Emily's Desperate and Murderous Fight: The Tragic Manifestation of the Condition of Women in the Postbellum South
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Various speculations have been made regarding Emily’s motive in finding a lover in Homer and keep his remains after murdering him. Some critics view the story as Emily’s abortive attempt to wage a war with time and change, while others assert it as an extended expression of her incestuous desire. In this essay, I contend that Emily’s decision to murder Homer and sleep next to his dead body as his wife is a manifestation of the tragic situation in which women of the postbellum South were trapped. Once Emily begins her relationship with Homer, she is forced to deal with the consequences of her subversion of the moral foundation of the South, and she continues her resistance to her communal and religious values of the South by drawing on them, revealing the fundamental limitations of her subversive power. Specifically, in murdering Homer and keeping his body, Emily defies the townspeople’s critique of her behavior and she does it through the Grierson pride that the townspeople attribute to her. By the same token, although Emily does not share Southern belief in God, she postulates the existence of God so that she can reject God’s forgiveness and stipulate the terms of her punishment. Through Emily’s desperate and murderous fight against the social constraints of her time, Faulkner demonstrates the extent to which human psychology can be distorted and twisted in the face of unreasonable expectations about and codes of conduct that force individuals to give up their innate need for love.
Abstract
Various speculations have been made regarding Emily’s motive in finding a lover in Homer and keep his remains after murdering him. Some critics view the story as Emily’s abortive attempt to wage a war with time and change, while others assert it as an extended expression of her incestuous desire. In this essay, I contend that Emily’s decision to murder Homer and sleep next to his dead body as his wife is a manifestation of the tragic situation in which women of the postbellum South were trapped. Once Emily begins her relationship with Homer, she is forced to deal with the consequences of her subversion of the moral foundation of the South, and she continues her resistance to her communal and religious values of the South by drawing on them, revealing the fundamental limitations of her subversive power. Specifically, in murdering Homer and keeping his body, Emily defies the townspeople’s critique of her behavior and she does it through the Grierson pride that the townspeople attribute to her. By the same token, although Emily does not share Southern belief in God, she postulates the existence of God so that she can reject God’s forgiveness and stipulate the terms of her punishment. Through Emily’s desperate and murderous fight against the social constraints of her time, Faulkner demonstrates the extent to which human psychology can be distorted and twisted in the face of unreasonable expectations about and codes of conduct that force individuals to give up their innate need for love.
참고문헌 (13)
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