Comparing Mary & Emily: The Themes Of Mary And Emily

Mary and Emily. These two lonely women are familiar, not the appearance but their pathetic fate and stubborn decision. They have both abandoned by man, both getting hurt from love, both did things wrong due to that and both a maniac. This is true that they refuse to accept the truth and the changes are real. That causes them isolate and having an unfortunate ending. So why they have become this situation?

Mary's life is controlled by a man, a womanizer, a cheater. Because of the guy who abandoned her, she gives up everything. "she had given up everything but her work, and that there had been in her history some reason.", this is how the narrator has told us, everything but work. Her work is inescapable because she still needs to live. She

Also, she thinks working is the only anodyne for her pain of being left. Keep the focus on work and make herself busy, to neglect that men, to neglect the sorrow. Nevertheless, we can find out that the feasibility is not so well. That her works are full of her past. We can find evidence of Mary who is excellent at " The tone of time". For example, copying some old portrait or somebody's style. Conversely, she trapped in it at the same time. Her new commission is to think of a sitter, she can only think of him as a bigot. Mary was the prisoner of the past and the prison guards, her past, is tormenting her. As we can see, she cannot get away from the shadow that the man is gone, turned his back to another woman and never came back for her. All these actions and thoughts are what she does to reject the man has left her, this is the unexpected turn. We also know the man that we consider it is not worth it, it is what she thinks important which more than life. Moreover, Mary's only friend is the narrator but her heart is always on that man. She doesn't trust the narrator as in the last part of the story, she assumes he

She is a patient of asylum, also a prisoner. There are more than one changes in her miserable life. Start from her childhood, her father, that arrogant rich man looked down every person of Jefferson. What he has taught Emily it is his selfish dignity. Emily grows up in this kind of situation. For her teen period, the time girls will have oodles of fantasy and dream of love, her father broke it harshly. He shut those guys who asked Emily for a date out of the door as he thinks they are not good enough for her. Emily just surrenders as a good girl. That causes the first twist of her life when it comes her father's death. Emily thinks he left her alone after keeping her in prison all these years. She doesn't know how to stay with people and it is his responsibility. Thus, she wants revenge, she wants to treat her father like what he has done to her, trapped him. Emily tells the Jefferson that her father was still alive and denied the truth. "After her father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all." It is her second change, Emily's lover leave her. We can find out that one more person she loves has abandoned her, again. It brings the following terror, she kills Homer, the unmarried man. Poor Emily cannot bear separation any longer, so she upgrades her action of escaping the truth, leading Homer's death to keep his body like exactly what had happened when her father died. Besides, she sleeps next to him, it shows