Wild Nights with Emily offers an affirming portrayal of Emily Dickinson's queer identity and romantic relationships, particularly with Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. The film depicts these connections with dignity and complexity, actively challenging historical erasure and misrepresentation. It celebrates the worth of queer lives and love, framing societal obstacles as external injustices.

The film strongly endorses progressive family values by celebrating a lifelong, committed, same-sex partnership as a valid and fulfilling family unit, while critiquing traditional gender roles and societal pressures for women to conform to heterosexual marriage.

The film satirizes and critiques the repressive, hypocritical social norms of 19th-century New England, which were deeply intertwined with prevailing Christian morality. Characters embodying these narrow-minded societal values, such as Mabel Loomis Todd and the patriarchal literary establishment, are depicted negatively for their attempts to control Emily Dickinson's narrative and suppress her true identity and relationships. The film's narrative stance is critical of these oppressive structures.