Birthmark and Rose for Emily Essay

Georgiana is beautiful and doesn't even think about the birthmark until her husband points to it and then goes into a deep state of misery because of that. In order to relief her husband of the misery, she agrees to drink the potion which leads to her death.

Emily on the other hand is not so obliging. Though she has suffered enough at the hands of her father who wanted to keep all men away from her so she could be a real lady, but Emily doesn't let her life end like Georgiana. She doesn't meet her death because of a man but instead takes his life and then meets her own death in due course of time. Emily was a victim of a stern father while Georgiana was a victim of a perfectionist. In both cases, these women suffer but while Emily takes revenge, Georgiana dies a silent death. Emily's victimization began at the hands of her father. She was a young woman, she wanted to be like other girls or so it appeared. Hoffman (1951) notes, "In the picture of Emily and her father together, framed by the door, she frail and apparently hungering to participate in the life of her time... Even after her father's death, Emily is not monstrous, but rather looked like a girl "with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows -- sort of tragic and serene." (p. 261-262)

Thus Emily could have been saved had Homer been a kind person. In much the same way, Georgiana wouldn't have met an untimely death had Alymer been different. Thus we notice that similarities exist in the way these women were treated. Both suffer not because of their own flaws or failures but because of the men in their lives. It is however heartening to see that Emily was not completely a victim.She was courageous enough to exact revenge and while it may be considered psychotic behavior, it only shows that sometimes enough is really enough.

The opening line of the story tells something important about Emily.

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house..." (119)

She was considered a fallen monument because for decades she had stood like a monument against powerful currents of change. But the fact that she couldn't accept change or move ahead with it is attributed largely to her stern father who wouldn't let her enjoy life like other girls did which led to sexual repression and an unfortunately lonely life. Alymer and Georgiana also represent the same dynamics as Emily and her father. The way Emily had always tried to please her father, Georgiana had tried to make her husband a little bit too happy. Her desire to get him out of misery cost her massively in the form of her life.

The feminist theme in both stories connects them in a way that ordinary study of the characters might not have. The victimization of women at the hands of men is the common thread that ties both stories and helps us in studying the characters and their psyche.

References

The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 20 vols. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1962-85. "The Birth-mark." 36-56. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1968.

Frederick J. Hoffman (editor) Olga W. Vickery (editor) William Faulkner: Two Decades of Criticism. Michigan State College Press. East Lansing, MI. 1951.

William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily," Collected Stories (New York: Vintage, 1977), p. 128

Judith Fetterley. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Indiana.....