Intro
Emily Dickinson is an American poet, who is probably the most recognizable name in American poetry. Not much is known of her motivation regarding her poems as only 12 of the 1800 she had written were published during her life time and she left little in the way of explaining her thoughts regarding what she had written. What is known is that she did not think the majority of her poems were worth public consumption and had told her sister Lavinia (Vinnie) to dispose of them after her death. This was probably due to her poems being heavily altered before they were published in order to fit in with what was considered the apropos in poetry at the time. Some of the reasons that her poems were considered unconventional was due to the lack of titles, the usage of short lines, unconventional punctuation and capitalization, as well as the usage of slant lines. On top of this the topic of many of her poems dealt with things like death, sex and immortality which were not considered appropriate topics for a woman.
While it was probably known to her friends and family that she was writing poetry. One can imagine that they were unaware of the number of poems that Emily had written during her lifetime until after her death. It was during the time that Vinnie was cleaning out Emily’s room after her death that she came upon a bundle of poems with the instructions that they be destroyed. After reading some of them Vinnie sent them to be published instead. This paper will look at the life of Emily Dickinson along with the themes and style of her poetry.
Body-bio career
Emily Dickinson was born on the 10th of December 1830 at her family’s home in Amherst Massachusetts to a prominent, but middle class family. Her grandfather Samuel Dickinson had been the sole founder of Amherst College. (Wolff). Her father was a member of Congress as State Legislator and she and her siblings were educated in the best schools with Emily attending Amherst Academy along with Lavinia. She would attend the Academy for seven years. During this period Emily had taken a couple of terms off throughout her education due to illness, but she had always returned to her studies (Wolff).
After graduating from the Academy Emily would go on to Mount Holyoke’s Female Seminary later to be renamed Mount Holyoke College. She was only able to attend the school for ten months before she was pulled out by her father. The reason for which was never disclosed by Emily or her family. Nevertheless, there have been rumors that she left due to illness, she had defied the rules that were put in place at the school, she disliked the teachers and other students, her father had just wanted her home, or that she herself was homesick. (Habegger). Whatever the reason she left the school to return to her family home in Amherst, where she would spend the rest of her life. During the first few years of her return Emily was fairly active in the community as she would attend many events in the town (Wolff)
When Emily was around twenty-three she began to distance herself from society. She started refusing to join social gatherings and behaving in a slightly childish manner. She would only wear white and when she would come into a room her behavior was bizarre as she would say or do things that were off putting before exiting up to her room. Nevertheless, her self- exclusion from society was not something that occurred quickly. It was a process that took the next seven to ten years to complete. In her thirties she was barely even seen by her own family as she would choose to converse with others through a slightly ajar door. This was even how she insisted that her doctor examine her when she was sick as she refused to allow him in her room or to permit him to see her. Still Emily had not cut herself completely from society as she wrote letters of correspondence to her various acquaintances and friends. She also would send baked treats out to the children in the neighborhood through a series of pulley systems.
Outside of being a recluse Emily herself was a woman of intelligence and learning which can be ascertained from both her level of education (which was rare for women of the time) and her poems which deal with many serious topics using a style that includes numerous dashes, and random capitalized words in the middle of sentences. This shows that she was not concerned with convention. It was said by her aunt Lavinia that Emily as a child enjoyed playing the piano and was a "perfectly well & contented—She is a very good child & but little trouble.” (Wolff). Her contented demeanor seems to have changed during her teenage years when she became troubled by the idea of death. One of the reasons for this was because her friend had died from Typhus. Emily would later write of the event "it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even look at her face” (Habegger). As a result of the death Emily sank into depression and would be sent by her parents to Boston to live with family in order to recover. (Wolff). She would eventually come out of her melancholy and return to school.
When Emily was around fifteen years of age there was a religious revival in Amherst that Emily had taken part in. While Emily would write of her experience during the revival in the following way "I never enjoyed such perfect peace and happiness as the short time in which I felt I had found my savior” (Habegger). Her foray into religion would not last as she never declared a formal religion and quit attending church after a few years. However, it is evident in many of her poems that religion still played a major role in her life.
Soon death would return to her life again as she had become friends with Benjamin Newton a young attorney who worked with her family (Farr). He would die within a few years of them meeting of tuberculosis. He was also the person who introduced her to a number of poets such as William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom Emily had never read due to the fact that they were rather controversial at the time and were not considered appropriate reading material for women. In fact, Emily’s brother Austin was the one who snuck various works by the poets to Emily because their father would have disapproved of her reading them. She would also be influenced by the writings of William Shakespeare and Charlotte Bronte (Wolff).
While Emily had been slowly extricating herself from society since she was 23 it was not until around 1867 that she had completely removed herself from society. This occurred around the time that the family’s servant had quit leaving Emily in charge of the household chores until a new servant was hired about a year later. (Farr). She quit leaving the house and would only speak to others through a door. When she was seen which was extremely rare she was always wearing a white dress. People in the town began to spread rumors of her eccentricities and her family especially her brother took great pains to protect her privacy as well as to protect her from the gossip that was circulating about her at the time.
