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Riley Clifford

Mrs. Pettay

English 112

3 May 2017

Psychoanalytic Analysis of A Rose for Emily

The high and mighty Grierson family lineage, a family who was exempt from paying

their taxes, a family whose house sat on the most select location around, and a family who

believed themselves as more pure than the rest of town, ended with the lonely death of Emily

Grierson. Poor Emily, a dialogue that is repeated throughout the story A Rose for Emily by

William Faulkner shows the towns point of view as Emilys death creates a monument of what

was the Grierson family. A monument of the Grierson name that is shown by the amount of

people attending her funeral just to see the inside of her house and explore her lifestyle. As for

her life, Emily lived trapped in the way of her upbringing, her childhood. She lived with a sense

of entitlement and craved a sense of power over her surrounding peers because that is how her

father was and that is how she was raised. To form a better sense of Emilys lifestyle, it is

important to look at how Emilys upbringing caused her strong desire to hold on to her sense of

power as an adult to remember the life she once had as a child of the coveted Grierson family.

Through no fault of her own, Emilys childhood and entitled upbringing causes her to fall

into a trap that she herself is blind to, always living to find a sense of power over others. Poor

Emily never sees her own pathetic lifestyle because she carried her head high enough-even

when we believed that she was fallen. The we in this quote represents the towns point of

view. As the narrative in the story switches back and forth, we see as the towns point of view
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continues to strengthen as they pity Emily and her lifestyle. Poor Emily, the town says time

and time again as her life continues. Not only is she stuck in an illusion where she still holds

power over her peers, Jennifer Burg, who is the head of the English Department at Wake Forest

University, states how Miss Emily rejects the end of the old order of Southern life and ignores

the next generation with its more modern ideas (Burg 388). Not only does she ignore modern

ideals but she only lives by the ideals of her father. Every day she looked at the big crayon

painting of her father up on the wall, lived in the luxurious household, and lived as if she

demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson. The girl was

raised to disregard the opinion of others, as seen when she simply refuses to pay taxes or when

she unlawfully acquires arsenic through the intimidation of her stare down. Emily expects

respect on her name and craves that power. She lives to have a sense of power and respect

because her childhood shapes her that way and she plans to live that way.

Her father was an important part of her childhood and she admired his dominance and

power not only in her life but in the community. When Emilys father dies, the last connection to

her family lineage, she gets sick for a long period of time. Not only does she fall ill, she denies

the fact that her father is dead. She needs to hold on to her father. His sense of power comforted

her and without him her body becomes weak. Then, she meets Homer Barron. The townspeople

view Homer as he is, a Northerner and a type of guy no one with the Grierson last name should

associate with. However, Emilys desire for power and importance blinds her. There is

something about the fact that a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice comes into town and

immediately becomes a known figure within the community that strikes in Emilys heart. When

her father died she needed to fill that hole in her life. Emily sees the resemblance of her father in

Homer. Emily discerns a bit of her father in Homer Barron and appreciates the sense of power
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that Homer carries. Emily uses Homer to fill the gap that her father leaves because she

appreciated his dominance when arriving in the town and, this time, refuses to let go.

Emily lives her adult life seeking to find the same pleasures that she once found as a child

growing up as a member of the high and mighty Grierson family. According to Ludy T.

Benjamin, a professor in psychology at Texas A&M University, in Freudian psychology, the

father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud explains how the childhood of an individual creates an

unconscious within an individual that the individual wishes to please (Benjamin). Emilys

subconscious is filled with the idea of power that connects her back to her childhood. Tobe, the

negro, is kept in the house, she gives china painting lessons, and she rides around in a yellow-

wheeled buggy in town, all because such activities give her a small sense of power and remind

her of her upbringing. When the gravel company finishes the job, Emily remembers the struggle

of losing her father, of losing that sense of power. When her father dies she knew she had

nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her. Then, when the man that

brought her back that same bliss and perception of power as her father comes into town, she isnt

going to let go. Her internal desires that originate from her childhood come back strong in her

unconscious as she grows older and takes over her behavior by controlling her thought process.

So much so that she goes out of her way to poison Homer Barron so that she can hold on to that

last sense of power over the town before the last member of the Grierson family passes. The

reader can find two reasons as two why Emily kills Homer. First, Emily is essentially preserving

Homer, as seen through the elegance in the preparation for his death. For Emily, she is not

killing Homer Barron, just preserving him. Emily had been to the jewelers and ordered a

mans toilet set in silver and then bought Homer a full outfit with a nightshirt not because she is

set on killing him, she is set on savoring him. Another reason is that while she wants to hold
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onto Homer, the Northerner embarrasses her and no one shall embarrass a member of the

Grierson name. Homer Barron is a Northerner, the type of man that Emily should never be seen

with, and is also gay, alluded to by his tendency to hang around other men in the story. Emily is

intrigued by Homer because of his sense for power and the need to fill a hole that her father left,

and therefore she kept his corpse in her house. However, being a gay northerner, the insult or

embarrassment to the Grierson name that this situation creates demands that Emily punish

Homer. Emily has to kill him to preserve the honor of the Grierson family. For Miss Emily, the

arsenic is not used for murder but a way to preserve the last sense of power to keep her sanity

and to escape the fact that she has embarrassed the dominate Grierson name.

All her life, Emily has a deep love for her father and makes sure to emulate his values in

her actions. Like the Electra Complex describes, a psychoanalytical concept, Emily had an

unhealthy connection to her father that lasted a life time. Because her father was gone, she never

had a reason to grow out of it. (Benjamin) The short story mentions how Mr. Grierson made sure

to keep other men away from Emily but she did not have a problem with her fathers actions. In

fact, when her father passes away she only picks Homer Barron because he is the one male

individual she meets that reminds her of her father and brings back those memories from her

childhood. The townspeople agree, as the story says that none of the young men were quite

good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau; Miss Emily a

slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his

back to her and clutching a horsewhip. This quote, coming from the point of view of the local

society, paints the reader a picture of the dominance that Mr. Grierson held on Emily and Emilys

way of thinking. Because of her father, no young man was quite good enough for her, because
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no young man, in the eyes of Miss Emily, could match her father. Similar to most young girls,

she loved her father, but unfortunately for Emily, she let that love for her father control her life.

Everything Emily does, whether it be still living with the help of the negro, refusing to

pay taxes, living with the stench of a decaying corpse, and even killing another human being, she

does to bring back the sense of power that reminds her of her father and her entitled childhood.

In reality, childhood and the manner in which an individual is raised has a lasting effect on a

persons unconscious thoughts, behaviors, and day to day personalities. For Emily, her

childhood and her relationship with her father stuck into her unconscious and influenced her

daily decisions and actions. Unfortunately for Homer Barron, Emily sees no wrong in her

actions. She holds her head high and lives life in the way she preferred. She lived her life in the

only way she knew possible, by searching for and preserving that sense of power and fulfillment

that her father and her childhood brought to her as the last member of the high and mighty

Grierson family.
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Works Cited

Benjamin, Ludy T., Jr. "Psychoanalysis, American Style." Monitor on Psychology. American
Psychological Association, Sept. 2009. Web. 05 May 2017.

Burg, Jennifer, et al. "Using Constraint Logic Programming to Analyze the Chronology in ``A
Rose for Emily''. vol. 34, no. 4, Dec. 2000, pp. 377-392.

Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. Logan, IA: Perfection Learning, 2009. Print.

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