The Story of Emily Grierson: Crazy or Just Lonely?/A Rose for Miss Emily.

The Story of Emily Grierson: Crazy or Just Lonely?

In the story "A Rose for Miss Emily", William Faulkner paints a picture for the reader about a woman of gentile birth who is scarred by her father's strict mentality. The story takes place in Oxford, Mississippi after the civil war. Faulkner describes Emily's reclusion to her home that turns out to be the gruesome truth for all of the townspeople's sympathetic curiosity.

Miss Emily was referred to as a spinster by locals who, after disappearing behind the closed door of her childhood home, was the subject of speculation and gossip to everyone who had known her. Emily was depicted as a lonely woman who lived in seclusion for the better part of her life. Thinking no one was good enough for her, Emily's father thwarted any chances she had for a relationship years ago, leaving her alone upon his death.

English: William Faulkner's signature

William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portable si...

William Faulkner, 1954

At thirty years of age, people began to speculate about her state of mind, you could imagine her desperation. She could not deal with her father's death. After three days of denial, she conceded and had him buried. "The townspeople thought she might have gone crazy ,but then they remembered all of the young men her father had driven away, and they knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her"(90). These were the first signs of Miss Emily's seclusion.

Soon after she came out of seclusion she started dating a man named Homer Barron, "a Yankee - a big, dark, ready man with a big

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voice"(90). This astonished the townspeople because he was way out of her league. It was easy to see how she would pin all of her high hopes of marriage on him when he showed...