How does the townpeople's sense of culture affect the story's outcome?"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

With the interpretation of Emily as symbolic of the Old
South, the townspeople's sense of culture dehumanizes and perverts Emily.  For, to them
Emily is a "sort of hereditary obligation," and "a monument."  This attitude of the
townspeople leads them to excuse Emily's behavior at times, such as when Homer Barron
returns to town within three days and the neighbor sees the Negro man admit him at the
kitchen entrance. But, when Homer does not appear in the streets for almost six
months, the narrator comments,

readability="6">

Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as
if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times had been
too virulent and too furious to
die.

When Emily refuses to
fasten metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox, they let Emily
pass

from
generation to generation--dear, inescapabble, impervious, tranquil, and
perverse.

And, this is how
Emily Grierson died.  Having had her life repressed by her father, her growth as a
person perverted by tradition and cultural expectations of her remaining in the past,
Emily has become "impervious, tranquil and perverse"; she becomes the lover of death,
the past, that most impervious of states.