Friday, December 6, 2019

psychoanalytical criticism of Rose for Emily

A psychoanalytical criticism or reading of "A Rose for Emily" would seek to understand Miss Emily Grierson's psychology and use that to explain her bizarre actions in the short story.
Freudian psychoanalytical theory makes much of children's relationships with their parents, so we would definitely want to examine Emily's relationship to her father. We know that Emily inherits a sense of entitlement from her father, as she wants to continue the traditions of privilege enjoyed by her family in past generations, even as the world around her progresses from the antebellum South to the modern world. The first odd detail we hear about Emily and her father is introduced in Part II of the story, when we learn about her father's death. The narrator relates,

The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom 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.

Emily is clearly in denial about her father's death; she refuses to accept that he is truly gone. She keeps this up for three days, and even though several people try to convince her that he is dead and they must take his body away, she refuses. It takes threats of "law and force" to make Emily eventually "[break] down" and let them in. The burial is taken care of swiftly. The narrator reflects that, at this point, they did not think of Miss Emily as insane:

We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

The community actually understands why Emily acted the way she did. The reason they give is "all the young men her father had driven away." This little detail tells us much more: Miss Emily had suitors, but her father did not approve of any of them. In a way, he made sure she was single, alone. Now that her father is gone, she has no one. The people of the town understand that "she would have to cling to that which had robbed her." In other words, they are doing some psychoanalysis of their own.
If we look at the parallel scenario of Homer Barron's death/disappearance, we can see Emily repeating some of her previous actions following her father's death. Repeated actions are sometimes seen in trauma survivors, as they replay the moment of the trauma. Further, we can see Emily trying to avoid loss a second time through her murder of Homer. Because we hear from an outside perspective, we have to put pieces together on our own, but the story suggests that Homer may have been about to leave Emily rather than marry her. In an effort to keep him with her, she poisons him and lives with his body for many years. Emily is able to replay the death of her father but with more success this time because she can keep the man with her instead of having him taken away. He is only discovered after Emily's death. Many readers are sickened by what they imagine to be Emily's necrophilia, but if we look at the clues to her psychology in the story, we, like the townsfolk, can understand that she is trying desperately to cling to what she has left to avoid loss, loneliness, and solitude.

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