What does the following quote mean, and how does it connect to the ending of "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner?

"We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will."

This statement is made by the narrator in "A Rose for Emily" in connection to Emily's reaction to her father's death. In the preceding passage, the narrator explains that when Emily's father died and the town's women went to call on her, she wasn't wearing mourning and didn't look sad and denied that he was dead. The narrator goes on to say that three days later Emily finally broke down in grief and that the town representatives rushed off with the body to bury it. The narrator follows this explanation with the quote in question:

We did not say she was crazy then.  We believed she had to do that.  We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.

What the narrator is suggesting is that because Emily's father had been so sever with her and so unyielding to her desires and hopes, it was normal for her to cling to him since people react to oppressors with inexplicable devotion. The townspeople all knew what kind of overbearing and hostile father he had been and could understand Emily's extreme reaction to her father's death. As a result, they did not think she was crazy. The wording of this observation, "We did not say she was crazy then," implies another, later, occasion on which they did think she was crazy. This foreshadows--sets up the anticipation and mood of--the shocking ending that reveals that Emily must now be called crazy because the dead Homer, found in Emily's bedroom after hre own death, was a skeleton laying in her bed.

What is the significance of the quote about Emily's father driving away young men in "A Rose For Emily"?

"We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her"

The short story "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner tells of Emily Grierson, a spinster living in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, in the late-ninteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The story does not follow the chronological order of her life. It begins at her funeral and then skips backwards in flashback vignettes. It is told by an unnamed narrator who represents the common viewpoint of the people in the town. When he refers to "we" in the story, he alludes to the general town populace.

The sentence in question is at the end of part II. It follows an explanation of why she never got married and why the townspeople felt sorry for her. The narrator explains that the Grierson family "held themselves too high for what they really were." In other words, they thought that they were elite, upper-class people when they were really just like everyone else. As a result, "none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily." Her father was overprotective of her, so that she was 30 years old and still unmarried when he died.

Emily inherited the house, but her father left her no money. That's why Colonel Sartoris had remitted her taxes. Because she was alone and poor, the townspeople pitied her.

"We remembered all the young men her father had driven away" refers to the paragraph above explaining that, in the eyes of her father, no suitors were good enough for Emily. That's why she was left alone after her father died. "Nothing left" refers to her financial situation and the fact that she was left without any money. "That which had robbed her" was the impression her family had that they were upper class. It robbed her because it deprived her of young men who might have made possible husbands because none of them were regarded as good enough. Because she had no husband and no money, she clung to the idea that she was a member of the upper class, and that's what motivated her behavior.

What is the significance of the statement "We remembered all the young men her father had driven away" in A Rose for Emily?

It's ironic indeed that the townsfolk should mourn for the many suitors Emily's tyrannical father sent packing over the years. She certainly never did so. In fact, she never even mourned her late father's passing, remaining in denial over his death. So the townsfolk feel compelled to mourn for what might have been in Emily's life, the opportunities that she missed spending her whole under her father's thumb. The absence of the young men from Emily's life is almost like a bereavement in itself, deserving of sadness and pity.

Emily's inability to function properly as a human being and her lack of a developed emotional life means that the people of the town have to take upon themselves the duty of remembrance. Not only do they grieve over the unceremonious dismissal of Emily's suitors but they also had to honor the memory of her father due to Emily's being in denial over his death. And they are called upon yet again to perform the same function, this time in relation to Emily herself. The fact that they have to do this is significant as it tells us that there was no one left to mourn her. It speaks volumes about Emily—what kind of person she was, and what kind of sad, empty life she led.

What is the significance of the statement "We remembered all the young men her father had driven away" in A Rose for Emily?

The phrase

"We remembered all the young men her father had driven away"

appears in William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" in section II, when the unnamed third person narrator tells the story about the time when Emily Grierson's father dies and Emily goes under a fierce stage of denial about her father being dead.

During this time, the narrator explains how Emily's behavior is so odd that she even has the ability to change her entire demeanor, since she is under the complete understanding that nothing has really happened.

The day after his death [...] She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.

This is when the narrator explains how, when this happened, they felt sorry for her and even felt the need to understand her situation. Here is a woman who has always been over-protected by her father, kept by him, and even controlled by him only to see him go away, leaving her at her own mercy.

When the townsmen see her breaking down, they realize that perhaps Emily had stayed too long under her father's wing. How could she not cry? She was never able to make real connections with the outside world. Her father's own Southern pride and penchant for over-protection resulted in a plethora of missed opportunities for Emily to get married and have a normal life as a regular lady. She lost her chance to be taken care of by someone during her father's life, and now she is on her own after her father's death. The reason why she held on to her father is because he is all that she had left.

This is why the townsfolk narrator says:

We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.