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Does Miss Emily Drive Insane

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In the story, A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, main character Miss Emily lives in just a typical life, but usually gets eyed out from the townspeople. She is the only child whose father is a selfish man keeping Miss Emily from getting out of the house. Not only is she being kept from leaving the house but her father is holding back her love life with his strict rules. Her father would keep a gigantic horsewhip around him every time Miss Emily ever disobeys him or even when she brings home someone to the house. Because of her father’s strict ways, this routine had been going on for years up until her father’s death and right when she was in her thirties. I believed that since she was being prevented from loving someone so many times that …show more content…

What caused her to go crazy to the point where she decides to kill Homer and even sleep with his dead body? I believe that first sign of her insanity was right when her father died. “The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead” (Pg. 649). At this point, when her father died she was denying that he was dead. She didn’t want to give in his body. Her father was the only person she ever loved even if her father was very strict because her father didn’t let her love anyone. She was stuck with him and knew that her father cared so much for her. The crazy part about all of this is that she kept her father’s body for days and that even it took the law forcers to bust in and grab the body out. This pretty clearly shows that she was going insane. Another piece of evidence that triggered Emily’s insanity was the amount of years she had to go through with her father’s strict rules of not bringing a man into her life. Because of her father, she would get whipped by a huge horsewhip every time she tried to get into a relationship. She had to go through this for years that once her father died, she was already old. No man in the town wanted to get into a relationship with her because they were afraid of her. This soon led her to buy poison, “But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it for. Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up”(Pg. 651). This clearly shows that she was going insane, not specifying what she was going to use the “best” poison for. Which entirely leads to the last piece of evidence which is right when the townspeople broke into her house and found the deceased body of Homer. What gets more insane was

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Emily was growing old. Her hair was shortening and turning gray. Soon after realizing that “Homer was not the marrying man” and that he would much rather spend his time with young male mates, Emily decided to retaliate. In order to not lose what she thought was the love of her life, Emily went down to the nearest drug store and bought some rat poison and gave it to Homer. Homer died and Emily kept his body in the upstairs room where no one would dare to go.

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Connor Coupanger English 102 Prof L.H. Roberts February 15, 2018 The Act of Two Murders In the short story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, and the drama “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, the authors created two female protagonists “Miss Emily Grierson” and “Mrs. Minnie Wright” their stories are both about woman and murder. In Trifles, Mrs. Wright has been arrested and investigated for suspected murder of her husband. Miss Emily in Faulkner 's story, kills a man who she was dating.

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Emily’s Mental Deterioration After getting over the initial shock of finding out that the mysterious woman that everyone was talking about was going to sleep each night with a decaying body next to her, it makes sense for the reader to question her mental state. If the reader took a closer look at the town’s description of her, they will realize that as time went on, Emily’s will power began to deteriorate. When she was young, she was the topic of everybody’s conversation, however, she did not let that bother her and walked down the streets with her head held high. Emily took over the old house after her father’s death and kept a few servants around to keep the house tidy, nonetheless, the outside of the house was not kept in the best of conditions.

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It is clear that in her era, Miss Emily was seen as traditional American Southern women, who lived to become an inferior women to man but was later a burden to her society. She was a lady who was secluded from society, lived a psychopathic life, which at the end, and was no secret for the town’s people. While Miss Emily was alive, she lived in a secluded home of a single father, thus leading her to be dependent upon him. She did not have much of a socially engaged life, for her father drove men away. When he finally died, Miss Emily told the townspeople that he was not dead, and finally, on the third day, let the town’s people buried him (William Faulkner 1105).

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Miss Emily’s father dies, she finds a suitor, and buys poison, then shuts herself and her

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Every society is different. They each have their own customs, habits and way of life. In The Chrysalids there are many unique societies, each and everyone different, particularly the Waknuk and Sealand societies. The Waknuk society is filled with problems humanity has strived to leave in the past, discrimination. Meanwhile, the society in Sealand has overcome these problems.

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This pushed poor Emily over the edge of insanity and led her to commit the heinous act of murder. In the back of her mind, she probably had only one thought if she couldn't have him, then no one else ever

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In Section III, Emily commences an affair with a man of lower-social status named Homer, whom she ends up poisoning and killing for no particular reason. The story concludes with a townsperson walking into Emily’s old abandoned house, and seeing Homer’s dead body and Emily’s hair remains on a pillow, implying that Emily had been sleeping next to Homer long after his death. In terms of psychopathic tendencies, this action of Emily’s is the most prominent example to infer that she suffers of a mental illness. However, everything she does throughout the story definitely crosses a morally grey line that a normal person would not come anywhere

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The narrator articulates the community’s opinion on Emily who was viewed her as someone who was unapproachable, of high standards, someone who was merely talked about. They came to know many details about her and still carried a dogmatic view on Emily and her lifestyle, thinking of her as “a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town”. Believing that Colonel Sartoris, her father, had built an unnecessarily high reputation, the townsfolk thought her father should have wed her off to the first proper suitor. Emily, in a sense, had been left to uphold to his actions

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The narrator focuses a lot on Emily Grierson after her death. The narrator said multiple times they believed she wasn’t crazy. However, their actions proved to show the opposite. Emily’s father played a role in her isolation.

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She is mentally disturbed, and driven to her act by insanity. Miss Emily kills her victim, Barron, to keep him around because she truly loves him and she does not want to let go. Both protagonists have a distorted perception of

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The townspeople never say that miss Emily is crazy nor is she ever diagnosed with a mental illness, but she shows symptoms and behavior that imply that she is crazy and is mentally ill. Her father isolates her from the whole town, so her father’s actions are what drive her crazy and mentally ill. One reason why people may see Miss Emily as crazy is because she tried to hold on to her father’s body and tried to convince everyone in the town that he wasn’t dead. Faulkner says, “She did that or three days with the ministers calling on her and doctors trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body.

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“A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, is a significant story in expressing the reality of people’s true selves and addressing their emotions towards death. At the beginning of the short story, the whole town went to Miss Emily’s funeral: the men pitiful for their “fallen monument”, the woman out of curiosity to see the inside of Miss Emily’s house (Faulkner 720). Everyone in the town saw Miss Emily as their “tradition”, which regarded her as a stable feature in the town; she had been there so long that she has become the point of attraction of the town’s life (Faulkner 721). Miss Emily’s father was very protective of her; he completely enforced a policy around his daughter, excluding her from the community. Alive, Miss Emily’s father believed that no one in Jefferson was adequate for Emily; he protected her from humiliation, disgrace, and from those who are beneath her.

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They search the house, and they find her body lying lifeless in the dusty, dark room. As they continue on their journey, they see Homer Baron’s remains in the attic. Ms. Emily has killed Homer while the townspeople assume he went away. They also see some of Emily's hair next to the body which we can see this meant Emily slept next to him. We can analyze that Emily may have been a Necrophilic.

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At the end of the story, we find out that Emily murdered Homer Barron and dressed him up and laid down with him whenever she wanted to. If someone took this story at face value, they would call her a sociopath because murder is outrageous. However, when taking a closer look at Emily’s background, the reader can see that the circumstances in her life lead her to such rash decisions. She believed she was doing the right thing by killing Homer, but she went about the situation the wrong way. She just didn 't want to lose another, probably last, loved one in her life.

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