The Poison Woman (Emily) is really, really, not awesome in the story “A Rose For Emily.” Here are three reasons why:
First of all, before the story even starts, her father dies (And her “sweetheart”). She is left really really sad and doesn’t want to go outside: “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (Pg 2). If I were her, I’d be like the lady in the Ted Talk and get over it. It’s been so long that the Negro servant who had once been a young person became a very old guy. Also, I wouldn’t just never go outside ever again. There’s so many things you can do outside of your house. You can hang out with your friends (assuming you have any), you can travel to some landmarks and take photos to your heart’s content, and you can even go surfing!! You can’t order your Negro servant to go and hang out with your friends for you! You can’t order him to go and have fun surfing and taking photos for you! Emily’s kind of trying to freaking make a quarantine just for herself in the story and in my opinion, that’s not that cool.
Secondly, she seriously needs to lose some fat. “She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand” (Pg 2). From the way the story describes her, she is a very, very, fat, round, chubby, and obese woman. But I’ve never seen her actually do anything about it. This is probably because she has an attitude problem and won’t even go out of her own house, but still, nobody likes being fat, right? She could tell her Negro servant to start cooking more healthy meals. She could be like the guy in the same Ted Talk as I mentioned earlier and plant a bike in front of the television. She could start exercising by jogging around in her backyard while listening to music or doing squats while scrolling around on her phone, looking at the news and chatting with her friends (Again, assuming that she has any)! She could even do those awkward weight-loss dances that weight-loss people post on YouTube because they don’t have anything better to do (Not saying that losing weight is a bad thing, I just think those diet-dances are a little bit weird)!
Lastly, this girl is seriously violent. At some point in the story, she buys a container of poison: “‘I want some poison,’ she said” (Pg 4). At first, I thought she was going to kill herself to stop all the pain and all that nonsense (I wouldn’t put it past her, though). The people in her town thought so too and story said they said things like “‘She will kill herself’; and we said it would be the best thing” (Pg 5). But, at the end of the story, this idea gets destroyed because when they discover the Homer guy’s corpse in the upstairs room, they find a gray hair (Emily’s hair) next to it on a pillow with a head dent on it. It reveals that Emily might have poisoned Homer instead of herself because Homer wouldn’t marry her. I think this act is very violent and unnecessary. If Homer doesn’t like you, so what? There are plenty of other things to do like going on a vacation or trying to hit some golf balls into that teeny hole thing in the grass with a flag on it instead of trying to court an old dude who doesn’t even like you. I think this might be because of her poor attitude towards life again. You can’t just murder to have someone in your house forever. You just can’t! It’s wrong and very selfish too and if anyone found out, this time they probably wouldn’t buy your frantic screams to ask some dead colonel about the act of violence and wrongdoing.
All in all, I think this Emily woman is not being a good neighbor and not even being that awesome in this story by William Faulkner. Surely, I don’t think anybody would, considering that she’s quarantining herself and not socializing with anyone, she’s really fat, and that she literally murdered Homer in order to keep him in her house.