Beauty's Innocence
Personal events occurring in stories play a major role in shaping characters. Different people react to such events in many different ways and they often mentally or emotionally de-personalize themselves from the society. The story "A Rose For Emily" by William Faulkner opens with an unnamed narrator describing the main character, Miss Emily Grierson's funeral. The story further unfolds by disclosing her isolating character. Miss Emily tries to distance herself from her fathers death and losing her loved one, Homer Barron. All the elements as perceived through the eyes of the narrator work well together where the narrator writes, "after he father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all." This clearly relates to the theme, as it shows her intentional alienation from the outside world.
Miss Emily tries to distance herself from her fathers death to avoid fear of being lonely. Town people say She told them that her father was not dead (Faulkner 703). When town ladies came to pay their condolence to her father, Emily was normal and she was trying to behave as if nothing had happened and her father was alright. She thought this might keep town people from burying her fathers dead body. She was happy at least to be with her fathers dead body rather than being alone and suffer.
Miss Emily has very sensitive character and that when it comes to loving a person, she loves them to death. She loves them so much that the women never want to be away from her loved ones even after their death. To make this point more appropriate to the readers the narrator writes, "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 703). Even though she was thirty years old, she still had a childish mentality. She might have been influenced by her father. Moreover she had no one to take care of her as her father used to drive away all the other men whom she fell in love with as said by the narrator.
Emily Grierson lives her life under her fathers influence. Her father thinks that no man is good enough for his daughter. Therefore, he pushes away anyone who comes near his daughter. After living like this for so many years, Emily is left with
nothing after her father dies. 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 703). Due to that fact that her father has driven all the men who wanted to enter her life, she is left alone after her fathers death. Her attitude towards men is affected by her father. Therefore she isolates herself from others because she used to live under her father which caused her to become lonely.
Miss Emily de-personalizes herself from the town and town people as she was from a well know family and she has to maintain the dignity of that family. And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed (Faulkner 705). After Emily killed Homer she kept his body in her bedroom and kept the news of Homers death as a secret to town people. She knew if townspeople know about her killing Homer Barron they would treat her as a criminal and this would spoil her fathers good will. This was the reason she was not disclosing herself to the outside world.
In conclusion, Miss Emilys de-personalizing character was due to the events occurred in her life and influence of people and their acts on her dreaded life.
Work Cited
Faulkner, William. A Rose For Emily Literature for Composition. 8th ed. Eds. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, and William E. Cain. New York : Pearson Longman, 2007. 701-711
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