Mental Insanity In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

A Rose For Emily, by William Faulkner, is a short story about a woman living in what is presumably the south, sometime after the civil war, who goes crazy and murders her so called “sweet-heart”. (Faulkner, part II, paragraph 1) There are a few clues throughout the story as to Miss Emily’s mental stability, as well as to the causes of her actions beyond simply insanity. The simplest way to justify Miss Emily’s actions of murder, is to pin it all on mental insanity, and while she is very likely crazy, there are also subtle hints of reasons throughout the story for her eventually murdering Homer Barron. Mental insanity, which would allow her to consciously murder in the first place, appears to run in her family, as her great-aunt, Lady Wyatt, “..had gone completely crazy at last..” (Faulkner, part II, paragraph 10) and died, sometime before the death of her father. The death of her father was quite an instrumental event in allowing her to murder Barron. The narrator of the story reveals that Emily’s father felt “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such.” (Faulkner, part II,

If a man leaves a woman, for any reason, a somewhat stereotypical excuse for him, even in this day and age, is “she’s crazy.” What better reason would her sweetheart have for leaving her, than his realization of her insanity? The narrator said that “...her sweetheart-the one we believed would marry her- had deserted her.” (Faulkner, part II, paragraph 1) The whole of the town had believed he would marry her, yet one day he up and left with no explanation, which can lead to the conclusion that he discovered she was crazy, and didn’t want to deal with it. The narrator also specifically says that he deserted her, implying a psychologically traumatic experience for Miss Emily, and one that could have been the last straw before she truly lost her