Analysis Of Abnormality In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, is a gothic short story about a southern woman named Emily Grierson. The story is told by an unnamed first-person narrator who is representative of the townsfolk. However, this narrative voice excludes Emily’s thoughts and feelings, adding to her perceived freakish personality. As the story develops, the power Emily’s last name carries from her family’s stature and wealth becomes diminished, resulting in pity towards her from the rest of the town. The story deals with themes of love, isolation, and tradition while simultaneously shuffling through time in an attempt to place the reader in the world of Miss Emily. Throughout, “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner foreshadows Emily’s mental insanity by describing
Emily’s character in the town is nothing more than a responsibility. The narrator explains that alive, Emily was “a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town.” Because of southern hospitality, Emily’s town feels a duty to assist the disadvantaged and Emily fits this criteria because of her mental state of mind. Furthermore, Faulkner once more foreshadows that Emily is mentally ill by illustrating how the town regards her. In part four, the narrator relates that the town believes Emily purchased arsenic to “kill herself” and that it “it would be the best thing.” Because suicidal thoughts are easily connected to inner instability, the reader is able to speculate that Emily’s mental state is less than healthy. Faulkner further hints at Emily’s mental insanity by the way the town treats her. In part four, the town further enables Emily to remain mentally unwell because they aren’t genuinely concerned for her wellbeing. After locking herself away, a neighbor notices a strange smell arising from Emily’s home so the four men from the Board of Aldermen “slunk about the house like burglars” sprinkling lime “in all the outbuildings.” Here, the townspeople recognize that the strange scent could be Homer Barron’s decomposing body since he was last seen with Emily prior to his disappearance but instead mask the smell much like they mask Emily herself by not giving her psychiatric help. With this ostracization from the town, it can be reasonably expected that a drastic action such as murder and sleeping with a corpse would be of no surprise to the town and therefore should not surprise the