Emily Dickinson Life And Her Works Essay

Emily Dickinson: Life And Her Works Essay, Research Paper

Emily Dickinson: Life and Her Works

Emily Dickinson made a large influence on poetry, she is known as one of

America’s most famous poets. With close to two thousand different poems and one

thousand of her letters to her friends that survived her death Emily Dickinson

showed that she was a truly dedicated writer.

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on December 10,1830

to a prominent family, her father Edward Dickinson was both a lawyer and the

Treasurer of Amherst College. Emily’s mother was Emily Norcross Dickinson.

Emily had one older brother, William Austin and a little sister, Lavinia. She

was educated at the Amerherst Academy, the institute that her grandfather helped

found. She also spent a year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley,

but had left because she did not like the religious environment. For a woman of

this time, this much education was very rare.1

Emily Dickinson was a very mysterious person as she got older she became

more and more reclusive too the point that by her thirties, she would not leave

her house and would withdraw from visitors. Emily was known to give fruit and

treats to children by lowering them out her window in a basket with a rope to

avoid actually seeing them face to face. She developed a reputation as a myth,

because she was almost never seen and when people did catch a glimpse of her she

was always wearing white. Emily Dickinson never got married but is thought to

have had a relationship with Reverend Charles Wadsworth who she met in the

spring of 1854 in Philadelphia. He was a famous preacher and was married. Many

scholars believe that he was the subject of her love poems. Emily probably only

saw Wadsworth an additional three times after their first encounter which was

only done by him going to Amherst, where she lived. In 1861 Wadsworth moved to

San Francisco. It is after this time that Emily really started to produce

hundreds of poems. Emily Dickinson submitted very few poems to publishers.

She felt that her poetry was not good enough to be read by everyone. Eight of

her poems were published during her life time either by her friends who

submitted them to a publisher without her consent or Emily Anonymously. (Emily

Dickinson 1996,1)

In 1862 she told a friend “If fame belonged to me I could not escape

her…My Barefoot-Rank is better.”

It is also thought that Emily Dickinson had a passionate relationship

with Susan Gilbert. Emily wrote three times more poems to Susan then to any one

else. They probably met at Amherst. They became very close friends, they

shared many similar interests and desires. Emily became very affectionate

toward Susan and trusted her completely. Their relationship went sour when

Susan became engaged to Austin Dickinson, Emily’s brother. For two years their

friendship ended completely. When Austin and Susan moved next door their

relationship started over and Emily began to write her love letters to Susan

again. Feminist scholars who have examined Emily Dickinson’s letters and poems

to Susan from a lesbian viewpoint think that her letters and poems to Susan move

beyond a romantic friendship to a blatantly passionate relationship. No one

knows how Susan responded to Emily’s love letters and poems. When Emily died

all of her letters from Susan were destroyed. So no one will ever know whether

they did or did not have a love affair. I think that the mysteries of Emily

Dickinson’s life is what makes her poetry so interesting because it can be

analyzed in so many different ways. Emily’s poems and letters to Susan could

suggest an eroticism that could be intentional, subconscious, or merely

coincidental. Emily may have had perfectly innocent intentions, but to modern

audiences translated to be sexually suggestive. (Poetry of Emily Dickinson

1996,2)

Other poems that Emily wrote were mostly about the exploration of the

concept of religious faith. Her father was a very religious man who practiced

a Protestant sect that closely followed the tenets of New England Puritanism,

but she was never able to practice his faith with dedication. She was drawn to

transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was one of the leaders of this

movement in the belief in the essential unity of creation, the goodness of

humanity, and the supremacy of insight over logic and reason. This philosophy

also taught a renunciation of authority, whether it be religious, scientific, or

political. These new ideals led her to think a lot more about life and it’s

ultimate destiny. The concepts of good and evil, life and death and where you

go when you die turned into an obsession with Emily which led her to spent a lot

of time worrying about it and writing about it as her life slowly went by

instead of enjoying life and living it to its fullest.(Sewell

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