Control In A Rose For Emily

Is Miss Emily Grierson’s controlling behavior contributing to her loneliness and psychotic behaviors? In the short story “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, Miss Emily Grierson is a mysterious and “monumental” citizen in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. Miss Emily is constantly being watched and gossiped about by the citizens in her town, and her weaknesses and shortcomings as a person are constantly scrutinized. One of Miss Emily’s weaknesses includes being controlling, which causes her to act in a psychotic manner by finding it hard to let go of the past and the people she loves, even when they are dead.
Although the town is becoming more modern, Emily is trying to control time by staying in the past which makes her both a blessing

and a curse. Her need to control time begins with her not paying her taxes. Although she is sent a tax notice and personal letters from the mayor, she still does not acknowledge the town’s modern change and seems reluctant to. As stated by the narrator:
Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor – he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron – remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity (Faulkner 1103).

Even after Colonel Sartoris’ death, Emily can control time by referring to him as though he is still alive. Instead of embracing the present she idealizes the everlasting past and continues to control and live in her unchanged and timeless perimeters. This causes her to both be a curse and blessing to the town, by being someone from the past people want to respect, but also a curse because people cannot entirely understand her unchanged traditions and eccentricity.
Within Miss Emily’s unchanged traditions and influences in her life is her father. Emily’s father is a constant influence even after his death. “On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily’s father” (1103). The portrait of Emily’s father shows Emily must control her life like he once did in order to be comfortable. Emily’s comfort with control is displayed when she no longer leaves her home, and purposely controls her life through the portrait due to the familiarity of a controlling lifestyle. The portrait also shows that Emily cannot accept the change of her father’s death just like she cannot accept

the change of modernism, she feels she must control death, and forever keep her father alive inside a portrait.
As well as controlling her father’s death she also caused an untimely one for Homer Barron.

Within the story, Emily has the need to control loved ones from leaving her. Unfortunately for Homer Barron, Emily could not accept that Homer did not want to be with her, which led to his expiration. “What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed which he lay; and upon him, the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient biding dust” (1109). To control Homer from moving on and finding someone else to love, Emily believed killing him was the only way to be together forever, even if they could not get married. With all the year’s homer laid dead in Emily’s bed, this was her way of controlling homer from leaving, and controlling the loneliness she felt that she could never get rid of because of the controlling lifestyle she continued to

live.
Miss Emily Grierson’s controlling personality causes her to have psychotic behaviors and causes her to be stuck in the past. Constantly being scrutinized and gossiped about leaves Emily with extreme loneliness, which only leaves her to control time and familiar faces since she cannot control the gossip about her. The nature of her control creates unfortunate and untimely death, as well as the confinement to her home with her “undead” loved ones.