A Rose for Emily - Research Paper Example

?Jerry Ciacho November 3, The Evils of Seclusion in A Rose for Emily In “A Rose for Emily”, a short story written by Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Price laureate William Cuthbert Faulkner published in April of 1930 in a magazine, the main character, Emily Grierson, shows disturbing mental troubles as she is cut off from society and is isolated in her august house in the small city of Jefferson. The story’s background setting plays a key role in showing how her isolation led to her insanity. As this story occurred during a time when there was a division between the North and the South, causing a big gap in classes and wealth, the segregation was a key element behind the father’s reasons for his actions and involvement in his daughter, Emily’s life. The short story also, in addition, puts an emphasis on the long history of adamant societal limitations and restrictions that are set down on females, which became another factor for her suppression. Furthermore, the Griersons showed a refusal to concede to the changing times. They remained stuck in the past of their wealth and nobility that fueled the story’s plot. According to a journal written by John Skinner, Emily represented "a refusal to submit to, or concede, the inevitability of change." (Skinner 42) All in all, these subthemes altogether play a bigger role in its distressing representation of uncharacteristic mental behavior and implications that are displayed in the dark secluded demesne of Emily Grierson. The restrictions and limitations insisted on on the young aristocrat, along with the refusal to change, caused her to be extremely secluded and isolated from the rest of the world around her and later on, instigated her apparent psychological instability. Emily Grierson is the archetypal outcast that hides her true identity away from the society; locking herself into the house that symbolized the august Old South and that clearly represented the idleness of Emily’s life as everyone else was progressing and moving forward. The house, which shelters Emily from the community, becomes a strong evidence of the woman’s withdrawn mentality. The house plays an important role in the short story because not only does it indicate Emily’s mental condition, it also becomes a facade of the living past for which Emily is trapped inside and it is only in her passing away that the entire society is given the opportunity to gain access and view of what Emily has been doing alone in that house for years since her father’s death. When the house is finally opened up, it confirms what the people in the neighborhood had been observing and presuming about her. What occurred inside of that house strongly showed the progressive insanity that encroached her life as she lived alone, separated from the outside. Indeed, her tragic and forced isolation and reclusion in that house could have caused the madness that destroyed her. Stuart Grassin’s journal gives a psychiatric explanation for this. It is written that when one is secluded and experience intense monotony, “after a time, the individual becomes increasingly incapable of processing external stimuli, and often becomes “hyperresponsive” to such stimulation. For example, a sudden noise or the flashing of a light jars the individual from his stupor and becomes intensely unpleasant. Over time the very absence of stimulation causes whatever stimulation is available to become noxious and irritating. Individuals in such a stupor tend to avoid any stimulation, and withdraw progressively into themselves and their own mental fog.” (Grassin 327) Emily’s father played a very important role in the story as he was the man who mainly controlled most of Emily’ life and decided for her while he was still alive. As written in the story, the people “had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door.” (Faulkner 4) The citizens of Jefferson, the place where she lived, have always understood that Emily’s family deemed excessively greatly of their own selves as they belonged to the aristocracy in the Southern area. It was seen especially in Emily’s father who always sent away the numerous suitors that came into Emily’s life. He strongly believed that none of them were ever and will never be good enough and will be able to be at par with the status and nobility of the Griersons. This constant driving away of wooers by her father resulted into Emily staying single by the time she was already thirty years old. In the story, as the people watched Emily’s life decline, “that was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such… So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.” (Faulkner 4) When Emily’s father had finally passed away, Emily became a prisoner to her own house, and like any other prison cell, isolation is integral and this aroused and fueled Emily’s mental disturbance as the story progressed. When Emily’s father passed away, it became the start of her slow and steady mental breakdown. The day after his death, the women of the town went to Emily and at the door offered their sympathy and condolences. However, Emily responded in a bizarre manner. As the story says, “Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.” (Faulkner 6) By this time, the people did not yet presume that she was going crazy. They