This she did to perhaps show mourning for the loss of her father, but this is where she also begins her entrance into her lost world of the past.
Faulkner describes Emily as an old woman fat woman; he mentions a gold watch she wears around her neck. The watch cannot be seen, but its constant ticking can be heard: "they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain" (ARE 532, NIL). We can see that Emily, like her watch, which is unseen for most of her life after her fathers death and at the same time is unwilling to accept the passing of time, the changing generations, and the changes in the world surrounding her. .
By the time the representatives of the new, progressive Board of Alderman visited her regarding her delinquent taxes, she had retreated further into her world of the past. She declared "I have no taxes in Jefferson" (ARE 533, NIL). She bases her belief on what Colonel Sartoris had told her years before, when he was mayor: that she did not have to pay taxes in Jefferson. When the members of the Board of Alderman questioned her about the notice from the sheriff, indicating that she did in fact have to pay her taxes, she says "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff .I have no taxes in Jefferson" (ARE 533, NIL). Emily refuses to accept that the sheriff has any right to change what the Colonel had told her years earlier. She says "See Colonel Sartoris" (ARE 533, NIL). Just as Emily refuses to acknowledge the death of her father, she refuses to acknowledge that the sheriff had any right to order her to pay taxes and believes that Colonel Sartoris can clear everything up, thus not acknowledging that he died some ten years earlier. Showing her prominence Emily vanquishes them from her home "just as she vanquished their fathers thirty year before" (ARE 533, NIL).
Emily holds on to an era gone by when her family had prominence and power. She uses this authority over the townspeople and we see that when she visits the druggist to purchase arsenic.