Emily Grierson's Resistance To Change

Resistance to change is the underlying theme of the American author William Faulkner’s short story entitled “A Rose for Emily.” Emily Grierson the object of fascination in the story, is a secluded and secretive old women that limited the town’s access to her true identity. She was not willing to change and as a result did not function effectively in society. An analysis of Emily Grierson reveals three challenges facing the character: isolation, life and psychosis.
The first challenge Miss Emily faces is isolation. Having been the only daughter of a noble family, Emily was overprotected by her father who “had driven away” all the young men waiting to be close to her. The story mentions, “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss

Faulkner’s short story reveals how a hereditary mental illness runs in the family. “People in our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner and Ange). An example that shows Miss Emily is mentally ill, is when she goes to a local druggist and insists she wants poison. "I want some poison. I want the best you have” (Faulkner and Ange). Then, she refuses to tell the druggist what she is going to use it for. Furthermore, Miss Emily’s lover Homer Barron was dedicated to his single status and did not want anything serious with her. The town barely saw the two together and did not hear from them until after Miss Emily’s death. When Emily’s cousins broke open a room that was not seen in forty years. They discovered, “The man himself lay in the bed. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay (Dilworth 251). This impression is only solidified by the later horrifying revelation, not only of how she murdered Homer Barron but of how she slept with his decaying corpse, then grotesque skeleton. Miss Emily’s refusal to accept that Homer did not want to marry her took a psychological effect on