By Victor Strandberg (excerpt from Reference Guide to Short Fiction, Detroit and London: St. James Press, 1999.)
At first reading the Gothic horror of the tale will likely rule out a heartlifting experience. But in the end this story can be seen as the quintessence of Faulkner's art; failure to grasp the heroic nature of Emily Grierson will probably portend an inability to understand Faulkner's oeuvre at large. What connects Faulkner's Nobel sentiments with his necrophiliac murderess is the existentialist concept that every life contains some possibility of genuine free choice, despite the psychological determinism that severely limits the area of free will in many cases. It is only within that area of freedom, however small, that the dignity and meaning of anyone's life can be predicated.
With his customary economy of style Faulkner indicates Emily's huge burden of psychological determinism in a visual image—"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." By driving away her suitors so as to keep her housekeeping services for himself, Emily's father has ruined her chances for a normal life and thereby grossly deformed her personality. But crazed as she is, after her father dies Emily attains a tiny area of genuine free choice—her chance to find and hold Homer Barron as lover and husband—and it is solely within this area that Emily can be judged. Faulkner's overall design leads our judgment to work greatly in Emily's favor, highlighting the virtues of courage, honor, and endurance in her life story.