Overprotection And Death In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

In the course of a woman 's life there is vanity that prevails at first and slowly fades with the the mishaps or missed opportunities in life, for instance a once young and beautiful woman lets her surroundings affect the way she really wants to live and love. As to say, once a rose so vibrantly red and blossomed becomes withered and grey in waiting days. William Faulkner 's early 20th century story " A Rose for Emily," is an American gothic horror tale that shows the transition in Emily’s life of living her youth in the Old South and then getting older in a fast changing world that turns into the New South. Faulkner uses symbols of overprotection, emotional distress, and death through out the story to better describe the tragic life of Emily

As Faulkner wrote, the way the town saw Emily and her father being a tableau, “none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We 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). In this quote Emily’s father is showing how overprotective he is of his daughter; Faulkner even created the imagery of the father clutching the horsewhip in his hand and standing in front of the door allowing no one in and not letting virgin Emily, dressed in white, out. The horsewhip can symbolize the stern maybe harsh disciplinary personality Emily’s father had towards her and in everyone’s eyes, causing the town to have pity over Emily. Emily’s white dress embodies the innocence and purity maybe even the naïve-ness Emily portrays. Emily’s father is a symbol

Along with the passing of her father Emily is then allowed the freedom to finally think for herself and then comes Homer Barron, a man whose Emily’s father would have disapproved of if he was still alive. As Donald Akers stated that Emily dating a northerner as a, “reasonable, explanation for her relationship with Homer would be that is her way of rebelling against her dead father. During his lifetime, her father prevented her from having an “acceptable” suitor. Thus, she rebels by associating with a man her father would have considered a pariah: a Yankee day-laborer” (“A Rose for Emily”). That excerpt suggests since Homer was a Yankee, it was completely against the Griersons legacy to marry a northern man having the post Civil War mentality, so Homer would have never been the perfect suitor for Emily. Regardless to say Emily quickly fell in love with Homer and she couldn’t bare the humiliation of Homer leaving her since he was not the marrying type. Within all of the things happening around Emily and all of the mixed internal feelings Emily repressed throughout the years, especially not having many