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Vicky Dado
Professor Abbott
English 102-C01
08 July 2018
“A Rose for Emily” Analysis on the Effects of Extreme Isolation
“A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner introduces protagonist Emily Grierson, a privileged
and sheltered southern woman struggling with mental instabilities prompted by her isolation
from those around her. This short story, told in first person collective, emphasizes the theme of
isolation, how it imprisons both physically and emotionally, through three relationships Emily
has: her father, her lover, and her servant. Those relationships explored the layering psychosocial
effects of extreme isolation by an individual’s families, their community, and their own actions
and choices on the psyche.
Emily was isolated from everyone in the community especially potential suitors. When
her father died, Emily did not want to give up her father’s corpse to be buried. Because he was
one of the few people Emily had human contact with, it made sense to the townspeople that
Emily would be reluctant to let her father go even in death. The narrator states that because of
“[all] the young men her father had driven away” (Mosby) Emily never got married even after
her father had died. This highlights the extreme isolation imposed on Emily, triggering her
abnormal actions that followed her father’s death. It took days for Emily to give the townspeople
her father’s corpse in order for them to have a proper funeral. Emily’s ironically few interactions
in her life were with men, despite her father’s controlling nature in prohibiting males from any
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contact with Emily. The only men in her life she had prolonged contact with was her father, To
be her Negro man servant, and Homer her love interest. All of those
relationships spoke to different parts of her character by adding a layer of repression and
isolation.
Emily’s father is a domineering force throughout the short story. He is depicted as an
ever present oppressive figure that stifled his child’s individuation. Her forced seclusion from a
postbellum southern town, and the changing world encouraged eccentric, unbalanced, and anti-
social behavior. Emily’s relationship with her father is depicted in the tableau of the Grierson
Family. Her father clutches a horse whip in his hand with his back toward Emily. The allegorical
context of the horsewhip depictsa dictatorial and authoritative presence while his back towards
Emily shows his lack of warmth or care for her feelings. A 2017 study shows that children whose
