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Psychoanalytic Criticism of A Rose for Emily

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Psychoanalytic Criticism of A Rose for Emily
Psychoanalytic Criticism of A Rose for Emily

A Rose for Emily is a sad story about a woman who struggles with being unable to cope with the death of her father and being a lonely woman. It is broken into 5 sections in which in each part the narrator shifts the point of view. In section 1 the story starts off at Miss Emily’s funeral. The funeral is taking place at her home and many people come to pay their respects and also are curious to see the inside of the house. No one had seen the inside of the house besides the manservant for 10 years. Throughout the story we see the struggles a woman has with loneliness, depression and even necrophilia. Miss Emily’s character has many mental problems. Her biggest problem that we see her struggles with is denial. Several times through out the story she struggles with the denial of big issues. Sometimes it’s the death of a person or other times it was denying the fact that she owed taxes. Another struggle that she deals with is the fear of abandonment, which that seems to be what brought on her denial. Growing up her father was very controlling and when her father passes I think she has trouble dealing with not having a controlling figure in her life. That is what brought on the denial of her father’s death. That denial also plays a role in her necrophilia problem later in the story. The first of Miss Emily’s problem is denial. In a couple of cases we see that her denial is a big problem for her. We first see her denial take place when she takes place when the narrator talks about how she avoided paying taxes. This seems minor at this point because the town had told her that she owed no taxes, and in fact that the city owed her money from her fathers loan to the town. The loan was false but when her father passed she was left with only a house. Since she was thought of by the town as “ a tradition, a duty and a care” (pg. 148). the town decided to help her out. They didn’t think she would take charity money so they

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