A Rose for Miss Emily: How Emily Griersons Father Influenced Her Life - Essay Example

A Rose for Miss Emily: How Emily Grierson’s Father Influenced Her Life A Rose for Miss Emily is one of William Faulkner’s most brilliant short stories in which he describes the bizarre life of a young aristocratic women in a small Southern town, as observed by a neighbor. The story is about Miss Emily Grierson,, and though Emily’s father, Mr. Grierson, is a very minor character in the story, Mr. Grierson’s influence over Emily is the strongest, defining who she becomes and influencing the decisions she makes. Learning who Mr. Grierson was is the first step to discovering the influence he had on Emily. Mr. Grierson was a member of one of the oldest families in Jefferson, an aristocratic man and authoritative father, who, like Emily, is afraid of losing the one person left who is close to him. Mr. Grierson is a member of the same generation of Colonel Sartoris, of whom it is said “only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented (the tale to protect Miss Emily from ever having to pay taxes).” (Faulkner, 120) Colonel Sartoris still retains the sentiment of protecting the helpless young woman who has lost her father and fabricates a tale of Mr. Grierson’s generosity to the town in order to allow Emily Grierson to retain some self-respect and not feel that her inability to pay taxes is met with an act of charity. This is the mentality of over-protecting the aristocratic female characterizes the generation of Mr. Grierson. Mr. Grierson protects his daughter throughout his life, not allowing her to go out and not allowing anyone to come too near to her. He is plays the role of protecting his daughter’s virtue and keeping any unworthy man who is beneath their family name from approaching her. As the neighbor states, “We had long though of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the backgroud, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the backflung front door.” (123) In this picture, Miss Emily is the young, pure maiden in a white dress, which symbolizes her maidenly innocence and virtue, on the cusp of womenhood. The fact that she stands submissively in the background reveals her helplessness to stand against her father. It also shows her dependence on him. Her father is a dominating figure in the foreground, the word “spraddled” showing his foreground dominance. By having his back to her, he shows his insensitivity to her as a person: her needs, wants, and desires as a growing young woman are not seen behind him. He clutches a horsewhip in his hand, and whether or not there are any horses in the picture, it reveals his tendency to rule his household authoritatively by force. Colonel Sartoris had also proclaimed the edict that a Negro woman was not allowed out without an apron. This generation held fast to a society distinguished by class. Mr. Grierson, the head of his aristocratic family, however small the family had dwindled to, was protective of their family name even if it meant there was no one for Emily to marry as a result. In the same way that their house gradually becomes surrounded and isolated by cotton wagons and gasoline pumps, an old relic of a dwindling generation, Mr. Grierson is the an old relic from an earlier generation, one who never forgets, as the older towspeople later phrase it, “’noblesse oblige’, without calling it ‘noblesse oblige.’” (125) Mr. Grierson believes heartily in his noble heritage and does not ever forget his obligation to it. Perhaps this explains his reason to cling to Emily so voraciously and to protect her from being soiled by the lower classes of gentlemen. Nevertheless, it only contributes to Miss Emily’s perversion. Emily’s mother deserts her through her death at a very young age; perhaps it is for this reason that Emily’s father, and then Emily, both have an inherent fear of losing those closest to them, refusing to let them go. Her father taught her by his own example to hold on to your own and not let them desert you. By these two incidences: losing her mother by her death and experiencing her father’s hold on her, Emily learns that you cannot let those you love slip away from you. Her father’s tight hold on her shows that he believes that to lose her would cause something disastrous, something that cannot be endured. Then he promptly dies, deserting Emily himself. Emily cannot cope with the betrayal. She refuses to even admit to his departure from this world at first. Furthermore, she refuses to have him buried until all the townspeople are alarmed and bury him “very quickly” (124) when she finally breaks down. What Emily must have felt when she had been deserted by her father is probably indescribable. It is no surprise that consciously or unconsciously, Emily determines that she will never again lose anyone that belongs to her. After her father’s death, Emily is depressed and reclusive until Homer Barron enters her world. She must have loved him with a desperate kind of love, the kind her father had for Emily after he lost his wife, the