end up dehumanizing her; while allowing her to get away with

Time is a very delicate matter all too quick to bring change, but people on the other hand can be stubborn, unwilling to bend to the changing of the times they cast themselves as outsiders, estranged from the world. Over the course of the story and Emily’s lifetime in general change is always occurring and it seems the more it occurs the more fragile miss Emily becomes. From the time of her father’s death, we begin to see her deteriorate. She is by her own definition conventional, and as so when a lover comes into her life she cannot deal with any change that accompanies it. Her own demise is the final irritation endured, thus she passes on in her home far away from the rest of the world. This story is truly one of mystery and while Miss Emily doesn’t want it, many changes occur pushing her more out of her customary range of familiarity.

To contextualize Emily’s behavior, as a young lady, she was held back and restricted from engaging in many activities and was symbolically shown to be in an abusive household. Through the townspeople’s description of the titular character and her father, it is evident that Emily grew up with a father who was very aggressive and completely unlike her, which forms the reader to feel sympathetically towards her, because she had never experienced the love from a family anyone needs to grow and mature. The Townspeople “long thought of them as a tableau” (Faulkner 3), or a spectacle, and saw Emily as an innocent person hindered in the family. Emily is also detailed as a “slender figure in white” (Faulkner 3), which expresses her purity compared to her father who was a “silhouette” (Faulkner 3), or a dark figure visible dominantly over the light figure of Emily. The abusiveness and dominance of Mr. Grierson is shown as he has “his back to her and clutching a horsewhip” (Faulkner 3). Emily was fairly different from most southern belle women at the time, as she was single until age 30 mainly because of “all the young men her father had driven away” (Faulkner 3). As a human being, deaths are some of the most, if not the most, damaging to one’s mental state, and it’s clear to feel sympathetic towards Emily and

The story portrays Miss Emily and the people in a southern town of Jefferson during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The town and the house itself take their own characterization alongside Emily, the main character. It is the significant reason behind Emily’s attitude and actions. The use of this time-period is essential in giving the reader an understanding to the values and beliefs of the characters within the story. The people from the town seem fascinated with Miss Emily as an antique of older times.

Throughout the story, Faulkner uses his characters as symbols of Miss Emily’s unwillingness to conform. Colonel Sartoris the previous mayor of Jefferson has waived the Grierson’s of ever paying taxes in Jefferson as a way of repayment for Mr. Grierson, Emily’s father loaning the town a large amount of money in the past. However, conflict arises between the Board of Aldermen and Miss Emily when they attempt to get her to pay taxes and she refuses, “Each December we sent her a tax notice which would be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed” (159). Miss Emily refuses to pay her

Because her behavior and reclusive nature has made her unacceptable in her community’s eyes, Emily counters their attitude with a refusal to live in their presence. Even though the town has gossiped about her and asked her family to step in on occasion, they never completely snubbed her. In many ways, they tried to bridge the gap or assist her, but each time she refused them. This is first seen when her father dies and people begin to feel sorry for her. The ladies gathered to offer help and sympathy, but are denied by Emily when she swears that her father is still alive. Later, when the town starts free postal delivery, Emily does not allow them to put a mail receptacle or address numbers on her home. Emily is physically refusing to let the outside world contact her. Then there is the debacle with her taxes. As the newer generation tries to rectify the former mayor’s decision to discharge her taxes, she refuses to answer their tax statement and later a personal letter from the mayor. Finally, the Board of Alderman visits her house, and tries to explain why she has to pay her taxes. She refuses to listen to their reasoning and she quickly dismisses them. During this time, there is only one person that is allowed in her home, a male servant who is African-American. As the years pass, the man grows old with her. Despite all of the years of him

William Faulkner’s, A Rose for Emily, is an account from an eye witness’ perspective of the life and dilemma of a noble woman belonging to the bankrupt aristocratic family in the late nineteenth century. It’s a tale of a woman who due to her seclusion at the hands of her father and severe critique by the society turns into a mentally unstable person.

When Miss Emily father, dies many of townspeople show pity on her through remitting her taxes when the narrator exclaims, “Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily father had loaned money to the town,which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying” (Flaunkner). This tax break was the beginning of isolationism. Typically during the time of this story was written, women relied on the men to be the bread winner or either was forced to join the workforce . Being financially stable from being revoked from taxes allowed her to isolate her inside instead of going to find a husband or a job. With the lack of motivation to get involved in her community she was isolated by herself and by the community. The townspeople claims that they want the best fit for Miss Emily not even recognizing of his serve mental illness of being a necrophilia. The community truly had no interest in her feelings just wanting her to stay isolated from