who is emily in the story a rose for emily
A Rose for Emily The story opens with a brief first-person account of the funeral of Emily Grierson, an elderly Southern woman whose funeral is the obligation of their small town. It then proceeds in a non-linear fashion to the narrator's recollections of Emily's archaic and increasingly strange behavior throughout the years. Emily is a member of a family of the antebellum Southern aristocracy. After the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times. She and her father, the last two of the clan, continue to live as if in the past; Emilyâ€™s father refuses for her to marry. Her father dies when Emily is about the age of 30, and takes her by surprise. She refused to give up his corpse, and the townspeople wrote it off as her grieving process.