Gender Norms In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

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This story is written by a girl struggling to find herself through her adolescent years. From a young age Emily very hard at being a typical "girly girl", she shaved her legs, wore makeup, crushed on boys, wrote about them in her diary, and avoided any thoughts she had about kissing girls. Her twin sister was a typical tomboy and was made fun of because of it, even by Emily. Emily never wanted to be like her sister, she wanted to form her own identity but had a very hard time doing so. Even with parents very open to there children not following typical gender norms and or being different, she had a hard time being herself anywhere. Going to a school where everyone was so similar she easily pointed out differences between herself and her family …show more content…

I was always a pretty quiet kid but come the end of middle school and throughout high school I kind of didn’t know my "true self" and where to fit it, I got very quiet and didn’t really talk a lot. I was always known as the quiet girl, I never really felt like I had something worth talking about and never felt like anyone wanted to hear it. Emily went through this a lot in her story where she was only herself behind her writing and didn’t let anyone else in. As for the coming to terms with their sexuality, there was a girl in my group of friends freshman year of high school who was gorgeous, typical "girly girl", long blonde hair and everything. But she was always very quiet except around her one best friend. Years later she came out as being a lesbian and slowly started making changed to her appearance, She cut all her hair off, dyed it dark, and started dressing different. Now that she's out of high school and being the person she truly is, she's obviously happier than ever. This is basically exactly what happened to Emily in the story, it just kind of shows how hard it is to find yourself and be comfortable with who you are while in high school with people you’ve known forever, and where everyone is super