Death is an inevitable process of life, when a significant other is lost it can cause a traumatic disruption in the way someone continues living their life. When someone neglects change the feelings of being isolated, may be resulted by self-imposed thoughts of not belonging with society or by being rejected by others leading to the feeling of loneliness. Just as in the short story “A Rose for Emily”, in which William Faulkner conveys the struggle of loneliness and isolation from the inability to adapt and accept change.
This is emphasized through the relationship Miss Emily had with her father, Homer Barron, and society itself. Miss Emily’s father plays a vital role in the development of her character that leads to her loneliness and isolation. This is seen through his overprotective relationship that damages Miss Emily’s sexual self-esteem and by her refusal to adapt and accept his death. While under her father’s authority she was confined from any relationship with any other male.
Any attempts of a relationship were discarded due to his standards, this is seen in the story when it is said, “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. ” (319). This quote emphasizes her early isolation with the opposite sex and shows how her relations with her father played an early factor in her loneliness. This is vital since her relations with any other male besides her father are non-existent in which will play a significant role in the way she conducts her self when finding a lover.
According to a study conducted on adolescent girls, it suggests that fathers’ over-protective relationships had significant negative correlation with daughters’ self-esteem that later effect them during their transition to adulthood. (Mori 46). This is important because it gives context about her damaged sexual self-esteem from her over-protective father and how it later effects her in a negative way. Until Miss Emily’s father’s death, she had never explored her sexuality due to her fathers governing influence.
When Miss Emily’s father’s death occurred she refused to accept the facts, in the story it was said, “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. ” (319). This quote shows her inability to accept the change she will now have to face from her father’s absence which will be foreign to her since her whole life she has been under his control.
As she is unable to adapt to this sudden change her denial leads to her self-imposed isolation from the society she lives in. Miss Emily continued to isolate herself from the rest of the community for the general phase of her life. Her isolation is noticeable until Homer Barron arrives in which it is the first time in Miss Emily’s life were a significant other is introduced. The relationship Miss Emily has with Homer demonstrates her inability to accept the change that’ll soon occur between her and the new lover Homer.
This is realized through the murder of Homer in order to keep him around and by her once again self-imposed isolation when she is threatened to be “deserted” by her new lover. Homer Barron, a Yankee from the north a laborer who came to pave new sidewalks, soon begins to have relations with Miss Emily. Given his social status and Miss Emily’s status in Jefferson the people declared the relationship as a scandalous affair. As if she was too good to be with him given their statuses in the artificial hierarchy that was created by the society she lived in during that time.
Besides the gossip of the town they continued to see each other they were commonly seen together, as this was the only time Miss Emily was out and about from the confined spaces of her home. Homer brought Miss Emily out of her shell of confinement from where she was trapped in, since her father’s death. Shortly after there is gossip that Homer will dessert her as her kin from out of town visits her, while it is unknown what they discuss Homer leaves as her kin are there and later returns after they depart.
However, this fear of change in Miss Emily’s life causes her to retaliate the thought of losing her lover just as she did with her father. She is unable to accept the change like a normal person would, given her past relationship with her father who has traumatized her way of thinking. Now she takes manners in her own life, as she buys rat poison and supposedly murders him to keep him by her side till death do them part just as she wanted in the beginning when the idea of marriage with Homer was mentioned.
Miss Emily’s relationship with her father causes her to act in fear of losing what she was tried so hard to acquire, someone to protect her and replace what was lost. This can be connected back to her damaged self-esteem as her identity lacks confidence while feeling unsecured with her self-identity. Although she might have wanted to be isolated since the time of her father’s death her inner heart lingered for companionship. (Mosby). Her quest for love and protection drove her to murder Homer when the hint of him leaving her came o her mind. According to Scherting, since the death of Miss Emily’s father, Emily became an emotional orphan in search of the father who had been taken from her.
