High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Emily Grierson, generally referred to as Miss Emily, is the lonely leading lady in the short story A Rose for Emily, written by William Faulkner. Miss Emily is “a small, fat woman” who, before dying, lived within a modernizing town full of people who saw her as a very cold, very distant woman that lived in her past. The entire short story, this protagonist is referred to by her fellow townspeople only as “a tradition, a duty, and a care,” and is portrayed as a very mean, stubborn old woman; however, as her story unfolds, she is portrayed more as a sympathetic character whose whole story could never be fully understood.