Transcript Emily Dickinson Radical Currents of in her Life, Poetry, and Letters Emily Dickinson and Religion • 1851: Amherst was in the midst of.

Emily Dickinson
Radical Currents of in her Life,
Poetry, and Letters
Emily Dickinson and Religion
• 1851: Amherst was in the midst of a religious revival
• Several members of the Dickinson family, including her
sister-in-law Susan Gilbert, were strongly affected and
counted themselves as saved
• E. Dickinson wrote to her friend Jane Humphrey in 1850:
• “How lonely this world is growing, something so desolate
creeps over the spirit and we don't know it's name, and it
won't go away, either Heaven is seeming greater, or
Earth a great deal more small, or God is more "Our
Father," and we feel our need increased. Christ is calling
everyone here, all my companions have answered, even
my darling Vinnie believes she loves, and trusts him, and
I am standing alone in rebellion, and growing very
careless. Abby, Mary, Jane, and farthest of all my Vinnie
have been seeking, and they all believe they have found;
I can't tell you what they have found, but they think it is
something precious. I wonder if it is?
• The nineteenth-century Christians of Calvinist
persuasion continued to maintain the absolute power of
God's election.
• His omnipotence could not be compromised by an
individual's effort; however, the individual's
unquestioning search for a true faith was an unalterable
part of the salvific equation.
• While God would not simply choose those who chose
themselves, he also would only make his choice from
those present and accounted for-- thus, the importance
of church attendance as well as the centrality of religious
self-examination.
• Revivals guaranteed that both would be inescapable.
• As Dickinson wrote in a poem dated to
1875, "Escape is such a thankful Word."
• her references to "escape" occur primarily
in reference to the soul.
• In her scheme of redemption, salvation
depended upon freedom.
• Dickinson refused to be confined by the
elements expected of her
• Poetry, in the 1850s, became more important to
her than religion
• she described but did not specify an "aim" to her
life
• Announced its novelty: "I have dared to do
strange things--bold things"),
• asserted her independence: "and have asked no
advice from any"
• couched it in the language of temptation: "I have
heeded beautiful tempters"
Dickinson and Marriage
• Close friendship and exchange of writings between
Dickinson and Gilbert
• Dickinson sent her 270 of her poems; some of them
written as letters to Gilbert
• Still, the nature of the exchange and relationship
apparently did not satisfy Dickinson; some serious break
occurred
• In a letter dated to 1854 Dickinson begins bluntly, "Sue-you can go or stay--There is but one alternative--We
differ often lately, and this must be the last."
• Question: nature of their love for each other?
– Language of Dickinson’s correspondence with her is passionate,
but so are her letters to Humphrey
– Dickinson's own ambivalence toward was clearly
grounded in her perception of what the role of "wife"
required.
– In her observation of married women, her mother not
excluded, she saw the failing health, the unmet
demands, the absenting of self that was part of the
husband-wife relationship
– She commented to Gilbert before her marriage to
Dickinson’s brother Austin: "How dull our lives must
seem to the bride, and the plighted maiden, whose
days are fed with gold, and who gathers pearls every
evening; but to the wife, Susie, sometimes the wife
forgotten, our lives perhaps seem dearer than all
others in the world; you have seen flowers at
morning, satisfied with the dew, and those same
sweet flowers at noon with their heads bowed in
anguish before the mighty sun."
• After Gilbert’s marriage, Dickinson continued
their correspondence but turned her attention
more toward other, literary friends: (1858): "My
friends are my 'estate.' Forgive me then the
avarice to hoard them."
• Her decision to restrict her life to the home, often
sensationalized, was most likely practical, in
order to preserve time for her work
• As she turned her attention to writing, she
gradually eased out of the countless rounds of
social calls
• See: poem # 225 (p. 2563), “I’m “wife”—I’ve
finished that—”
Dickinson and Publication
• #788: “Publication--is the Auction” (p.
2585)