The Major Years: Isolation And Emily Grierson – A Deadly Combination Essay, Research Paper
The Major Years: Isolation and Emily Grierson – A Deadly Combination
William Faulkner, one of the most famed writers of our times, explores
in his writing the themes of alienation and isolation. He interweaves these
themes with his female characters. In A Rose for Emily, Miss Emily Grierson is a
woman who is alienated and lives in isolation from the people in her town. The
theme of isolation is the focal point of the story, since it is what drove her
to her madness.
Faulkner’s theme of alienation comes up many times in his writing. In
the book The Major Years, Melvin Backman states that Faulkner was reaching for a
more decent life and more decent people in the midst of evil. He was reaching
for love, innocence, simplicity, and strength, but he also knew that these
things were being hidden by reality. “With Faulkner, as with all men, the
personal condition underlay and shaped his view of the human condition” (Backman,
p.183).
The critic goes on to note that men in Faulkner’s works tend to
undermine women and their roles in society. Women are oppressed and are usually
controlled by men. The women try to fight the men in their society and are
trying to find a way to escape from their grasps. They are hesitant to stand up
to the men and instead they tend to hide away. Backman notes that, “The will to
confront reality seems to be losing out to the need to escape”(p.184).
Miss Emily is a woman who had the whole town wondering what she was
doing, but did not allow anyone the pleasure of finding out. Once the men that
she cared about in life deserted her, either by death or by simply leaving her,
she hid out and did not allow anyone to get close to her. Miss Emily was indeed
afraid to confront the reality that Backman discusses. Since she did not want to
accept the fact that the people she cared about were gone, she hid in her house
and did not go out. She was the perfect example of a woman alienated by a
society controlled by men who make trouble for her instead of helping her.
Minrose Gwin, author of The Feminine and Faulkner, states that several
of Faulkner’s female characters, including Emily Grierson, are “indeed active
disruptive subjects in their narratives; theirs are voices which denounce and
subvert male power”(Gwin, p.8). They do what they do , such as killing Homer
Barron in Emily’s case, because they are tired of men telling them what to do.
Gwin further states that the patriarchal world creates its own images
of women. Emily tried to challenge these images by not being what the men in her
society would consider “normal.” The men felt that all women should tend to
their homes and be sociable, not locked up in a house with a manservant to clean
it. They also felt that it was not right for a man to be doing that kind of
work; it was a woman’s job to clean the house. ” ?Just as if a man?any man?could
keep a kitchen properly,’ the ladies said; so they were not surprised when the
smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the
high and mighty Griersons”(p.26).
Backman, paraphrasing Wright Morris in The Territory Ahead, says that
flight and nostalgia are essential to American life, “The American flees the raw
and uncongenial present for a mythic and desired past”(Backman, p.185). This
perfectly summarizes Emily’s character because she is trying to leave the
present and go back to a happier past. She is attempting to recapture her past
because she needs to find the love she once knew. “After her father’s death she
went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at
all”(p. 26). Emily alienated herself from anyone when the two people that once
loved her went away. She was afraid to grow close to anyone in fear of losing
them again.
Emily was a headstrong woman that seemed frail and weak, but was
instead very strong. She had the whole town convinced that she could not hurt a
fly, but instead she was capable of the worst of crimes, murder.
“Faulkner’s works convey a deep sense of oppression and withdrawal,
yet they convey too the struggle with self and society. In the midst of defeat
and despair a small center of resistance resides”(Backman, p.186). Emily, in the
middle of all the alienation and isolation she felt from the residents of her
town, also found the resistance to show them she was not someone to be taken
lightly.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Backman, Melvin. Faulkner: The Major Years, A Critical Study. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1966
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction,
Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X.J. Kennedy. New York: Harpers Collins, 1991. Pp. 24-31
Gwin, Minrose c. The Femenine and Faulkner: Reading (Beyond) Sexual Difference.
Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990
Morris, Wright. The Territory Ahead. The Macmillan Company, 1957.