Loneliness In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the protagonist, Miss Emily Grierson, is faced with challenges that leave her no choice but to find a way to escape the internal struggle of loneliness created by her own actions, leading to self-inflicted destruction. Looking in on the surface, the female character is imprisoned by the repressiveness of her father. While he played a huge role in causing Emily’s mental state to deteriorate, it was ultimately the consequences of her own self-control that confined her mind. Because of her poor choices, Emily lives in misery instead of rescuing herself from such damaging chains of sorrow. Throughout the text, it is evident that the overall conflict in “A Rose for Emily” was driven by self-deprecation

Since there were so many “young men her father had driven away,” it can be inferred that Emily’s father was a very unwelcoming man who did not believe any male was good enough to meet the Grierson standards (Faulkner 55). As stated by Victor Strandberg, “driving away her suitors so as to keep her housekeeping services for himself, Emily 's father has ruined her chances for a normal life” (par. 3). After the death of Mr. Grierson, all that Emily had left was herself and the house because of the seclusion her father created. However, she could have willingly escaped this confinement because her father was no longer there to set rules for her. Instead, she “went out very little” (Faulkner 53). Because Emily made the choice to stay hidden from the townspeople even though her father’s presence was long gone, she was creating an antagonist upon herself. According to Ray B. West, Jr., “when as in A Rose For Emily, the world depicted is a confusion between the past and the present, the atmosphere is one of distortion-of unreality” (par.3). In other words, Mr. Grierson’s contribution to Emily’s distorted mental state slid her into such a world unfamiliar to most. It is obvious that a gender issue was not problematic in this case due to Miss Grierson’s own choice of remaining withdrawn from society, instead of breaking free from the isolation her father once made her

Although Mr. Grierson was very overbearing and caused most of his daughter’s internal issues, he was not present for a great portion of her life. Therefore, he could not have a say so in whether or not she freed herself from the imprisonment he forced her to live in. The central conflict was not driven by a gender issue because the person responsible of the problems leading to the conflict was pointed toward Emily herself. It is clear to see that Emily took her life in her own possession despairingly for the worst. She was able to have complete self-control and freely make any decision she wished to make, but she could not rescue herself from the dreadful consequences that awaited