Why does Emily seem to get away with so much in this story?"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner

Emily Grierson is not so much a woman as she is an
institution in William Faulkner's Southern town.  In the opening paragraph the narrators
comment:

When
Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral:  the men through a sort of
respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the
inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant...had seen in at least ten
years....

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty,
and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the
town....

That she is
perceived yet as a "hereditary obligation" is evinced by Emily's not paying taxes and by
her having a deputation that waited upon her to ask about her taxes some years later. 
And, because of her name and former social position,  no one says anything about the
foul and persistent order emanating from her house:

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"Dammit, sir,"  Judge Stevens said,  "will you
accue a lady to her face of smelling
bad?"

Even today, in small
Southern towns, there is a certain protocol that is observed, especially toward ladies
and gentlemen both of traditional names. For in people's minds, these old names
represent the Old South, an era of a certain gentility.  Symbolically for Faulkner, Miss
Emily represents the Old South in conflict with the North, represented by Homer Barron. 
Emily is in a state of decay, trying desperately to cling to a former age; she has a
pride that is "too furious to die." 

At her funeral, very
old men in their brushed Confederate uniforms talk of Miss Emily as though they had
known her, believing that they had danced with her and even courted her.  Their memories
confuse time, for Emily represents for them the Old South, the old institution and way
of life.