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A Rose for Emily, a la Shmoop. People have different ways of coping with

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loneliness. Maybe they carry on conversations with themselves...

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...or sample every ice cream flavor known to man...

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...or spend some quality time with their favorite TV series.

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However, in William Faulkner's short story, A Rose for Emily...

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...the title character takes drastic measures to assuage her loneliness: she kills the man

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she wants to marry so he will never, ever leave her...

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...and then she keeps his corpse. Faulkner writes that Miss Emily Grierson <<Greer-son>>

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has a disastrous love life...

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...on account of her overprotective father...

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...and, after Mr. Grierson's death, a boyfriend who doesn't want to say I do.

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While Emily's neighbors enjoy talking about her misfortunes in the romance department...

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...and pitying her...

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...she has no friends, and her only relatives live far away.

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So, here's a question: Why is Emily so very alone in Faulkner's story?

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Maybe her loneliness is her own fault. After all, Faulkner tells us that Emily refuses

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to pay her taxes...

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...and then refuses again...

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...and again...

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...and again. No one likes a freeloader...

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...especially one who delivers her refusal in a cold, imperious manner.

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Perhaps if Emily made an effort to mingle with her neighbors, she would get invites

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to all the local Easter egg hunts, Christmas dinners, and baptisms.

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You never know what might happen at a baptism. Or maybe Emily's loneliness is rooted in her

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inability to let go of the past.

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After all, the only thing Emily wants to do is snuggle with the corpse of her dead, reluctant-to-wed-her

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boyfriend...

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...the boyfriend she killed with arsenic bought during a shopping spree at her local Jitney

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Jungle.

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Spending all her time with Not-So-Hot Dead Guy means Emily can't move on with life and

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make new, still-breathing friends. Or is Emily's father to blame for her loneliness?

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After all, Mr. Grierson was so certain that no one in town was good enough to marry his

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daughter that Emily couldn't marry while he was alive.

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By dominating Emily and separating her completely from the other townsfolk...

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...perhaps Mr. Grierson shaped his daughter's personality in such a way that she is unable

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to escape loneliness while she lives. So why is Emily so very alone?

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Is she responsible for her loneliness?

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Is she lonely because she can't let go of the past and her dead boy-toy?

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Or is Emily lonely because her father made it impossible for her to live any other way?

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Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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