You may be wondering how can a creepy old lady murderer have any dignity? But it's not so much that she gained or achieved dignity by being a good, moral person, but rather that she just received dignity by being Miss Emily Grierson. Faulkner also gives dignity to this story of a locked-in city. She was a noble, wealthy white woman who had not married. It made her less dignified, but when people found out she killed her lover to stay with him, it gave Miss Emily a frightening dignity again. The fact that she didn't kill herself was also another worthy thing. As she already lacked dignity as a single white woman of the Civil War era, after his death she slowly began to regain her dignity. It hardly mattered, because the only person it would have affected was Miss Emily herself. Yang discusses Emily's social position: "...the community's strong opposition and interference, closely examines the connection between her high social position and her tragic end, and points out that Emily, instead of experiencing her own life, serves the functions of a symbol of a system and a culture, and acts as the spiritual pillar supporting the disintegrating Old South. In accomplishing this great mission, she pays an enormous price, for as an idol worshiped by the community, she must be strictly limited by the standards of the Old South and has