Analysis of “A Rose for Emily”
Abstract
This paper is an analysis of the character in “A Rose for Emily.” It shows how her father, a selfish man deprived her of a better life and how she faces adversity.
Even though Mr. Grierson is penniless, no suitor is good enough for his daughter, after he dies, his daughter Emily holds on to the only two things left from her pass, her name andher aristocratic arrogance.
Emily lives a sheltered life while her father is alive, she is totally dependent upon him, and she is not even allowed friends. She is not prepared to face the world alone. Her father knows this, yet he is selfish and drives away suitor after suitor.Emily’s father made sure she would have nothing when he is gone he took from her any chance of marrying, and he took from her any form of inheritance. Consequently, she clung to him not out of love but out of dire need. (119).Her father is a male chauvinist, no one has ever seen them together and they were walking side by side, he always take the lead to show his bigotry. He gives no reason for turning away her suitors, he is the man, and he does not ask her opinion; Clearly, Emily has never stood up for herself. Unfortunately for her, no one lives forever, and when her father died she is left picking up his mantle including his depts., she is penniless and alone.
In her community her name is important; she is the last of the southern aristocrats; the town’s mayorstrokes her ego and hides her behind her name to save her from the embarrassment of poverty. “The most important thing left her was the Grierson name and all that it represented in that town. The Grierson name conveyed such respect on Miss Emily, that she was virtually untouchable by anything except her own personal tragic circumstances” (121).Her name and her house used to be a symbol of wealth and class, now it is just an ugly sight among the garages and cotton mills. “It was a big, squarish [sic] frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street”(119). All that granger is gone and she has lost her place in society.
Emily is financially strapped unable to pay her taxes and the mayor concocts a silly story about her father’s loan to the city, and it suits Emily to believe it (120). Emily choses to believe anything that works in her favor; like when her father died, she could not accept that fact because if she did she would have to accept her destitution; just for a little bit longer she wanted to hold on to her only provider,and for three days she refuses to believe he is dead. No surprise, her life line is gone. If left alone she probably would not have buried him. According to Mellissa Clark, Emily held her father responsible for taking away from her any semblance of a normal life. Her father is the only life she knows and she is afraid to let him go. Despite his selfishness, he is all she has ever known. (Academic Library 1997). One understands Emily’s plight; she has no one and no hope of a husband.
Emily is a sensible woman and she knows that the town pities her; and they should, she has no one. Emily was not train for anything, the least her father could have done is have her trained to be a governess; the only job rich girls who have fallen on hard times can do. Surly she had an education, she could have hire out herself, but that would be beneath an aristocrat like her, it would have paid her more than what she gets for teaching children how to paint cups which is her only income (128) The fight has not left her yet, she knows her name is all she has left and she knows how to behave like an aristocrat. She wraps herself with all the dignity she can find and puts on a class act the few times she associates with the town’s people or when they come to visit.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century America south still struggles with class everyone knows his or her place; Emily, despite her fall from grace knows this too but will never succumb to charity, even if it kills her she would die hanging on to her social status. She is not going to give anyone the satisfaction to offer help to her or treat her with any less respect than her name deserves, therefore she becomes a recluse. Even when the community tries to reach out to her she does not encourage such visits and eventually everybody stays away from her and that suits her well. As much as it is the innate nature of people to gossip most of the community really care about what happens to Emily. Although Emily has lost everything the town’s people still expects her be the proper southern belle.
“Poor Emily” becomes a very popular phrase among the town’s people, they expressed a great deal of sympathy towards her, although she never hears it, Just as Emily learned to show no emotion when her father sent her suitors away, she learn to ignore the town’s whispering. When Homer came to town Emily did something that she would not dream of doing when her father was alive. Frist she made friends with Homer, something a lady of her status should never do, the noble lady with the common laborer, a Yankee no less. That goes against all conventions of the south even the regular people thought that Emily’s behavior is blasphemy; she is lowering herself being with Homer. Emily has pass caring what the town’s people think; she is a Grierson and she is going to die a Grierson; every time she goes into town she put on a rehearsed act fit for a Grierson: “She carried her head high enough It was as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness” (125). Emily’s message is very clear, I can do whatever I want and still be a lady.
Emily’s last hope of someone to take care of her like her father did is Homer. Home is not Emily’s kind, he is loud, he drinks and most of all, he likes men. For Homer Emily is just a friend, he has no romantic feelings towards her, but Emily sees it differently. When one is backed into a corner like she, any man will do. Whatever the town thinks of Emily, it cannot say that she does not know how to act dignify. When she bought the arsenic, evidently to kill Homer and the druggist asks her reason for her purchase, by law he needs to know, she refuses to tell him. She gathers up all her pride and said; “I want some poison ‘with cold, haughty black eyes””(125) This is Emily’s last chance of having a man, the only other man in her life was her father and he left, even though she tried to hold on to him. This time she is going to make sure that Homer stays. According to Gary L.Kriewald, Emily Grierson's deliberate departure to the refuge of her home after, as far as the town’s people know, Homer Barren's desertion of her is as rebellious as it is preservation, an act of silent opposition absorbed against her world where the mainly qualities of courtliness, strength, and morality typified by Colonel Sartoris, Judge Stevens, and her father have been usurped by the doings of rogues and pettifoggers (2003).
“A rose for Emily,” is a sad story. Emily is raised by a selfish father who has no inheritance to give to her, yet he refuses every suitor who asks for his daughter. Her father dies and she refuses any kind of friendship offered to her by her community, she becomes reclusive and dies holding on to her delusion of granger
Reference
“A Rose for Emily.” Retrieved from Academic Library. 10 May 2013 <
Clark, Melissa. (1997) (no title) Retrieved from Academic Library. 9 May, 2013
Inge, Thomas M. (1970) “A Rose for Emily.” Reprented, New York. Ramdom House pp. 119- 25
Kriewald, Gary L. The Widow of Windsor and the Spinster of Jefferson: A Possible Source for Faulkner's Emily Grierson.: The Faulkner Journal. Volume: 19. Issue: 1: Fall 2003. PP 3+.