only thought that it was a normal part of the grieving process, especially for her, as her father was the only person left in her life, so denial and disbelief seemed to be a normal emotion that any person who was deprived of their only possession left would feel. Two years after the incident, Emily had withdrawn from the society and people have started to notice her bizarre actions, and her extreme seclusion inside the house. This became Emily’s very own ‘prison’ and just like any prison cell, people are secluded and are confined inside four corners of nothing but wall, and this kind of solitary detention does indeed lead to insanity and madness. In a newspaper article written for the South London Press that was centered around Robert King’s time in seclusion, author Cracknell says, “Isolation drives any prisoner to insanity and we have seen that in Guantanamo. It is difficult to imagine what someone like Robert went through. After so much time the mind starts to go crazy. The brain just starts to eat itself. Isolation prisons are considered to be torture, and they are.” (Cracknell 5) Emily’s continual isolation affected her ability to socially interact with other people and this might have impaired her mental stability. In a newspaper article published by The Guardian UK on a man who was isolated, the report settles on a similar conclusion saying “Ms Gutierrez… told the Guardian her client was showing clear signs of the debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder and suffering from panic attacks. She said: "The time in isolation led to mental breakdowns, he was talking to himself, hallucinating, sitting in the corner.” (Dodd, Taylor and Cowan, 3) Paul Grobstein gives the reason for this in a book on neurology and behavior published by Bryn Mawr College. He explains how isolation progressively leads to insanity, “It denies us the ability to ask questions and seek reasons and information to form explanations that allow us to understand ourselves as well as our world and our place and purpose in the world. It is logical that we feel less stable and secure overall when the things that our brain and body rely on to connect to and understand our surroundings are taken away from us.” (Grobstein 246) Perhaps the most apparent display of Emily’s intensified psychosis due to her separation from the rest of the community came later on in the story. She met a man named Homer Barron, a humble laborer from the North. People did not, at first, think she was serious with him, as her father would not approve of the man if he were still alive. She was a Grierson, and she was not expected by her father, or by anyone in the community to be with a man like Barron. This reaction by the people clearly displayed the difference in nobility and class between the North and South at the time, and how this demarcation affected Emily’s life greatly since her father would not permit her to be with anyone deemed lower than her. In the story, “the ladies all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." But there were still others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige, without calling it noblesse oblige. (Faulkner 7) However, the people’s judgment about them together started to change when Emily was seen more in the streets with him instead of in her house hiding herself inside, alone. This becomes a catalyst for much controversies and scandals by the townspeople, and results in their ever-growing shame and disparagement. They believe that she has neglected her family dignity and integrity by being with a man with lower standard and class. As Emily’s status and her respectability is more and more endangered by all these talks going around about her, Emily purchases arsenic, a strong element that contains toxic compounds in it. Barron, after leaving for a short period of time, is seen coming back to Emily’s house and is reported to have never been seen by the people ever again. Later on, Emily shuts the whole entire top floor up and no one ever sees her anymore, except for rare brief looks of her from the shutters of her windows, that is until her death. When the top floor is finally revealed before the entire community in the last paragraph, it is seen that Barron, or “what was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust… and in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.” (Faulkner 9) This is a clear and obvious depiction of the insanity that has finally taken its toll on Emily’s tragic life and becomes the strongest evidence showing how her father and the society secluded her from the world, and no matter how much she wanted to be free, she was trapped forever and death was her only escape. Works Cited Faulkner, William. A Rose for Emily. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1970. Print. Cracknell, James. "The Isolation that Leads to Insanity." South London Press 30 Oct. 2012: 5. Print. Dodd, Vikram, Richard Taylor, and Rosie Cowan. "Isolation, Breakdowns and Mysterious Injections." The Guardian UK [London] 26 Jan. 2005: 3. Print. Grobstein, Paul. The Brain's Images: Co-Constructing Reality and Self. Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Bryn Mawr College, 2002. Print. Grassin, Stuart. "Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement." Journal of Law and Policy 22 (2006): 236. Print. Read More