Suhaila Islam
FIQWS HA9
Professor Von Uhl/ Yankwitt
24/11/2021
The Effects of Isolation
Loneliness can drive the human mind insane to the very point of dissociation and depersonalization. An individual is left with a sense of self-loss yearning for the feeling that comes with having someone who truly cares about you. You sit alone and watch both your mental health and wellbeing deteriorate as the years slowly and painfully go by. It’s a sad but very familiar truth for millions of people on this Earth. The short story, “A Rose for Emily”, written by William Faulkner, portrays how the main character, Emily, acts upon a wishful impulse to murder Homer, the man she loves, which is viewed as a psychologically unstable action driven by decades of social isolation and fear of being left by the people she loves.
Faulkner builds his claim that Emily’s instability is caused by decades of social isolation by supplying the readers with information about Emily being rejected by Homer, whom she loves and wants to marry. He portrays how Emily channels that heartbreak in an unhealthy manner otherwise identified as repression and acting on a wishful impulse. Faulkner’s purpose is to forewarn readers about the consequences of holding on to something they must let go of in order to move on (Faulkner, n.pg. ). In this case that would be refusing to accept that Homer did not want to marry her and the death of Emily’s father. This notion of refusal to move past the death of her father represents the Freudian concept of resistance, where an individual is unwilling to acknowledge hurtful memories (Freud 2219).
Emily feels a strong need to marry a person she loves due to having been socially isolated by her father for many years because he did not want her to meet men who might take her away from him (Faulkner,n.pg.).This has left her sexually repressed her entire life (Faulkner, n.pg.). As a result of her father’s overbearing and overprotective parenting, she has had trouble finding a partner (Faulkner, n.pg. ). Freud discusses all forms of repression in his lectures, saying that an individual may repress a memory if it is too traumatizing (Freud 2215). The sexual repression Emily faces results in personal psychological deterioration of her mental state, and what Freud would call a wishful impulse, pushes her to kill Homer. A wishful impulse is a Freudian concept described to be “a sharp contrast to the subject’s other wishes and which proved incompatible with the ethical and aesthetic standards of his personality”(Freud 2212). It can be inferred that the cause of Emily’s wishful impulse to kill the man she loves stems from her loneliness and years of sexual repression at the hands of her father.
Paragraphs nine and ten in the short story portray how hard it is for Emily to deal with the death of her father(Faulkner, n.pg.). Emily’s relationship with her father can be viewed as abnormal and concerning. Her father has always driven potential partners for Emily away since he feels as though none of them are good enough for his daughter (Faulkner,n.pg.). As Faulkner writes, “none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily” and her father would “clutch a horsewhip” whenever young men approach Emily at her home (Faulkner,n.pg.). Her father’s aggressive response to men who are interested in her is one of the reasons why she struggles to let go of relationships that don’t work out, such as the one she had with Homer.
Emily’s father is all she had growing up, and when he passes away she struggles to comprehend what has happened and even denies that he is dead (Faulkner, n.pg.). Her refusal to let go of her father can be recognized as the Freudian concept of resistance, where an individual refuses to accept a deeply upsetting situation. Freud states in his lecture that the more an individual resists accepting what has happened, the bigger the consequences will be (Freud 2217). And in Emily’s case, she resists welcoming the idea that the one man in her life who showed her what we assume is innocent love is gone. The author shows us by Emily’s behavior how this trauma negatively affects her health and how she becomes psychologically unbalanced (Faulkner, n.pg.).
Emily’s loss of her father causes her to cling to Homer because she does not want him to leave her(Faulkner,n.pg.). We know after Homer’s death, Emily keeps his body for about thirty years. This is recognized as a medical condition called Necrophilia and describes an individual’s sexual attraction to a dead body (Faulkner,n.pg. ). In the last paragraph of “A Rose For Emily”, The narrator says when they look at her bed they see his dead body and next to him they “ noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head”, and “we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair”(Faulkner, n.pg. ). What the townspeople see showcases how Emily has been lying down next to Homer’s dead body and showing him affection by holding him. Emily fails to comprehend the line she has crossed. This devotion towards Homer’s dead body further proves that Emily continues to resist any change and move on with her life after he rejects her. Her refusal is clearly shown in the short story seeing as Faulkner mentions that “what was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay”(Faulkner, n.pg. ). Emily let her resistance grow rapidly to the point where a dead body almost sank into her mattress.
Its quite clear that in the short story “A Rose for Emily”, the main character Emily Grierson, acts upon her wishful impulse to kill Homer in order to keep him from leaving her. Emily’s father has pushed her into an isolated reality that causes her to slowly develop unhealthy and unacceptable actions and thoughts. It appears as though her dad has also caused her to develop a nervous disorder that has manifested itself into something much darker. Freudian concepts such as wishful impulse, resistance, and repression play into how Emily acts, and why she is willing to harm someone she loves. Everything Emily goes through is interconnected. Her childhood, her isolated upbringing, and her relationship with her father cause her to be psychologically unstable to the point of committing homicide.
Works Cited Page
Faulkner, William. “A Rose For Emily”. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1970, American Periodicals Series Online pg. 233.
Freud, Sigmund. Five Lectures On Psycho-Analysis. W. W. Norton & Company, 1910,https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b446/cfb00094a2e62f82e8c8e430581891ca4e47.pdf?_ga=2.153662776.1893964575.1597526595-1709737971.1597526595
