28 October 2021

Love Is What Makes the World Go Round

The need for love is a consistent theme that has plagued humanity for centuries. It can be said that such a desire could drive a person to the point of a psychological break. This can be seen in works such as “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. In this piece, Faulkner introduces the reader to a disturbing, yet tragic tale of unattainable love. The psychological elements of this short story can be supported through concepts developed by psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. In “A Rose for Emily”, the controlling nature of the father of the main character, Emily Grierson, allows the reader to use Sigmund Freud’s concepts of repression, resistance, and substitution to analyze Emily’s complex psyche; in order to obtain the loving relationship she wished for in her youth, Emily had repressed her father’s restricting values and resisted the notion that she is a disappointment to her father; this resistance is the result of Emily’s ex-lover, Homer Barron, becoming a symptom of her repression.

Emily’s own father had engrained in her the concept that individuals of higher classes, especially women, would marry others of equal or higher status in order to preserve the prestigious lineage. This is displayed when the text states, “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau: Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip…” (Faulkner n.p.g) This demonstrates how because her father valued their esteemed status, Emily’s father governed her love life to the point where Emily became an unattainable prize rather than a courtable distinguished woman. Such sheltering would cause Emily to fear a life devoid of love. To prevent this, Emily is willing to go against the ideals and standards that were implanted by her father.

This can be supported through Freud’s discussion of repression and resistance. Freud explains how even a concept ingrained into an individual’s mind can become a foreign thought. In his second lecture, Freud states, “The same forces which, in the form of resistance, were now offering opposition to the forgotten material’s being made conscious, must formerly have brought about the forgetting and must have pushed the pathogenic experiences in question out ofconsciousness… Thus the incompatibility of the wish in question with the patient’s ego was the motive for the repression; the subject’s ethical and other standards were the repressing forces” (2212). Here, Freud emphasizes how a patient’s own morals can cause a concept, which is incompatible with such morals, to be repressed into the unconscious where it will face resistance and will no longer surface to the patient’s conscious mind. Just as Freud states, Emily is forced to repress her father’s controlling influence, as it goes against her own standards of finding love. By doing so, Emily will be compelled to substitute her father’s influence by obtaining the romance she was deprived of as a young woman.

To do this, Emily finds comfort in the arms of a newcomer by the name of Homer Barron. It is clear, however, that Barron does not meet the outlandish expectations of Emily’s father. For instance, when introducing Barron, the text states, “The construction company came with ni***** and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee – a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face… Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy…” (Faulkner n.p.g) This emphasizes how Barron is the physical embodiment of everything Emily’s father despises, as Barron was a low class northerner, while Emily’s father was a well-respected southern nobleman. By associating herself with a man of a lower status, Emily is directly defying her father’s values. Emily is then inherently a disappointment to her father as she is going against her esteemed status for her own standards and will resist this feeling of disappointment to pursue the spouse she yearns for.

Freud illustrates in his lecture how this resistance is the result of Barron becoming a symptom of Emily’s repression. In his second lecture, Freud explains, “It is on the look-out for an opportunity of being activated, and when that happens it succeeds in sending into consciousness a disguised and unrecognizable substitute for what had been repressed, and to this there soon become attached the same feelings of unpleasure which it was hoped had been saved by the repression” (2215). Through this quote, Freud describes how to take place of a repressed memory, the unconscious, which houses this memory, creates symptoms which are insufferable to a patient, despite its attempt to protect the patient from further psychological harm. For Emily to obtain what was stolen in her youth, Barron becomes a substitute, or symptom, of Emily’s repression of her father’s ideals. Barron as a substitute, however, causes Emily to believe the agonizing notion that she is consequently disappointing her father. To combat this, Emily develops a resistance to this damaging thought to suppress it into her unconscious mind, where it can no longer bring her suffering.

The restricting parental values in “A Rose for Emily” allow the reader to use Sigmund Freud’s concepts of repression, resistance, and substitution to analyze the psyche of the main character, Emily Grierson. By repressing her father’s controlling hand, along with resisting the notion that she is a disappointment to her father, Emily would eventually settle into the arms of a man named Homer Barron, who would become a harmful symptom of Emily’s repression and result in her resistance. Freuds lectures discussing repression, resistance, and substitution support how apowerful the impact of an unhealthy substitution can be. Love is a powerful and inspirational force that allows the world to function. It is when the need for love becomes an obsession, that the same force can drive an individual into madness.

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