only kind she knew. This authoritative, patriarchal love that would control its subjects is what Emily has developed for Homer. In their marriage bed together, with the engraved toilet seats she purchased for him nearby and his clothes folded neatly on a chair, their room is the picture of marital familiarity. Dead in her house, he is in a place where she can always see him and not allow him to betray her by leaving. She finally has her husband, and he will never abandon her. At the heart of her father was a fear of a loss of control, and influenced by him, this lies in Emily’s heart as well. At the root of Emily’s motivation to kill Homer is her father’s controlling love for her which will not allow her to desert him and leave him alone. Emily follows his precise example. Refusing to acknowledge her father’s death and the smell that surrounds him, she also refuses to acknowledge Homer’s departure from this world by sleeping in bed next to him for the rest of her life, the indentation on her pillow and iron gray hair left on the pillow perfect evidence of her twisted love that would not allow even a small chance that Homer might desert her. Murdering her lover so she can keep him in her house forever is symbolic of how her father “murdered” every chance she had to become a woman whose needs were met. Emily’s father did this by never allowing her to leave his household. So Emily followed his example and kept Homer in her household. One item that is mentioned several times in the short story is the crayon portrait of her father that sat in the front living room. The fact that it is crayon signifies that Emily did it herself, not a professional painter who had painted an official portrait. The moments she spent over it, drawing his face and capturing it forever in her memory, shows her devotion to him even after his death. Her father’s portrait holds a prominent place in the household as he held in Emily’s life. After his death, the townspeople do not say she is crazy for holding on to her father. In fact they say that “with nothing left, she would cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.” (124) It is obvious to everyone in the town that Emily’s father took every chance for love away from her in his life. He “robbed” her and so she clung to him. She was not about to have another man rob her of her chance for love, so she did not even give Homer a chance. She simply killed him to control the outcome. After her father died she made a portrait of him, but with Homer she takes it a step further. She takes his actual body and puts it in a place of importance in the household in an entire room. The author shows that this clinging to someone and not letting them go is abnormal. It started with Emily’s father and influenced her so much that that is the only kind of relationship she has with anybody. The “negro” servant that serves Emily for her entire life stays with her for as long as she is alive to make him stay. The very day that she dies, he flees the house and is never seen again. It was only her commanding presence that kept him there, faithfully serving her. Homer, though liked by all the townspeople, was a smaller type of her father and she married someone like her father as is sometimes the case in an abusive situation. Though different in many ways: he was a commoner, a day laborer, and from the North, Homer was like her father in the one way that ruined Emily’s life: he held the whip and he held the reins. In the only portrait of Emily and Homer together when they were both alive, Emily rides beside him in a buggy on a Sunday afternoon. Homer Barron has his “hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.” (126) With his hat cocked and a cigar in his mouth, he portrays a careless attitude, perhaps indifferent to Emily’s needs as her father was. With the reins and whip in one hand, one yellow glove (not even both hands, but one) he is easily in control without a struggle—it doesn’t even take two hands to control Emily. She fell in love with someone just like her father, someone who controlled the direction of their relationship. In this way, Emily’s father influenced in her life. By controlling her life, he showed her that she was helpless in a relationship with a man, which prompted her to fight against that feeling of helplessness and gain the upper hand to control Homer. By showing her that people in relationships can never be freed from each other, he taught by example that she should not allow anyone to leave her; thus, she killed Homer Barron and kept him in her household for the rest of her life as her father had done with her. As the townspeople concluded, “The quality of her father which had thwarted her woman’s life so many times had been too virulent and too furious to die.” (127) She inherited more than her aristocratic family name from her father, and she thwarted Homer Barron’s life as a result of her father’s example. Works Cited Faulkner, William. A Rose for Miss Emily, Ed. Edward P.J. Corbett. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, 1970. Read More