The Outsiders (Emily Grierson Character Anaylsis)

Jones 1
Tiana Jones
English 151-33
02/10/11
Dr. Sims
The Outsider

Miss Emily Grierson, is the main character in William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily,” is surely bizarre by any standard reader and a character analysis of Emily may perhaps venture in a number of directions. It is virtually impossible not to observe her in a mental as well as contextual light. Over the course of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily", Miss Emily’s inconsistent and idiosyncratic conduct becomes outright wacky, and the reader, like the townspeople in the story, is left speculating how to clarify the fact that Miss Emily has exhausted years living and sleeping with the corpse of Homer Barron. According to the narrator in one of the important quotes from “A Rose for Emily” the townspeople “didn’t say she was crazy” at first, and of course, she was never assessed, identified, or care for by a mental health professional. Yet by the story’s ending, the reader can go back through the narrative and identify many events in which Miss Emily’s character and conduct hinted at the possibility of a mental illness, even if the town wanted to refute this fact and leave her integral as a social idol. In fact, this information could be used to sustain clarification that Miss Emily suffered from schizophrenia .It is sensible to suggest that Miss Emily developed this mental illness as a reaction to the severe circumstances in which she was living as a Southern woman from an aristocratic family. Miss Emily decompensate because she was unable to expand healthy and adaptive coping and resistant method. While most people can deal with this kinds of stressors Miss Emily faced, those who can’t develop psychotic symptoms in reaction to their circumstances.
Emily is the typical outcast. She is controlling while at the same time she restricting the town’s way in to her true personality by keeping it concealed. Emily’s house protects her from the thoughts of the people that live around her, and the mind of the woman which it resides in. The way the house looks

Depicts her mind in the same fashion; it is shuttered, dusty, and dark. However, the town intensely securitizes Emily and the way she acts. One minute, she demonstrate qualities of stereotype for the south “eccentric” deranged , extremely catastrophic, and display of peculiar activities. Emily implements her own sense of law and behavior, such as when she declines to pay her taxes or clarify her reason for purchasing poison. Emily also avoids the law when she declines to have numbers attached to her home when federal mail service is initiated. Her purposeful neglect of the law eventually causes another vindictive act, because she takes the life of Homer Barron whom she rebuts from abandoning her. The storyteller depicts Emily as a shrine; however, at the same time she is sympathized for and often exasperating, trying to live life on her own conditions. The rumors and assumption, the townspeople started about her getting married to Homer with no wedding plans. After she buys the poison, the town people started saying she was going to kill herself. Emily’s instabilities, conversely, lead her into a different direction, while the final scene of the story indicates she is a necrophilic. This means that she has a sexual attraction to dead bodies. Moreover, it indicates a powerful desire to control another in a relationship that will eventually alternatively cause bonding to occur. Mr. Grierson controlled Emily, but after his death, Emily in turn temporarily controlled Homer by declining to give up his deceased body. Then she ultimately transfer her control by giving him affection, however, by being unable to express in a traditional way, her desire to possess Homer, Emily takes full power over him by taking his life.
In conclusion Miss Emily was mentally disturbed; she believed that she was still living in history. She refused to come to grip with the future, while feeling as though she didn’t have to abide by any of the new laws required of her. Miss Emily was deeply confused and mentally troubled; however, she still attended to everyday life as though change moved at her pace. She saw things differently then she seen the world.