LITR 4232: American Renaissance

Sample Student Research Project, spring 2006

Cana Hauerland

11 April 2006

The Poetry and Life of Dickinson

             In order to completely endure the poetry of Dickinson first her life must be explored to the fullest.  Everything about Dickinson’s life can be considered extraordinary due to her eccentric lifestyle.  Dickinson was a poet with many qualities; she was a poet of nature, religion, death, and love.  Throughout her life it is evident in her poetry that Dickinson wrestles with conflicting ideas such as religion, responsibility and death, in which she never actually figures them out from what we know.  Her personality, education, family, and poetry are all amazing.  Though Dickinson stayed home most of her life, she managed to touch the world with her writings.  She seemed to have a good insight of the world even if she never actually lived in it.

Dickinson lived from 1830 to 1886 and grew up in Amherst Massachusetts that was predominantly a college town in the western part of the state.  She witnessed a big change in her town because of the existence of the college.  Quiet, important, and cultural Amherst College was founded by dismays of Harvard who wanted the college to be orthodox oriented.  They believed that one needed to have an encounter with Christ in order to be saved and wanted everyone to have a good knowledge of salvation.  Though Dickinson’s “father served as the treasurer of Amherst College (a position [her brother] Austin eventually took up as well), and her grandfather was one of the college founders”, Dickinson still seemed to question her salvation (Meyers et al. 804).

 Fortunately, people of Dickinson’s time, herself included, were inward looking and literate, keeping diaries with strong records so we know a lot about the world of Dickinson.  Women during the 19^th century were expected to live a retrained life.  This life was mostly expected of Christian white women.  Women education was influenced upon until marriage occurred.  Upper-class women like Dickinson usually received the benefit of a good education.  Art was considered a good idea for women, “poetry, painting, and music, have, as we know, a chastening and ennobling influence upon the mind and heart”(“Female” 1).  However art was not considered a profession for women, “but we believe that females waste hours – in mastering the mere rudiments of these arts and sciences and that, too, without hope of becoming profiting in them”(“Female” 1).  Domestic qualities were perceived to be most needed by women, “the piano, pencil or the brush should never take the place of the rolling pen”(“Female” 2).  Dickinson chose not too participate in her expected future of “domestic science”.  It was believed that women were engraved with special values, “much has been said upon Female Education.  Much has been done to cultivate their minds, their understandings, and their hearts and their tempers”(“Female” 2).  Though Dickinson was not molded like these women, she did attend school for one year away from home.

Dickinson attended Mount Holyoke College at the age of 17 during 1848.  Mount Holyoke was a college for religious women.  A woman named Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke in 1837.  Lyon based her school on Christian orthodoxy, which is probably why Dickinson was sent to this school.  Dickinson seemed to love Mount Holyoke in which she expresses in a letter to her friend named Abiah Root six weeks after she arrived, “I was very homesick for a few days & it seemed to me I could not live here.  But I am now contented & quite happy, if I can be happy when absent from my dear home & friends”(Johnson 18).  Dickinson goes on to inform Abiah of her whole day at Mount Holyoke which consisted of prestigious and intense studies of art and religion.  Though Dickinson claimed to Abiah, “things seem much more like home than I anticipated & the teachers are all very kind & affectionate to us”, her teachers enforced orthodoxy on the girls tremendously (Johnson 18).  Lyon and her staff would take the young girls and place them into categories under “saved” or “not saved”.  The girls would have to declare their presence and were labeled as “hopeful”, “no hope”, or “saved”.  Students were ranked “on the basis of their spiritual condition”(Lauter et al. 3043).  This distension was disturbing to the girls.  Faith centered around Dickinson’s school along with the ideas of pre-destination and no control of it.  Before a new member of the faith community could be discovered they had to demonstrate or testify that they had been saved.  Dickinson never experienced this salvation and she constantly wondered why which it can be seen throughout her poetry.

In her poem “Faith” is a fine invention” Dickinson seems to be saying that faith is a great invention only when it is convenient by man.  “Faith” is a fine invention/When Gentlemen can see -  /But, Microscopes are prudent/In an Emergency”(1-4).  Dickinson is someone who spent her whole life thinking about words like “faith”.  She knows where the words came from, not from God but from man.  Dickinson sees the intervention of will and decision in society.  In her line,  “when Gentlemen can see”, the word “see” is a loaded word in regards of its attachment to the supernatural of religion.  The use of “Gentlemen” is where Dickinson perceives men to lead everything. She uses “Microscope” to create insight on the fine lines society drew between faith and instrumentation.  She creates an opposition theme between science and religion however she has probably not read Darwin’s Origin of the Species yet.  However, when science came along there was an element of contradicting the scripture and Dickinson is probably aware of this.  The use of “Emergency” in this poem could relate to the cultural movement of science during this time.  This skeptical poem has only four lines but Dickinson put them together with intention as she did with all her poems. 

