Emily Dickinson

1830 - 1886

Early Life

• She was born to religious, well-to-do family and had a normal childhood in Amherst, Massachusetts.

• Everyone expected her to marry and raise a family like most women of her class.

• This all suddenly changed when she was 24.

She became a poet and recluse.

• “Dickinson used precise language and unique poetic forms to simultaneously reveal and conceal her private thoughts and feelings” (Elements of Literature 345).

• What happened to turn a young girl into an unrecognized poet who never left her house?

What would cause a young woman of 24 suddenly to

isolate herself

within her yard and house

and ignore the world outside?

Speculations about Why

• Went to DC with her father, a congressman, because she had fallen in love with a married lawyer, who soon died of TB.

• There fell in love with another married man, a minister. He moved to San Francisco in 1862. About this time she wrote, “I sing as the boy does by the burying ground, because I am afraid.”

Return to Amherst

• Within a few years, she had retreated from all social life in Amherst. Always wearing white, like the bride she would never be, she remained in her parents’ house and restricted herself to household work and writing poetry, which she would sometimes send to people as gifts for valentines or birthdays, along with a pie or cookies.

· Only a few of her poems were published in her lifetime. She sent four of them to a critic, Mr. Higginson, asking for his help. When he sent suggestions for changing her poems, she replied in a letter, “Thank you for the surgery; it was not so painful as I supposed. I bring you others, as you ask” (Higginson).

• After her death, friends and relatives found bundles of her poems, which they edited and “corrected” and had published in installments.

• In 1955, Thomas H. Johnson finally published a collection of her poems that had not been “corrected.” These are the versions we read today.

The era in which she lived:

• TRANSCENDENTALIST MOVEMENT-American transcendentalism was an important movement in philosophy and literature that flourished during the early to middle years of the nineteenth century (about 1836-1860). 

Here are two versions of one stanza of one of her poems. The first is unedited; the second has been “corrected.”

We passed the School, where Children stroveAt recess—in the Ring—We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—We passed the Setting Sun—

We passed the school where children playedTheir lessons scarcely done;We passed the fields of gazing grain,We passed the setting sun.

See the differences? How does the poem change?

Why was she a poet?

· Many people have commented that there are no great woman artists. Would Emily Dickinson have become such a renowned poet if she had married and had children?

· What evidence is there in her poetry that she had a rich emotional life in spite of the fact that she rarely left home?

• Dickinson's works have had considerable influence on modern poetry. Her frequent use of dashes, sporadic capitalization of nouns, off-rhymes, broken meter unconventional metaphors have contributed her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of 19th-century American literature. Later feminist critics have challenged the popular conception of the poet as a reclusive, eccentric figure, and underlined her intellectual and artistic sophistication.

What sort of poet was she?• Dickinson is known for using poetry as private

observation.• Her poems are carefully crafted in rhyme and meter. • Her poems are written in Common Meter or Hymn

Meter – Definition: A closed poetic quatrain, rhyming A B A B, in

which iambic tetrameter alternate with iambic trimeter. Common meter is distinguished from ballad meter by its rhyme scheme: the rhyme scheme of ballad meter is X A X A.

• This meter derives from English hymnology and uses predominantly iambic or trochaic

• her hymns differed in these ways: – greater use of enjambment – greater metrical freedom – use of more images with no scriptural source

Other conventions used:• Dashes: Why? To indicate interruption or abrupt shift in

thought., emphasis., substitute for the colon: introducing a list, series, or final appositive.

• To keep a note of uncertainty or undecidability. Dashes are fluid and indicate incompletion, a way of being in uncertainty . Dashes mark without cutting off meaning.

• It is a falling away, an indefinite rather than a definite end to a line.

• Some critics have argued that the upward or downward movement of the dashes signifies elocutionary marks to guide readers on how the passage should be read or phrased.

• Why did she capitalize so many words? German, a language Dickinson knew, typically capitalizes nouns.

• To retain and give additional emphasis.

• What kinds of poems did she write? According to William Shullenberger and Sharon Cameron, Emily Dickinson has characteristic ways of opening poems: – Definitions: S LV SC form.

• "Pain has an element of blank. • "This was a Poet--It is that • "Longing is like the Seed"

– Riddles, some with lack of specific referents for pronouns. • "I like to see it lap the miles" • "A narrow fellow in the grass"

– Declarations: "I'm wife--I've finished that" – Landscape descriptions. – Tales, parables, allegories – Requests – Complaints – Confessions – Prayers

• How should we read Dickinson's poetry?

See handout for some additional guidelines

Heart! We will forget him!You and I—tonight!You may forget the warmth he gave—I will forget the light!

When you have done, pray tell meThat I many straight begin!Haste! Lest while you’re laggingI remember him!

This shows a conflict between her mind and her heart. What controls you, your mind or your heart?

Is she referring to unrequited love (love that is not returned) or love that is impossible because of the circumstances?

The Soul selects her own Society—Then—shuts the Door—To her divine Majority*—Present no more—

Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—At her low Gate—Unmoved—an Emperor be kneelingUpon her Mat—

(continued on next slide)

*Majority can mean reaching 21 or the greater part of something.

I’ve known her—from an ample nation—Choose One—Then—close the Valves of her attention—Like Stone—

Do we make choices with our minds (thoughts) or our souls (feelings)?

Does this describe her in any way?

How would you punctuate this poem?

What examples does this poem contain of slant rhyme?

The Major Theme is: Dickinson’s famous line “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” reveals her method of survival as well as the essence of her own poetry.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind—

What is she saying? Is she right?

How could this lesson apply to her own life as well as to her poetry?

Another Poet Writes about Dickinson:

We think of her hidden in a white dress among the folded linens and sachets of well-kept cupboards, or just out of sight sending jellies and notes with no address to all the wondering Amherst neighbors. Eccentric as New England weatherthe stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle,blew two half-imagined lovers off.Yet legend won’t explain the sheer sanityof vision, the serious mischiefof language, the economy of pain.

--Linda Pastan (Elements of Literature 371)

Sources of Images

Photograph of Emily Dickinson [On-line image] available http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/images/authors/emily.jpg.

Painting of Young Emily [On-line image] available http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~emilypg/1830.html.