Analysis of Emily’s Subject Construction in A Rose for Emily from Jacques Lacan’s Psychoanalytic Theory

William Faulkner, a Nobel Prize-winning author, is a highly influential figure in Southern American literature. A Rose for Emily is his Gothic short story published in 1930. This novel tells the story of Emily, a descendant of the aristocracy of the Old South, who grows up with a monstrous upbringing and is eventually driven by desire to poison her lover, Homer. The novel demonstrates the process of Emily’s complete entrapment in the real world, as well as the process of Emily’s subject construction. In the traditional society of the Old South, it is a common phenomenon that women suppressed by patriarchy live with a lack of subjectivity, but in the end, in the funeral of the main character Emily, she is regarded as a monument by southerners rather than a decentralized individual. This study aims to unravel the process of Emily’s subject construction through Lacan’s three orders theory. By exposing the oppression of patriarchy and traditional values of the Old South, it interprets Emily’s ultimate alienated self.