OK- You will get more responses with added details but I will give you the gist of it.
Ms. Emily was the daughter of a very conservative father who did not let her get along with many "gentleman callers". The story, however, takes place in so-called "modern days" when all of this is done and over with.
Yet, because of the fact that Emily's father was a town elder and knew everyone, even the town's provost and sherrif would not charge her taxes, or at least that is what her father told her.
Then, the father died, and she was left as a vestige of better Southern days. The town cotinued to somewhat modernize while she remained stuck in her old ways, including the permissive treatment of her tax money and obligations.
The story is surrounded by mystery as the "townsfolk" discloses more and more facts about Emily's life, to include the fact that she was linked to a yankee who was (of course, as part of Faulkner's agenda) a closet homosexual.
Here we have the serpentine effect of seeing how Emily has been left alone by the most important men in her life: Her father and her lover.
But, there is a catch- we do not know that Emily knows that Homer (the yankee, notice the name) is either gay, or leaving.
But he does---and she goes astray.
This is when she is recorded as going to the pharmacy to buy rat poison.
And, all that we have left is the fact that she went and got it, and, in the end of the story--she had been laying in bed with a skeleton which belonged exactly to Homer. The bed held a dead corpse, and (next to it) was the dented pillow of a person with white hair. Emily herself.
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