A Rose For Emily Love Life Analysis

In addition to how much Emily’s father had structured her life and held her back, there is the issue of Emily’s love life to consider. Her father never allowed her to have a man, for he was the only man he felt she needed in her life. This idea was so prominent that even the townspeople knew that Emily’s father was the reason Emily ended up unmarried and alone: “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (Faulkner). Emily did not know how to have relationships with men because it was always just she and her father. When Emily’s father passed away, she still did not know how to have a love life, because she was constantly holding onto her father’s presence and could not imagine life any other way. Furthermore, the struggle for Emily to maintain her reputation through her love life journey was evident in Thomas Dilworths article which, depicts the weight that was put on Emily and her relationships: “By entering a love affair with Homer Barron, Emily briefly rebelled against southern values and then, by ending her affair with him, at least as far as the townspeople were concerned, she conformed again to those values. She killed Homer largely to placate …show more content…
Emily’s father, her inability to accept the changing times, her hold on loved ones and the importance of tradition and reputation, held Emily in the past and left her with nothing but dust in her final years. The readers of “A Rose for Emily” are left feeling sympathy and compassion for a woman who was never able to conform with the world and who became twisted and crazed as she continually held onto the