Theme Of Control In A Rose For Emily

A Rose for Emily is the story of Emily Grierson, a woman with a filled with despair and an unhealthy, unwilling dependence. However, when her father passes, and she is freed from his tight grasp of thirty years, she is secretly takes control of her life, doing as she pleases under her misguiding appearance. She displays her overwhelming control, aided by the town’s perception of her, throughout the story in often disturbing ways.
Her first display control is when she is confronted by the Board of Aldermen about the issue of her payment of taxes in Jefferson. Her menacing presence within her own house and command of the situation displays this control, repeating the phrase, “I have no taxes in Jefferson”(I) followed by her request to inquire

Colonel Sartoris on the matter, seeming senile when noted to the reader that Colonel Sartoris had been dead for some time. She then requests the gentlemen to be escorted from the premises. While it is very possible that her mind has gone at this point and they leave out of respect and pity, she managed to evade paying taxes.
She had, however, been displaying her control years before, such as when she had bought the arsenic from the druggist.

Despite his efforts to sell her other, less intense poisons, ones more suitable for rats, she requests only the best he has, the arsenic. Instead of denying the request, the druggist follows through with selling her the arsenic, “for rats”.
Her greatest instance of taking control, in all aspects, is her dealing with Homer Barron. She had managed to take complete control of her life, by insuring that no one could ever leave or be driven away from her again. When learning of Homer’s disinterest of remaining with her, she had decided to kill him herself, on their “wedding night”, with the arsenic she had procured from the druggist. She had even been seemingly able to control her server, Tobe, keeping him from uttering a word for years on end about any ongoings in her house.
By managing to appear as “Poor Emily”, seemingly fitting into an old, deteriorating woman look, she was given, and had taken, full control of all major aspects of her life. Controlling decisions that were not completely hers, people that had no obligation to follow her, and controlling the the death of her lover. She displays an unhealthy power that she had inherited from her overbearing father, taking control through position, and

presence.