What was the status of Emily's family when her father was still alive?

The family had once been prominent members of the town. This is exemplified by the fact that Colonel Sartoris, a member of the Old Establishment, knew her father and, in order to remit her taxes, said that her father had once let money to the town By remitting Emily's taxes, they were paying her father back. No one really believed the story, but the fact that she got away with it implies people's respect for the family. According to the narrator, people in the town believed that "the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were." In other words, the family must have had money at one time, but that money was all spent during her father's lifetime. Despite this, "None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily." and she never married. The only image that was left suggests that her father was rather overbearing and clung to old Southern traditions. The narrator writes,"We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily, a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip..." In fact, when her father died, people said that all she had left in the world was the house and they believed she would become "humanized" by learning the value of money. Ironically, Emily seemed to ignore both the townspeople and her lack of money, preferring her own fantasy world to the real one.