Freud’s Influence on “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner

        Sigmund Freud’s theories on sexual repression are quite prevalent in “A Rose for Emily”. Emily has been raised her entire life by a controlling, overprotective father who never let her pursue any suitors, running them off every time they came around to call on Miss Emily (151).  Her father has denied her of any normal interactions with the opposite sex, and as Freud theorizes, repression, especially sexual repression, can lead to mental illness or neurosis. Her actions after her father passes away, which the townspeople are hesitant to call “crazy” (151), are actually symptoms of her neurosis. Neurosis, according to Freud, is caused by two factors: 1) sexual repression and 2) childhood trauma (especially sexual abuse). This leads to the interpretation that her father had not only repressed her sexual growth, but sexually abused her. The townspeople claim “she would have to cling to that which had robbed her” (151), they were right; she clung to the man who robbed her of ever having a normal, functional sexual relationship for the rest of her life.

            According to Freud, the human psyche is composed of the id, ego, and super-ego. Emily’s id can be held responsible for the dramatic and “crazy” actions she takes throughout the story. The id controls the basic primal instincts, and Emily’s id wants nothing more than to possess a man, something her father would not let her do her entire life. By suppressing this natural need for human sexual interaction, her father caused Emily’s need to become out of control with desire. This is why when her father finally dies, she wants to keep his body in the house, to have ultimate control over him. So when the townspeople take away her father’s corpse, her id’s desire still needs to be fulfilled, hence the seduction and pre-meditated murder of Homer Baron. She chose a man that was a challenge, someone who would never settle down, because it was more thrilling. Her lifelong sexual repression resulted in the formation of a fetish in which domination and possession would be the only way to satisfy her id. And, as she learned with her father, the only way to obtain this total dominance is to kill the object of her affection and possess their dead body, i.e. necrophilia.

            The Electra Complex is a theory that does not correlate with the story, however. The Electra Complex is the competition between mother and daughter for the affections of the father, ultimately resulting in penis envy and the transference of erogenous zones. There is no mother ever mentioned in this story, nor the desire of pregnancy from Emily. The only part of the Electra Complex that applies to this story is the redirection of desire for the father onto a non-related partner in a heterosexual relationship. But this only happens when the father dies, which is supposed to happen when the young girl’s mother helps shape her ego and super ego (sexual identity). What I think Emily is experiencing is the Oedipus Complex, where the child has extreme sexual desires to possess the parent of the opposite sex. If the Oedipus complex is never resolved, i.e. penis envy (the woman gives birth to a child to replace the lost penis), this can lead to the development of neurosis, as we see in Emily as she ages. Emily only had a strange sexual relationship with her father, never evolving out of the Oedipus Complex.

Supplemental Quote Analysis:

“On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily’s father” (149)

                This portrait of Emily’s father is still on display in her living room many years after he has been dead, showing that Emily has still not let go of her obsession and Oedipus Complex even though she has Homer Baron’s body locked up in her secret room. This shows that Homer was just a replacement for the body of Emily’s father.

“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, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door.” (151)

            The painting described is a representation of the repression Emily’s father was holding against her. Emily, dressed in white, a color representing purity and innocence, stands in the background, overruled by her father who stands with his legs spread apart and a horsewhip in his hand, exuding his dominance over the young girl. His back being towards her means that he either does not know or does not care about the damage he is doing to his daughter by being so overbearing and overprotective.

“She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days.” (151)

“‘I want the best [poison] you have. I don’t care what kind.’” (153)

“Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head… We saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.” (156)

             These three quotes help the reader confirm the state of Miss Emily’s mental health. She denied her father’s death though she knew it to be true, she pre-meditated the death of Homer Baron, and she slept next to a decaying corpse until she died. These are all obvious signs of a person who is seriously disturbed mentally.