Rose For Emily Psychology

A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner is a short story with third party narration, centered on the main character, Emily Grierson. She is suppressed by her father, life expectations and community interest in her life. The reader gets a sense that Emily cracks under all the pressure and they soon realize after her death, when she is in her seventies, that she did in fact have a mental disorder.

"A Rose for Emily" is a fictional short story written by 1949 Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is about an aristocratic woman who lived a very secretive and unusual life. Miss Emily had always been very sheltered by her father. He was the only man in her life and after his death, her behavior became even more unnatural. However her father's death cannot be seen as the only cause of Miss Emily's insanity. Miss Emily's behavior was also influenced by her own expectations of herself, the townspeople's lack of authority over her, and her neighbor's infatuation with her.

Miss Emily's relationship with her father is a key factor in the development of her isolation. As she is growing up, he will not let anybody around his daughter,

In William Faulkner's short story entitled "A Rose For Emily", Emily Grierson kills her lover Homer Barron after being in love with him for about a year. She then sleeps next to the body in the upstairs bedroom of her home, loving it as if Homer were still alive. She then closes up the upstairs, never seeing the body again. There are three different motives that can be looked at as to why Emily killed Homer. She wanted to exercise power, she couldn't accept that Homer was a homosexual, and she didn't want another man to be taken away from her.

She, Emily, is physically living but not in the present; she is stuck living in her past. We first see this when her father dies, “She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body.” (Faulkner). This depicts that she is enamored of the dead which is why she resists in letting them bury her father. Emily did not want to kept denying her father’s death so she decided to hold onto him. By the description Faulkner gives, one may say Emily just did not know how to adapt to change. With that being said, she feared change so she did not want to let go because she was so dependent on her father and now he was gone. Once Emily passed on and was buried, people from her town go into her house and discover a decomposed corpse along with the strand of gray hair on the pillow next to what was formerly Homer Barron. Faulkner explains in detail yet again what was found, “…What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt…Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head…we saw a long strand of iron-grey hair”. With this being said it is discovered that she, Emily, had been sleeping next to his dead body for years. These two examples are prime reasons one could conclude that she had an issue letting go of her past. Throughout the short story Emily seemed to not want to

Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal

"A Rose for Emily" is a wonderful short story written by William Faulkner. It begins with at the end of Miss Emily’s life and told from an unknown person who most probably would be the voice of the town. Emily Grierson is a protagonist in this story and the life of her used as an allegory about the changes of a South town in Jefferson after the civil war, early 1900's. Beginning from the title, William Faulkner uses symbolism such as house, Miss Emily as a “monument “, her hair, Homer Barron, and even Emily’s “rose” to expresses the passing of time and the changes. The central theme of the story is decay in the town, the house, and in Miss Emily herself. It shows the way in which we all grow old and decay and there is nothing permanent

A Rose for Emily was Faulkner 's first short story to be published in a national magazine. It was then published in a collection entitled These 13 in 1931 and went on to become one of the most collected American short stories. This short story is a Gothic horror and a tragedy. It is about a lonely Southern woman who has become mental ill after having an unfortunate childhood and being isolated from reality. We can see in the quote from William Faulkner about how “you can be more careless, you can put more trash in [a novel] and be excused for it. In a short story that 's next to the poem, almost every word has to be almost exactly right.” that Faulkner had mixed feelings about the short story as the best form for his narrative. A Rose for Emily has a complex plot and good pacing. Faulkner only gives information needed to foreshadow the murder at the ending or to allow the audience into Miss Emily’s life, so that we could further understand her.

William Faulkner’s short story, A Rose for Emily, is a dark tale of a young girl damaged by her father that ended up leaving her with abandonment issues. Placed in the south in the 1930’s, the traditional old south was beginning to go under transition. It went from being traditionally based on agriculture and slavery to gradually moving into industrial and abolition. Most families went smoothly into the transition and others, like the Griersons, did not. Keeping with southern tradition, the Griersons thought of themselves as much higher class then the rest of their community. Emily’s father found no male suitable for his daughter and kept her single into her thirties. After her fathers death Miss Emily was swept off of

This reality sends panic and fear through her because now she has nowhere to turn and no one to tell her what to do, no one to command her life. Not only is she stricken with the loss of her father but now she is cut off to the outside world, because her only link has passed on. Emily immediately goes into a state of denial; to her, her father could not be dead, he was all that she had and she would not let him go.

The treatment by Emily’s father affected her as an adult in many ways. I feel that her father actions caused her to isolate herself from society and not able to adapt to change. In the story, “A Rose for Emily”, Emily lived with her father and had little interactions with anyone else. Emily’s father was very controlling over her life by not allowing her to do things on her own, which resulted in Emily being reserved from society. Her father kept her shielded, and believed that no young man was good enough for his daughter. The narrator stated, “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (Faulkner, 1931, 84). After his death

Faulkner states that Miss Emily would tell the other people that “her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly,'' (Faulkner 804). This part of the story foreshadows another incident where Emily again refuses to let go of the deceased. Instead of Emily not being able to let go of her father, this time she couldn't let go of her close friend, Homer. The hint of Emily not being able to let go of her father in the beginning serves as an indication for the reader that Miss Emily is very isolated and will do anything to prevent that. Emily’s suspicious actions causes the reader to anticipate certain happenings and wonder what will happen next.

Emily is a character surrounded by mystery, leaving a mark on the influence of others, causing them to create their own scenarios about her life. It happened when she met Homer, when everyone hoped she will marry him, or when she bought poison and everyone thought she would poison herself. Her high wealthy status and respect were emphasized when she kicked out the people who

Emily lives in self isolation or what was perceived to be isolation. The only person Emily came in daily contact with was her servant. Isolation exacerbated the reality that Emily was truly alone. When left to themselves in isolation, many killers, often live out their world in a fantasy. Fantasy serves to relieve anxiety or fear and most people have them to one extent or another (Douglas, J.E., Burgess, and Ressler, R.K. 1995.) We may not know what really fed Emily's behavior, some theories are that she could have suffered from separation anxiety due to her father's death, others suggest that she was suffering from a form of neglect. This can be concluded by her longing for a companion.

Another indicator if her mental illness comes with her father?s death. As her neighbors tried to offer condolences, she acted as if nothing had happened. She refused to acknowledge her father was dead. It took her three days to release his body to be buried. This cycle of her inability to accept death is continued through out the story. When the city officials came to Emily to collect taxes, she kept telling them to talk to Colonel Satoris, who at this point in time had been dead nearly ten years.