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A Rose For Emily By William Faulkner

Decent Essays

At most, women have always been second to man, and the concept of a woman ever having her own mind or free will was obsolete, but only with time women slowly gain their independent mind frames. In both stories, “A Rose for Emily” and “Story of an Hour,” there are two women who long for freedom in different ways. The men in their lives keep them from making any kind of decisions that were based on themselves. In these stories, the symbolism, conflict, and the foreshadowing have the readers interested in the ironic endings.
In “A Rose for Emily,” Miss Emily’s father was the beginning of her mental entrapments. The author states, “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such” (Faulkner 302).The author’s idea has the readers assuming that the father wanted to keep her to himself. “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a straddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip the two of them framed by the back-flung front door” (Faulkner 302). It was as if he would be the only man for her. After she turned thirty and was still single, the towns’ people were not too thrilled about the idea. In those days women were wed at a very young age. When her father died, she could not let go of him because she had him in her home for three days assuming he was alive. A long time after that, she still kept herself bound to the house. The same idea comes to mind with the “Story of an Hour”, Mrs. Mallard finds out

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