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Mental Illness In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

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“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner is a story about a woman named Emily Grierson, who was finally free to live her life after her father died, however that is when her illness began to show. Emily feel in love with a man named Homer Barron, who didn’t love her back, so she poisoned him. Homer’s body was still in Emily’s house and stayed there until the townspeople found him after the enter Emily’s house after her funeral. A person reading, “A Rose for Emily” might think about how Emily was mentally ill and how she comes from a family with a history of mental illness. Emily’s relationship with her father was very controlling, he was very strict and cruel man who loved Emily but in the long run he really impacted Emily’s life in a negative way as one can see from how Emily treated the townsfolk, Homer, and herself. A person reading the story might think that the townspeople were judgmental and clueless, the townspeople saw Emily as a poor single woman who could not find a man to marry her. The townspeople saw the way her father treated her …show more content…

Emily was so messed up from her childhood that she was incapable of someone leaving her alive and feeling unwanted. The reader might believe that Emily was simply a killer, and that she killed Homer and possibly her father because she was afraid of being alone. Emily let the town believe that she was lonely and depressed, when she was just crazy and killed men who she thought was going to leave her. Faulkner wrote, “That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such”

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Not only that, as Homer becomes a popular figure in town and is seen taking Emily on buggy rides on Sunday afternoons, it scandalizes the town and increases the condescension and pity they have for Emily. They feel that she is forgetting her family pride and becoming involved with a man beneath her station. Even though Emily is from the high class family, it does not mean that she is living up to the pleasant lifestyle. As a matter of fact, she is actually living a gloomy and desolate life, which is essentially the opposite lifestyle expected for Emily's rank in society by the townspeople. Although Emily once represented a great southern tradition centering on the landed gentry with their vast holdings and considerable resources, Emily's legacy has devolved, making her more a duty and an obligation than a romanticized vestige of a dying order.

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