By Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren (excerpt from an interpretation of "A Rose for Emily," in Understanding Fiction, edited by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1959.)
Miss Emily is obviously a pathological case. The narrator indicates plainly enough that people felt that she was crazy. All of this explanation prepares us for what Miss Emily does in order to hold her lover—the dead lover is in one sense still alive for her—the realms of reality and appearance merge. But having said this, we have got no nearer to justifying the story: for, if Faulkner is merely interested in relating a case history of abnormal psychology, the story lacks meaning and justification as a story. . . . If the story is to be justified, there must be what may be called a moral significance, a meaning in moral terms—not merely psychological terms.
Incidentally, it is very easy to misread the story as merely a horrible case history, presented in order to titillate the reader. Faulkner has been frequently judged to be doing nothing more than this in his work.
The lapse of the distinction between illusion and reality, between life and death, is important, therefore, in helping to account for Miss Emily's motivation, but merely to note this lapse is not fully to account for the theme of the story.