While there were rumors of Emily’s eccentricity, this was not the only thing that she was known for during her lifetime. During her life time Emily was involved in gardening according to Judith Farr (Farr). Emily had studied Botany during her time in school and had written an herbarium that consisted of sixty-six pages and contained over four hundred pressed flowers which she had classified and labeled according to the Linnaean System (Farr). During her life time the garden she tended was widely admired by the townspeople. (Farr). Dickinson would die at the age of 55 from tuberculosis.
Writing style themes
There were a number of themes that ran through much of Emily’s poetry. These included death, sexuality, immortality, religion, nature and the self (Trustees of Amherst College). This section will examine her usage of the various themes in her poetry as well as her writing style. It is important to remember that Emily was known for her wit and her use of lyrical type poetry when engaging in her poems (Trustees of Amherst College). As is typical in lyrical poetry the poet uses “I” to identify the speaker, this does not mean that any of the ideas that are spoken of in the poem reflect the ideas or thoughts of Dickinson herself. The reader is addressed as “you” (Trustees of Amherst College). Almost all of Dickinson’s poems were written without titles, and are identified by their first lines and the numbers that have been assigned to them. The reason for this is unknown (Trustees of Amherst College).
One of the things that Dickinson poetry is known for is its ability to create “abstract concepts with concrete images” (Trustees of Amherst College). This is because she used concrete images of things that were a part of everyday life to act as metaphors for different concepts. Examples of this would be the loaded gun, which represents a women’s sexual power in “My Life I Stood a Loaded Gun” or the fly that represented the dying’s last moments of life in “A Fly Buzzed as I Died”.
Dickinson used common meter in her poetry. This is alternating lines of six and eight syllables (Trustees of Amherst College). Which also alternate between stressed and unstressed syllables and in known as an iamb (Trustees of Amherst College). Dickinson did not stick to one type of meter or form throughout her life. Instead, she experimented with several that would include ballad, which is dependent on “beats per line” (Trustees of Amherst College)
and short meter which is 6686. However, it is important to note that Dickinson was not strict about adhering to the rules of form or meter in regards to the number of syllables per line that she used (Trustees of Amherst College). This also applied to her use of rhyme as she used what is referred to as “slant rhyme” which is essentially no rhyme in most of her poetry (Trustees of Amherst College).
One of the things that is quite noticeable about Dickinson’s poetry is her punctuation especially her use of dashes. She used dashes almost every place that there would normally be a comma or a period, she also had a habit of capitalizing words in the middle of sentences. The reason for this is not clear. Nonetheless, doing so helps to connect certain aspects or thoughts in the poem. In respect to her use of dashes this was a rather popular way of writing in the nineteenth century as many letters and authors used it in their writings. Emily however seems to be the only poet to use it predominately in her works (Trustees of Amherst College).
The themes used in Emily’s poetry were (1) death which is a common theme in a number of her poems. This was probably due to the number of deaths that had occurred during her life and the fact that they seemed to have affected her greatly. In “A Fly Buzzed as I Died” she tells of a person’s last moments and in “Because I Could not Stop for Death” she represents death as a physical presence that one cannot avoid (2) the sexuality of women and the power that it gave them was something that was explored in a number of her poems. She often used mundane objects to speak of the power of women despite the fact that society tried to subjugate them. This is seen in the poem “My Life I Stood a Loaded Gun” where the female represented as the gun seems to only have the power that her owner gives her. However, in reality she is the one with power as she chooses to give him power over her knowing that she is the one with the true power. (3) immortality there is a sense in many of her poems such as “Because, I Could Not Stop for Death” that Dickinson saw death as nothing more than a transition between the living and immortality. (4) religion, Emily looked at the nature of man’s relationship with god in many of her poems. She seemed to see god as being indifferent to the sufferings of humankind and much of her poetry that contained religious themes seems to oppose submitting to the will of god. In fact, in some of her poetry she seems to outright criticize him. This was in opposition to many other poets who saw themselves as being ruled by god and were known to speak of submitting to the will of god in their poetry (5) nature was something that Emily used in many of her poems not only to describe other themes but also to speak of nature itself. In most of her poems about nature, nature is depicted as being harmonious. These are just some of the themes in Dickinson’s poetry.
Conclusion
In conclusion Dickinson despite not gaining fame or recognition for her poetry until many years after her death and her wishing for her poems to be destroyed. Is one of the biggest inspirations to modern poets. This is not only because of the topics that she wrote about, which still resonate with readers today but also because of the style and meters that she used in writing her poetry.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily, and R W. Franklin. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999. Print.
Farr, Judith. Emily Dickinson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1996. Print.
Habegger, Alfred. My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Random House, 2001. Print.
Trustees of Amherst College. "Emily Dickinson." Emily Dickinson Museum. N.p., 2009. Web. 13 July 2016.
Wolff, Cynthia G. Emily Dickinson. New York: Knopf, 1986. Print.
