The Uncanny in a Rose for Emily

Her father and the society influenced the miserable conditions she encountered. The uncanny by Sigmund Freud is an article related to new characters or emotions developing in an existing character. It was published in 1919 to help describe the uncanny condition. My thesis statement is how the character of Emily, represents The Uncanny, the term that Freud refers to in his text, in the context of her story. Given by the information provided by the narrator in the story Emily is viewed as the uncanny by the town’s people. After meeting a young construction worker, Emily thinks of getting married to him and having one of her dreams come true. However, Homer is not the type of man Emily thinks he is.

They break up even after Emily buys a wedding costume for him. The feeling that she cannot settle down with Homer makes her kill him so that he will live with her for the rest of her life. Sigmund Freud describes homely as something that exists within ourselves, familiar to one hand but extremely strange to the other hand. Emily could not use work as an excuse to go away from home. They had money hence she was not required to work. Her father also denied her the chance to have fiancées or get married. Every time she would try to do anything either the father or the society would turn against her. The society was too discriminative and made wrong judgements against the decisions people made.

She gave the visitors a cold welcome and showed them out in the middle of a conversation. The second incident of the uncanny in Emily’s life is the time she lost her father. She finds it hard to believe that her father is no longer alive. She remains in the house with his corpse for three days. The town’s people come later and convince her to let go of her father’s corpse. They thought that Emily’s inability to interact with them was a result of their social status in the society. Some women offered to come and visit her but no one responded to their calls. Clinging onto her father’s corpse and locking herself up for some months after her father’s death was enough prove for the town’s people to see Emily as the uncanny.

The society around Emily figured women as weak figures that could not stand for themselves and fight for their rights (Nathaniel n. p). Growing up Emily never had the chance to interact with other people due to her father’s command. However, the townspeople believed that the Grierson family had secluded themselves due to their social status. The society judged Emily wrongly without knowing her side of the story. Her behavior after her father’s death also contributed to the wrong judgments by the society. Emily did not do anything to prove the town’s people wrong. The town’s people attended her burial out of curiosity since they wanted to know how Emily survived without interacting with them. Works cited Nathaniel, Hawthorne.