A Rose For Emily And Trifles: A Literary Analysis

In A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, the protagonist, Emily Grierson is raised by her widowed father who cuts her off from much of society. She refuses to acknowledge his death, which causes her to become more isolated from her community. Later, she finds interest in Homer Barron, who visits her at home while in town and after a few days is never seen again. Some time later, Emily passes away at the age of seventy-four. After her funeral, the townspeople raid her house and find a man’s skeleton on a bed in her upstairs room. Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, opens with an investigation to the gruesome story of how John Wright was bizarrely murdered. Protagonists, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are found searching for quilt materials in the
Wright murdered her husband after succumbing to his abuse and realizing he killed her canary. Throughout the story, it is suggested that Mrs. Wright was subject to emotional neglect and physical abuse from her husband, John Wright. The works of William Faulkner in A Rose for Emily, and Susan Glaspell in Trifles, communicate a common theme of social isolation and display its detrimental effects through the female characters in their respective stories. Although they share a common theme, they differ in the reasoning behind their isolation.
A Rose for Emily presents the unfavorable effect of social isolation on an individual through the depiction of the troubled state of mind of the main character, Emily. Being isolated from society causes Emily to succumb to depression and lose her mental
Faulkner explored the history and legacy of the South. He focused on the tense violence and uncertainty of the future that prolonged after the Civil War. He was primarily motivated to write about the moral implications of history. After the war, citizens had to reestablish their society in order to restore the “normal.” Faulkner often presented his characters with great struggles. In A Rose for Emily, Faulkner presented Emily as a character with many struggles- overcoming the death of her father to name one (Lewandowski & Pelowski, 2014). On the other hand, Glaspell was a feminist and was concerned about addressing the importance of women and the issue of inequality (University of South Florida, 1996). She reveals her perception of inequality in her story, Trifles, through the unfair treatment and abuse exhibited by Mr. Wright toward his wife. In conclusion, the stories of A Rose for Emily and Trifles reveal similarities in the theme of isolation as displayed in the behaviors of the protagonists. However, they differ in the reasons behind their isolation. In A Rose for Emily, the numerous changes that occur, and her refusal to accept them cause her to be isolated from society. In contrast, the protagonist in Trifles becomes isolated as a result of her husband’s demeaning behavior towards