Is Emily a villain, a victim, or both in "A Rose for Emily"?

Your Name
Subject and Section
Professor’s Name
September 28, 2020
Analysis – A Rose for Emily
Understanding the thematic relationship between different characters in the story is essential for any reader. It allows him to gain a deeper insight into the narrative through an appreciation of the character’s personality based on his backstory. Accordingly, I would like to focus on ‘Emily’ in Faulkner’s novel entitled A Rose for Emily. Although a quick glance of Emily’s character would give the readers an idea about her sins, a closer look at her upbringing would also show that her character was due to her previous experiences. All in all, I believe that despite being a villain or victimizer, Emily’s deeds were brought about by her years of becoming the victim.
Emily’s Story
The main plot of the novel A Rose for Emily revolves around the narrator’s recollection of Emily’s past. It was shown that as a young woman, Emily was prevented by her own father to marry. However, as her father died and left her, Emily started to act mysteriously as she was left all alone by herself. Interestingly, rather than looking at her actions suspiciously, the townspeople attributed her acts as a ‘coping mechanism’ as she grieves for her own father. However, as the story concludes, the readers would find out that Emily killed her romantic partner Homer Barron and had slept with his corpse for a long time as she tried to preserve the memories of her past.
The Victim and the Victimizer
In line with Emily’s story, I believe that Emily is both a victim and a victimizer. This is because, despite her own evil deeds, it was because of the surrounding circumstances that made her who she was.
On the one hand, Emily is a victimizer for the strong possibility that she took advantage of Barron and murdered him. Before Barron’s act of “moving away from the town” (as believed by the townspeople), he and Emily seemed to have a friendly and romantic relationship with one another. Barron seemed to care for Emily in such a way that no other member of their society had. This evidenced that there were trust and love (whether friendly or romantic) between these two characters. However, as would be seen further in the story, Emily took advantage o...