The Not So Golden Daughter
“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not twist them to fit our own image, otherwise we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them”- Thomas Merton. That being said, relationships change when people themselves change. And one of the most difficult relationships is the father-daughter bond. It is especially hard when the daughter is coming of age. In the short story “The Golden Darters” Elizabeth Winthrop uses symbolism to show when a person is always controlled, she typically rebels, causing disappointment.
In the beginning of the story, Winthrop uses symbolism to describe Emily’s father’s controlling behavior. To the family's surprise, Emily's father, Gerald, tells
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When Emily comes back from the dance her mother noticed her ears right away. Angrily her mother says, “What has gotten into you, Emily? You know that you were forbidden to pierce your ears until you were in college. This is appalling”(153). Emily's rebellion against her parents causes major disappointment. Her parents didn't recognize that she was changing, until they saw her ears. Emily doesn't care about what her mother thinks, she only wants her dad's opinion. She wants him to be proud of her, that she used the skills he taught her to make the earrings. But as Emily asks for her father's thoughts, “He stared at [her] for a long moment as if he didn't know who [she] was anymore, as if [she] were a trusted associate who had committed some treacherous unspeakable act”(153). Gerald's main intention of the darters is to make him and Emily closer. What he realizes is that he can't control her anymore, and that makes him extremely distressed. Emily asks her father about whether or not the earrings look good on her. As she patiently waits for a response, Gerald stands up and stares at her for a long time. Then he finally says, “No they don't” … “They’re hanging upside down” Then he turned off the light and [she] couldn't see his face anymore”(154). Gerald is having trouble racking his brain around his little girl growing up. He disapproves with her rebellious actions. As result of Emily's behavior, her parents were disappointed in her
Life is sad and tragic; some of which is made for us and some of which we make ourselves. Emily had a hard life. Everything that she loved left her. Her father probably impressed upon her that every man she met was no good for her. The townspeople even state “when her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad…being left alone…She had become humanized” (219). This sounds as if her father’s death was sort of liberation for Emily. In a way it was, she could begin to date and court men of her choice and liking. Her father couldn’t chase them off any more. But then again, did she have the know-how to do this, after all those years of her father’s past actions? It also sounds as if the townspeople thought Emily was above the law because of her high-class stature. Now since the passing of her father she may be like them, a middle class working person. Unfortunately, for Emily she became home bound.
There is a positive balance of paternal love in her life. I would help her see the value in having her father in her life. She would use her experience with her father to understand that great men do exist and not everyone will hurt her.
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. 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.’ (25) This complete sheltering leaves Emily to play into with in her own deprived reality within her own mind, creating a skewed perception of reality and relationships”(A Plastic Rose,
Having been the only daughter of a noble family, Emily was overprotected by her father who had driven away all the young men wanting to be close to her. As a result of that, when she got to be thirty, she was still alone. It was Mr. Grierson who alienated his daughter from the normal life of a young woman. If she weren?t born in the Grierson, if she didn?t have an upper-class father, she could have many relationships with many young men in order to find herself an ideal lover. Then she might have a happy marriage life with a nice husband and children.
Symbolism is a way to use symbols to represent ideas or qualities. In the Lord of the Flies, by William Golding tells a story about boys who are stranded on an island after surviving a plane crash. These children come in contact with many unique elements that symbolize ideas or concepts. On the island we see conflict between Ralph and Jack ultimately symbolising civilization versus savage. The use of symbols such as the conch shell, beast, and even Piggy's specs, demonstrates that humans, when liberated from society's rules, allow their human nature become evil to dominate their idea of civilization.
life and looked for a way to gain her freedom. Emily must endure her fathers
In “A Rose for Emily”, William Faulkner uses imagery and symbolism to both illustrate and strengthen the most prevalent theme; Emily’s resistance to change. William Faulkner seems to reveal this theme through multiple descriptions of Miss Grierson’s actions, appearance, and her home. Throughout the short story it is obvious that Emily has a hard time letting go of her past, she seems to be holding onto every bit of her past. Readers see this shown in several ways, some more obvious than others.
A symbol of Emily growing up is the fact that she pierced her ears, even after her parents forbid it, telling her she had to wait until she was seventeen. This shows defiance toward her parents, but also shows her becoming more dependent and able to make decisions on her own.
Having to send Emily in her early days to live with her father was a burdensome nuisance. All of Emily's father's attributes were rubbing off on her, "all of the baby loveliness gone," (p.
He was a controlling figure to her. As the narrator was telling us the story, I noticed in a few lines things that her father used to do to keep her home. Looks like he would scare guys away interested in Emily. He did this stuff because he wanted her to stay home and take care of the house. From my point of view he would have more control over her actions and would not let her out of the house.
Wing knows he must remove himself from the city or else he will die but then he chooses to not speak to anyone in fear that what had happened once will happen again. Emily on the other hand, was raised in isolation from her mother, the town’s people, and men. People were not trying to get to know Wing, but people wished for information regarding Miss Emily. She isolates herself because “Emily’s ‘body’ is experienced as resistant and we read an opposition between the decay of her house and “our most select street”. Remarkably often the outside world tries to penetrate the house/body of Emily”” (van Stralen). She was already penetrated once by her father and now the people of her town desperately try to snoop and gather information from her. She does not choose to be the way she is but it is all she knows, so she remains in her house until the day she dies without any contact aside from her
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
As a child, Emily was unable make friends or even play outside because her father held his family to a much higher standard than other townspeople “The Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner 36). Emily’s father, selfishly held Emily back from living, loving, and freedom. She was unable to find a soul mate because her father believed that “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such” (Faulkner 36). Because of this, Emily stuck close to the only man she’s ever known like a newborn to its mother. Emily and her father had such a close bond that when he died, for days she refused to believe he was dead, and she also refused to let the townspeople dispose of the body. For the townspeople, Emily’s reaction to her father’s death was quite normal, but for readers it was our first glimpse at her necrophilia.
Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal girl with aspirations of growing up and finding a mate that she could soon marry and start a family, but this was all impossible because of her father. The father believed that, “none of the younger man were quite good enough for Miss Emily,” because of this Miss Emily was alone. Emily was in her father’s shadow for a very long time. She lived her li...
Growing up Emily’s father, Mr. Gierson, made her stay in the house and not socialize with others. He taught her that he was only trying to protect her from the outside world. Mr.Gierson was a rude man who felt that things should go his way; therefore, his daughter hopelessly fell for him because she did not know any oth...