Madness In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

“A Rose for Emily” is written by William Faulkner, an American author, in 1930. The story is based on the town’s knowledge and opinion about Miss Emily Grierson’s life. Critics like Cleanth Brooks Jr. and Robert Penn Warren from “Understanding Fiction” believe that Emily’s madness is derived from “her pride and her refusal to submit to ordinary standards of behavior” (400), which consequently lead to the story’s ultimate gruesome ending. In Brooks and Warren’s analysis, they made two key points that direct them to this belief. The first states that Emily is unable to distinct between the reality and illusion; the second further explains that it is due to her firm will and iron pride which causes the blurriness in her reasoning. C. W. M.
When her father dies, it is a custom for the ladies in town to come over and offer condolence. For days, Emily tells them that her father was not dead, in which she implies that it was none of their business. Her resistant is futile when it came to the law; thus, the community is able to bury Mr. Grierson’s dead body. After this tragic event, Emily has nothing but the house. From being high and mighty to being alone and a pauper, Emily becomes humanized according to the town people (393). They think she will be like them since she now experiences the struggle of a penny. They are wrong; she still has that unearthly look which resembles “those angels in cored church windows ̶ sort of tragic and serene” (393). Ever since Emily met Homer Barron, a Yankee who oversees the construction of sidewalks, rumors spread. Some says, “…a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer”; other says that she has lost her virtue and honor (394). Even though they pity her, Emily shows no reaction to their small talks. When she discovers Homer was not the marrying man, she feels insulted because for as long as she can remember the Griersons reject the suitors not the other way around. As
Though she is above everyone in the town, she is not above the law. The law is enforced in order for the town people to bury her dad. The law of time causes the environment around her to change and her beautiful house and her to decay. Despite her resistant, the law is something she cannot control. Nevertheless, Miss Emily wins the moment when she successfully poison Homer, when the judge does not enforce a law about the smell, when Colonel Sattoris dismisses her tax, and especially when Tobe and the town people are all silence after discovering the truth. Dead or alive, she still has that unearthly presence overbearing them; the reason is that Miss Emily is a Grierson, the last one in