A Rose for Emily is a short story by William Faulkner, whose narration is based on the main character, Emily Grierson. Emily is a woman born into a once-respected family in Jefferson, Mississippi. The narrative is presented from the viewpoint of the town’s collective memory. It is depicted as shattered and untrustworthy and reflects the prejudices and anxieties of the locals. The story is divided into four nearly equal parts, plus a shorter fifth part. It is told in sections, although there is no chronological order. At the story’s beginning, Emily is described as a young, beautiful woman dressed in white. When her father dies, she becomes increasingly reclusive, refusing to let anyone inside the family home. The key components of the story, the courtship of Homer, the purchase of arsenic, and the smell are brought up in reverse order. This makes it hard for the first-time reader to identify and explain the story’s connectors. The report raises an important idea about Emily based on her strange behavior as she struggled with change and the fear of losing control.
Throughout the story, Emily resisted the changes happening around her. When the town officials tried to collect taxes from her, she insisted that Colonel Sartoris had exempted her from paying taxes. When a new generation of town officials takes over and demands that she pay her taxes, Emily refuses and withdraws from society. She also refused to allow the townspeople to attach numbers to her house when they instituted a postal system (Dilworth, 257). Furthermore, Emily resisted the changing social norms of the town. The actions reveal that even as she appeared to act like a normal person, she was pathetic and tragic. Given her complicated reactions, she had difficulty following established traditions and conventional expectations, which made society fascinated by her behavior.
Emily’s fear of change and loss of control is rooted in her past, which was marked by trauma and loss. Even though she admired the community members, she acted peculiarly. Emily did not socialize with anyone outside of her family. Her father’s controlling nature and death left her without support or guidance, and she struggled to adapt to the changing times. Her fear of abandonment and the loss of her identity was so great that she was willing to resort to drastic measures to maintain control over her life, even if it meant committing a heinous act. Although her domineering father victimized her as she grew older, she adopted many of his willful characteristics (Dilworth, 258). She hid a lot from society and preferred to take the partial truth as her whole truth, making her monstrous. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Emily did not cope well with her father’s death. She could not accept that he was gone, and she became obsessed with preserving his memory. She refused to allow his body to be taken away for three days and continued to refer to him as if he were still alive.
Emily’s obsession with her father’s memory led her to keep Homer Barron, a Yankee laborer, in her upstairs bedroom. Society disapproved of her romantic relationship with Homer, who was disliked in the community (Faulkner, 91). The townspeople considered Emily’s relationship with Homer a perversion and did not fit her respect and pride. Nonetheless, she refused to conform to the expectations of the townspeople, given that Homer was the first man who intimately interested her. Emily’s relationship with Homer scandalized the townspeople, and they were convinced that she was planning to marry him (Faulkner, 46). She was highly determined to keep him close to her. Sadly, at the end of the story, it emerges that Emily had been poisoning Homer with arsenic (Faulkner, 43). He eventually died, and the townspeople only discovered his body after Emily died. She had kept his body in her bedroom, and slept next to it for years.
Emily started to act wildly toward Homer when he threatened to leave her. She intended to preserve their relationship, refusing to accept the possibility that he might abandon her. The action could point to hidden sexual desires she may have had. Society and culture generally taught people, especially women, to suppress their bodily desires. Emily preferred to act on the contrary and tended to act as a way of asserting what was usually unspoken. Homer’s remains can be considered to characterize her determination to accomplish and maintain some supremacy over men (Dilworth, 260). In some way, the community members could have violated her will when they finally infiltrated her room and concluded that she was a murderer.
When Emily grew into an older woman, she changed her dressing preference to black dressing. She became isolated and rarely left her home. People found it hard to understand her character, which appeared to be a juxtaposition of opposites (Moore, 92). She is captured as a person implicated in mutilating and corrupting bodies, violating the contrast between life and death, and struggling with differences and relations between the sexes.
The reasons for Emily’s actions are not explicitly stated in the story, but it is clear that she was unable to cope with the loss of her father. Her obsession with preserving his memory led her to cling to the few people she had relations with, including Homer. She could not let go of her past and move on, leading to a tragic end (Dilworth, 259). Even as the story depicts her as a person filled with horror and psychological abnormality, her actions also show some moral significance. She is described as a person with a strong will and her detachment from society caused people to hold her character with admiration and condescension. She appears as a person who was independent both in spirit and pride. She refused to conform to general values but showed respect and courage, which paints her as pitiable, intimidating, and admirable (Moore, 89). Her madness manifests her refusal to submit to ordinary behavior standards as she appears defiant and self-sufficient.
In summary, A Rose for Emily is a powerful story about the destructive nature of obsession. It shows how the past can continue to haunt people long after it is gone. Emily’s tragic story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of clinging to the past. That is why she struggled with change and the fear of losing control, which was deeply rooted in her traumatic past. This fear drove her to resist the changing times and commit a shocking crime to preserve her sense of identity and control. Still, the story shows her as a distinctive person driven by a strong will and unwilling to conform to ordinary traditions and customs. She showed independence in her thinking and actions and was not ready to act in a particular way despite the pressure from society.
Works Cited
Dilworth Thomas. A Romance to Kill for: Homicidal Complicity in Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” Studies in Short Fiction, 36 (1999), 251 – 262.
Moore Gene, M. “A Film for Family.” The Faulkner Journal, (2001) 87 – 94.
Faulkner William. “A Rose for Emily.” 40 – 48.