Dickinson seems to be explaining her perception of what God is doing with us in “I know that He exists”.  Though Dickinson was confused about his existence she obviously practiced her own form of Christianity.  “I know that He exists.  /Somewhere – in Silence – “(1-2).  Dickinson could believe that we are too course and too sinful to look upon God.  The line, “tis is an instants play” is like a parent playing with a child and with God always being the father, she wonders if this is what He is doing with us, playing a game of peek-a-boo (5).  The poem has a piercing effectiveness and suggests a revelation to be the blade of a weapon.  The possibility of being saved and the existence of God was a constant worry for Dickinson.  She seems to cycle around in her takes on religion.

Dickinson seems to think that if God keeps stringing her along and she dies, then what will happen and will she not be saved?  Though Dickinson is confused about the answers to both death and religion she is honest about them in her poems.  An obsession of religion leads to an obsession of death in which Dickinson questions death in a large amount of her poetry.  Like religion, she has all kinds of takes on death and simply does not know the answer about it so is never sure.  Dickinson wrote many stylish poems about death, which was common for writers of her time.  Death is something that is worried about because it is something of the unknown and is unavoidable.  Death ties to religion because depending on your salvation it determines where you go and this is why Dickinson spent so much time writing about it.  Religion and Death provide endless pieces to write because people will always be pre-occupied with these subjects. 

Dickinson describes death in “Because I could not stop for Death” as another journey in life.  Her portrayal of death in this poem is being positive and passive.  Death is brought to a personal level.  Dickinson gives death the name “He”, “He kindly stopped for me”(2).  She continues to give death characteristics of a man.  “Dickinson envisions death as person she knew and trusted” (Johnson 75).  Johnson believes Dickinson pictures death in this poem as “somebody she once knew and liked”(Johnson 75).  Dickinson seems to paint a picture of a couple riding along and enjoying each other’s company, “we drove slowly – He knew no haste”(5).  She does not seem at all afraid or sad but completely content with what is happening.  “Because I could not stop for Death” was brilliantly written by Dickinson to show that though she was curious about death, she is unafraid of death. 

 “A certain Slant of light” is a good example of Dickinson providing a well-formed insight on her poetry and views though one could never actually state exactly what she believed to be true.  By omitting certain things from this poem, Dickinson makes it quicker and deeper.  “Slant” is capitalized for a reason.  She is navigating around various elements,  “There’s a certain Slant of light, /Winter Afternoons -  /That oppresses, like the Heft/Of Cathedral Tunes”(1-4).  Dickinson is possibly inside her secluded home watching the light come in through the landscape.  The winter light is slanting, breaking through the clouds.  The use of the word “like” signals a simile.  A cathedral is usually a large structure, which could represent a sense of immensity.  She seems to be in an oppressed and mysterious space that is maybe a little too much and not joyful, “Heavenly Hurt, it gives us - /We can find no scar, /But internal difference, /Where the Meanings, are –“(5-8).  Dickinson also offers her religious intuition in this poem and the idea of nature being a disturbing and negating experience.  She notes a world of nature and a world of church.  She has capitalized every noun but one.  Her commas and dashes are the real signifier of this poem.  The “Scar” seems to represent her wound in comparison but we “can find no scar” because she is “Heavenly Hurt” and not physically hurt.  The “scar” is not easily dispensed with deep wound in the spirit soul, the depths of the mind, and the way we make sense of things.  Dickinson is telling readers so many unexpected things in this poem that energy is a contradiction of expectation. 

Dickinson had a very unique style of writing.  Her poetry was simply meditations in her head that became wonderful works in the future.  The uses of random capitalization and slashes throughout Dickinson’s poetry are a real signifier.  Dickinson wrote with such a delicacy that virtually all of her poems can be sang along to the same rhythm or the same song such as The Yellow Rose of Texas by Bob Wills.  In an anthology of modern poetry, Dickinson is a pioneer in fracturing form.  During her life Dickinson had almost no publications.  A man named T.W. Higginson can be considered the one to shut Dickinson’s hopes down of becoming a writer.  Although he acknowledged her gift, he was confused by her astonishing uniqueness and urged her to write more traditionally. 

Language was probably one of the most important things in Dickinson’s life. Dickinson was a person who watched and listened but learned what she wanted.  She was inventor of her own perceptions.  She was very eccentric in her skepticisms and had a highly charged angelical.  Dickinson took to shrewdness and to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s theory nature theory.  The theory seemed to be that there was a presence of God through nature without knowing how.  With this beautiful yet bone-chilling theory Dickinson was too smart not to question it.  Throughout her life she questions how trustworthy the universe is and where you find God along with the Bible and nature.  Dickinson was very interested in religious matters and scientific nature and these were the play of her inner-consciousness.  She inquires God and death, most of which can be seen in a coherence of her poems.  Formalist criticism worked well with Dickinson and her stoical personality. 