In which handovers to Homer Barron’s soon to be death from Miss Emily in turn to preserve what was lost and taken from her. It was later said that, “The deceased father was the subject of her sublimated desire, and Homer merely the living object on which that desire had been fixed and from which she evidently received considerable gratification. (Scherting 401). This highlights her motive on why her relationship with Homer triggers her defense mechanism to protect herself from being left alone and isolated once again. In a way, Homer was merely a surrogate to replace her father’s status in her lonely life. It is unclear if the gossip of Homer not being a marring man circulated around to Miss Emily’s ears generating this spontaneous action but regardless it made her quickly react and hide his corpse until found at the end of her life.
Her actions were foreshadowed by the way she coped with the death of her father, unable to accept the reality of it still clinging on to what she was most accustomed to. This is where the inability to accept and adapt change comes to the connection of her bizarre actions leading to her isolation and loneliness. Through the flashbacks the narrator goes through it is said, “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. ” (318).
This quote combines the isolation that is caused from both her relationships with her father and Homer Barron. Which could be seen as self-imposed since the choice to accept and adapt to the new change was possible but neglected. If it wasn’t for her unstable relationship with her father, she might have been a normal girl and maybe Homer Barron would still be alive happily married with Miss Emily. In addition to her unstable relationships that lacked a solid foundation her role and relations within in society assisted towards her self-imposed isolation.
Miss Emily’s role within society was absent so to say omitted from having any type of relationship with anyone that inhabited the town of Jefferson. Her inability to adapt and accept the change society challenged her with, lead to her isolation from society and overall loneliness. This is accentuated through the use of the first person point of view from the narrator that shows her disconnection, and the various instances were she neglects to accept and conform to new change. The narrator representing the majority of Jefferson’s erspective of Miss Emily’s highlights the events that occurred throughout her life giving the impression of the assumptions society made regarding Miss Emily. She was quite disconnected from everyone yet they knew everything about her or they thought they did. At Miss Emily’s funeral, the narrator notes that, “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town. ” (317). This quote reveals her status within the community as they portray her as an object of sort, degrading her existence as she herself had no real connection with the society of Jefferson.
Since they consider as an object it shows how her self-imposed isolation resulted in her status within the society of Jefferson. This is interesting because from the narrator’s tale of Miss Emily’s events the people of Jefferson are portrayed to be obsessed with her. Their obsession with the relationship Miss Emily and Homer Barron is key to this interpretation since they were the root of the gossip that circulated around town of the Northerner and the Southerner. As the narrator use of “we said” or “we learned” reflects the incoherence of group thought. Klein 230). Miss Emily’s isolation from society is strongly supported when word goes around that she had bought arsenic, the narrator saying, “So the next day we all said, “She will kill herself”; and we said it would be the best thing. ” (321). This really emphasized how Miss Emily was isolated from her society of Jefferson, they wish she would kill herself instead of trying to help her cope with her loneliness that she faced. However, since it was self-imposed they thought it would just be best to end her suffering.
Miss Emily continued to isolate herself from society as new changes emerged in the town, for instance when the mail service came to town. She refused to put such numbers on her house, Miss Emily wanted no part and by doing so she further isolated herself from being apart of a community. Resulting in her status as an object portrayed by the people of Jefferson otherwise if she had connected or attempted to be apart of society their perceptions of Miss Emily may have changed. Another instance in where Miss Emily neglects change to be apart of society is when the alderman try to tax her.
Nevertheless, she sends them off their way saying to check with Colonel Sartoris saying, “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves. ” (318). She is not only living in the past but she refuses to accept this change in authority and further isolates herself from the society of Jefferson. This all leads to her self-imposed isolation within her society since her relationship with it is absent the people see her as an object rather than a person.
Miss Emily’s relationships played vital roles in her character development which is evident that her isolation and loneliness was self-imposed. While her inability to accept and adapt to change also caused her to enter this self-inflected state of mind where she isolated herself from the society of Jefferson and to her bizarre coping mechanism with her dead male companions. Overall Faulkner’s development of the relationships Miss Emily had in her life played an important role in her isolation and loneliness.
