Rough Draft for Defending Emily Grierson's Murder

Emily Grierson, the key character in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” was clearly mentally ill. Her father certainly didn’t help her recover during his lifetime, in fact, Faulkner hints that he might’ve encouraged her exaggerated possessiveness, by his own example. The town people remembered “all the young men her father had driven away” (Faulkner, 529), which suggests that her father was incredibly possessive of her. Looking deeper into this, a reader could assume that their relationship wasn’t a normal, healthy father/daughter relationship. He perhaps needed her, the last Grierson, all for himself, and so she needed him. This idea is reinforced by the fact that when her father died she refused to let him go. She kept his dead body in the house for three days, refusing to let the ministers or doctors in the house, insisting that her father was not dead. The townspeople “did not say she was crazy then” (529), dismissing her behavior as natural instead of trying to help her. This is one of the first examples of the townspeople negligence, that succeeded in ruining three lives.

Tobe is an interesting, while entirely mysterious, character. He undoubtedly knew about Homer’s murder, and did not report it. But Tobe was not just an accomplice; he was a victim as much as Emily was. This was a town where traditional standards were still important, even while the town itself was being modernized, moving into the thirties. It didn’t matter how modern the rest of the town was, the townspeople still valued the idea of the “Griersons,” the southern elite, “the noblesse oblige -- without calling it noblesse oblige” (Faulkner, 529). A black man loyally serving her fit with this ideal. Tobe probably grew up learning, from the townspeople’s behavior, that he was nothing, fit for nothing except servitude. This is why Tobe served Emily so faithfully, not because of any kind of affection towards her, but because he was doing what everyone expected of him. The evidence Faulkner gives the readers to support this idea is when the townspeople pointed out that Tobe “talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from disuse” (532). You would probably talk to someone you had affection for, so that couldn’t have been the reason for staying to serve Emily. The townspeople wouldn’t even call him by his name, only referring to him as “the Negro” (532), reinforcing the idea that they thought of him as inferior. We only know his name because Emily called to him. We know that Emily has serious abandonment issues, so she probably had some sick, twisted affection for him. She probably didn’t view him as her equal any more than the townspeople did, but she would’ve made sure, somehow, that he wouldn’t leave her. The townspeople treated him like he was less than human, and the woman he served his entire life was insane. Tobe’s life was ruined because the townspeople needed to hold on to their traditional southern ideals.

The townspeople’s negligence becomes glaringly apparent when Emily bought poison at the drugstore. Emily haughtily asked for arsenic, and stared the druggist down when he asked her what it was for. Instead of insisting on knowing why she was getting the arsenic, or simply refusing, the druggist complied. He did this because of who she was, a southern princess. Never mind that the princess was mentally ill, and needed help. The day after they all thought she would kill herself, and they all “said it would be the best thing” (Faulkner, 530). This shows a disgusting lack of empathy or sympathy towards a person that is in desperate need of someone caring. When it came to Homer Barron, no questions were asked of Emily, though it was known that she was the last one to see him alive, and also known that she had recently bought arsenic. Were the townspeople truly blinded by her old southern prestige, or was it that they had a suspicion of what was happening, but looked the other way? Either way, it’s clear that the townspeople were somewhat responsible for the death of Homer Barron, the incredibly horrible servitude of Tobe, and the continuation of the untreated mental illness of Emily Grierson.