Though Dickinson was never a bride, she was interested in certain men at times.  She never marries but she cared and adored for certain people a great deal.  “No one has ever been able to identify definitively the object of Dickinson’s love – if, in fact, - there was any single person”(Meyer et al. 808).  However Dickinson is sad to have addressed some letters as “Dear Master” who is perceived to be several friends, one the “Reverend Charles Wadsworth”(Meyer et al. 808).  Dickinson met Wadsworth during one of her trips to Washington, D.C. and little is known about her relationship with him except that she had very strong feelings for him.  In 1862 Wadsworth moved to San Fransisco and during this time Dickinson’s poetry became intense which may or may not be because of Reverend Wadsworth.  Dickinson’s poem, “Wild Nights” was written in 1862, which was close to the time she met Wadsworth.  In the first stanza, “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!  /Were I with thee/Wild Nights should be/Our luxury”(1-4).  “Wild Nights” suggests a fantasy lover of some sort.  Dickinson seems to know exactly who and what she is writing about. She expresses her desire for passion in this poem. 

It is not clear when Dickinson began to isolate herself however analogies can be made towards why she did.  Dickinson seemed complete and full of life when she attended Mount Holyoke.  She also seemed content when she made the “five or six trips away from Amherst, traveling in her twenty-fifth year with her father to Philadelphia and Washington, and spending some time in Boston where she developed an acute eye problem”(Lauter et al. 3043).  When Dickinson was twenty-five the year was 1855.  It can be assumed that she was homebound tremendously after this trip due to her acute eye disorder and the fact that her poetry picked up during the 1860s.  However signs of her exclusiveness from society began before the 1860s. 

In 1850 Dickinson writes another letter to Abiah and seems very distraught.  She discusses the illness of her mother, “I sit by the side of mother, provide for her little wants-and try to cheer, and encourage her.  I ought to be glad, and grateful that I can do anything now, but I do feel so very lonely, and so anxious to have her cured (Johnson 36).   It is apparent in many of her lines that Dickinson did not enjoy caring for her mother and the household.  It is almost like Dickinson felt deprived from a normal life on account of her mother’s illness.  She describes how once she had to send a man away,

“I heard a well known rap, and a friend I love so dearly came and asked me to ride in the woods, the sweet-still woods, and I wanted to exceedingly – I told him I could not go, and he said he was disappointed – he wanted me very much – then the tears came into my eyes.”(Johnson 36) 

Dickinson seems to be getting more and more hysterical about herself and her religion,

“I am one of the lingering bad ones, and so do I slink away, and pause, and ponder, and ponder, and pause, and do work without knowing why-not surely for this brief world and more sure it is not for Heaven – and I ask what this message means that they ask for so very eagerly, you know of this depth, and fullness, will you try to tell me about it”(Johnson 36).

Dickinson continues being upset about herself then tells Abiah, “Don’t be afraid of my imperfections, they never did anyone harm, and they make me feel so cool, and so very much more comfortable”(Johnson 36).  In this letter to Abiah, Dickinson seems to stressing over many issues as a result from staying at home too much.  The trip she took with her father was possibly a needed vacation for her.  On this trip she perhaps fell in love with Reverend Wadsworth whom she could never be with and also acquired the eye disorder, two very annoying things in her life.  She may have began to believe that venturing out in the world would give her no satisfaction and this may be why she began to recluse herself from society.

Dickinson was comfortable enough with her life even though she was constricted and limited.  Eventually she attracted the reputation or aspect of being mad but her withdrawnness, exclusiveness or isolationism from society is intriguing.  Sometimes Dickinson would not speak at all.  Her sister Levinia once said after her death that, “Dickinson was the one of the family who had thinking to do”(Lauter et al. 3043).  Dickinson indeed had thinking to do as well as writing.  In her later years, the reclusive Dickinson made it a point to wear only white.  She was described as, “too hermitic to meet with dress makers, so Dickinson had her similarly framed sister serve as the model for all of her dresses.  Only one surviving example of Dickinson’s wardrobe is in the Amherst History Museum”(ED Museum).  Dickinson’s brother Austin remembers, “her compositions were unlike anything ever heard- and always produced a sensation- both with the scholars and Teachers- her imagination sparkled- and she gave it free rein”(Lauter 3042).   Dickinson was a genius who chose to be alone with her works.

When Dickinson wrote she revealed her core to her family, friends and now readers.  She was brutally honest in all of her writings.  Dickinson would not be forced to become the ordinary.  She would not be molded by society, which is possibly why she chose to evade it.  Many questions still arise about Dickinson and her mystery will remain forever.  Dickinson did live a full life in which she lived through her poetry.  When one studies Dickinson’s life and poetry she no longer Dickinson but she becomes the breathtaking and interesting Emily. 

Works Cited

Lauter, Paul., et al.  The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume B.     Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 2006.

Meyer, Michael., et al. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature.  Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.  2006

Dickinson, Emily.  Emily Dickinson Selected Letters Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. Cambridge:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.  1958.

Dickinson, Emily.  “Faith” is a fine invention”.  1860.

Dickinson, Emily.  “I know that He exists”.  1862.

Dickinson, Emily.  “Because I could not stop for Death - “.  1863.

Dickinson, Emily.  “There’s a certain Slant of light”.  1861.  

“Female Education”.  The Mother’s Magazine.  Massachusetts, July 1848.