What Is The Issue In A Rose For Emily

William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily is a complex story of a southern woman and her life seen through the eyes of the town members. Miss Emily, as the narrator calls her, has passed away at the start of the story after not being seen out of her house following the disappearance of Homer Barron, the man she was supposedly with. Miss Emily was described as a “. . .hereditary obligation upon the town. . .” (Faulkner 32), which is basically what the whole town sees and judges her by. The viewpoint of the story makes it hard to interpret because of the lack of thoughts and opinions from Emily Grierson herself. However, this is not the main problem in the story. The main problem is the reasons for Emily Grierson’s murder of Homer Barron who she was
supposed to be, according to the town, getting married to. Theories vary according to the reader, but almost all readers can agree that Miss.Emily was not the perfect picture of a southern woman that the town of Jefferson made her out to be. One could conclude that the reasons Emily decided to murder Homer Barron were caused by her past with her father, her isolation from human interaction, the assumptions about Emily and her family, and her love for a man who did not love her back. It is well known throughout the story that Emily and her father, who is never named, had a complicated relationship.
They are described as a “. . .tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground”(Faulkner 34). The narrator, who is thought to be speaking for the whole town of Jefferson, observed that no man was ever good enough for Emily in the eyes of her father. The town recalled that they “. . .remembered all the young men her father had driven away. . .”(Faulkner 34). Emily’s struggle to find someone to please her father could be a sign of her father's dominance over her. Hsu Chenghsun and Ya-huei Wang agreed in their article, The Fall of Emily Grierson: A Jungian Analysis of A Rose for Emily, that “Emily is the victim of her father’s patriarchal and aristocratic dominance. Even after his death, she cannot escape his domination”. After finally being with a man, Emily may have started realizing that Homer Barron is the type of man her father was trying to protect her from. Their outside relationship may have seemed like the perfect love story but no one knows what happened behind the closed doors of Miss Emily’s
home. When Miss Emily’s father died “.
. .she went out very little. . .”(Faulkner 34) and it became known that “. . . the house was all that was left to her; and in way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily”(Faulkner 34). Emily had no friends and no one to talk to until Homer Barron came along and took a liking to her. The town was “. . .glad that miss Emily would have an interest. . .”(Faulkner 34), but mostly because they felt sorry that she was lonely and wanted her to resemble the other southern women in the town. Homer Barron, unlike Emily, was loved by all of the town members. He was a relatable man and always seemed to be the “. . .center of the group”(Faulkner 34). Emily’s jealousy of her new man’s popularity could have caused her to go mad and dating him only showed just how much of an effect he had on her stance in the town. After they had been together a while, Homer starts to see the real Emily and tries to leave but it's too late because Emily couldn't possibly handle another
loss. Emily, like all of the white women in her time, was expected to look and act a certain way to fit into society. Emily was also raised with money and popularity in the town, but the townspeople gossiped about how the Griersons“. . .held themselves a little too high for what they really were”. Emily alone was held to high standards just for being a woman especially when it came to finding a man. The town agreed that “Emily was expected to take advantage of feminine characteristics to manipulate Homer. . .”(Chenghsun and Ya-huei Wang). However, she did not fit these standards that were placed on her by the people of Jefferson. She became independent and “She tears off her persona/mask and lets herself be possessed by her inner masculine personality, breaking the balance between her ego and her inner life”(Hsu Chenghsun and Ya-huei Wang). The town’s assumptions that Emily would need a man to survive pushed her over the edge. Homer Barron, although a likable man, was “. . .not a marrying man”(Faulkner 35). Emily was thought to be madly in love with this “. . .Northerner, a day laborer” (Faulkner 34), but Homer liked the company of young men. He did like Emily but not in the way a husband would or even a boyfriend and Emily wanted much more than a friend. Homer’s unpassionate relationship with Emily made her “Afraid that she is going to lose Homer and have to retreat to traditional Southern values, she decides to poison him in order to control him”. Once Emily knew that Homer could never love her she decided that killing him would be better than him leaving her. Emily was already a disappointment to women in the south and the loss of a man like Homer Barron would only give the town another reason to “pity” her. She felt she had no choice but to keep him forever which stemmed from her belief that she “. . .never has a chance to control her fate and her own life, finally falling victim to her own repressed desires”(Hsu Chenghsun and Ya-huei Wang). The reasons Emily murdered Homer Barron seemed to be tied to her struggle to find herself in a judgmental world. However, some might believe that she killed him simply because she was insane and that her life had no effect on her decision to take his life. It was only a short time before Emily bought arsenic that she “. . .ordered a man’s toilet set in silver, with H.B. on each piece”(Faulkner 36). If she knew that she wanted to kill him she could have been trying to cover it up by buying him nice things to prove her love for him. When Homer Barron’s body was found, an “. . .indentation of a head” on the pillow beside the body, along with a “. . .long strand of iron-grey hair” (Faulkner 37) was found. It was assumed that Emily had been sleeping with the dead body for many years and it also took her a while to try and cover up the smell. Its as if Emily did not care if she was caught because her life meant nothing to her or anyone else. Based on all of the reasons previously stated in this paper, it is clear that Emily's motivation for murder was caused by a scarring past and present life. Emily's life was full of loneliness and sadness that her father and the generation she lived in threw upon her. Emily made sure that when she was dead the whole town would know who she was and what she was capable of. Her name would always be remembered in the town of Jefferson as the lady who killed her “boyfriend” because of her past with her past with her father, her isolation from human interaction, the assumptions about Emily and her family, and her love for a man who did not love her back.