MASARYK UNIVERSITY Brno

Faculty of Education

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Symbolism of White in the

Poetry of Emily Dickinson

Bachelor thesis

Brno 2008

Supervisor: Written by:

Mgr. Pavla Buchtová Markéta Ševčíková

I declare that I worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and
secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

I agree that this bachelor thesis will be deposited in the Library of the Faculty of
Education at the Masaryk University and will be made available for study purposes.

Markéta Ševčíková

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A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s

Mgr. Pavla Buchtová, thank you for everything.

Sincerely.

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 CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 5

EMILY DICKINSON
Life 6
The Poet 8
Dickinson and colors 10
Dickinson and white 13

COLORS 15
Colors through history 16
Symbols 18
Symbolism of colors 19
White 20

WHITE IN DICKINSON´S IMAGES OF HEAVEN 22

Dickinson and faith 22
Poems 24

WHITE IN IMAGES CONCERNED WITH HUMAN WORLD 30

Dickinson and the world of people 30
Poems 32

WHITE IN IMAGES FROM NATURE 35

Dickinson and nature 35
Poems 37

CONCLUSION 39
BIBLIOGRAPHY 41
APPENDIX 43

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INTRODUCTION

My meeting with Emily Dickinson was the one of a great importance to me. In
her verse, I have found moods and emotions that resemble my own and that often
evoke some of my most private memories. When I read her lines about nature, I could
sense exactly the same enchantment that I felt as a child when marveling at countryside.
When she speaks of joy and sorrow, I can feel their taste strong in my mouth and the
flames of her excitement approach my heart easily. When she speaks with love, I feel like
I was sleeping in my father´ s arms and when she claims her truths I believe her since her
words are as straight and bare as my mother’s words for me.
I soon found out that Dickinson was the same confirmed dreamer as I have
always been. Many of her poems remind me of the journeys that my imagination has
taken too. Her beliefs and wishes were as naïve and idealistic as the ones I often bear in
mind; and even though they were not much probable to come real, she still could
preserve them and valued them more than the wealth of the material society. The things
that attract me to Emily Dickinson are her love of the rough, her ability to see beyond a
surface, to see both ends that things always have, to consider so many possibilities, to
offer and not to compel, to taste life with all that it brings.
I believe that all writers employ colors in their works as colors help to create
more concrete and visible images of things, people, and scenes. However, when I read
the poems of Emily Dickinson, I noticed that she did not use colors only for the purpose
of a physical description. It appeared to me that there must be some other, symbolic,
meanings hidden behind the colors that are embedded in her speech so frequently. As I
became curious, I decided to pick the color white, which Dickinson had the most
personal relationship to, and to find out more about its meanings and employment in her
verse.
I constructed the body of my thesis with a purpose to proceed from Emily
Dickinson as a person to her treatment of white color. At first, I will introduce some facts
about her life and I will continue with the characteristic of her poetic style. Then I will
give readers a chance to come closer to colors and their meanings (with the emphasis on
white, of course). Finally, I will present analyses of some of Dickinson’s poems that
employ the color. If you want to get from Emily Dickinson to white as I did, please follow.

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EMILY DICKINSON

Life

A solitary, forever girl – as she claimed herself to be – (Chase 144), Emily Elizabeth
Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 into a sleepy village in Massachusetts. At that
time, about 2600 mostly strongly religious and orderly citizens inhabited Amherst. The
Dickinsons had their stable position within the upper class members. Emily’s father
Edward was a lawyer, “too busy with his briefs to notice what we [the family members]
do” (to Higginson, April 26, 1862, Letters 254). Although he is portrayed as a “'stern' man
“, “whose word would have been law” (Barker 78) and despite the occasional clashes
that he and his daughter had (Chase 89), Emily seems to have always loved and admired
him. However, her feelings about her mother Emily, who did “not care for thought” (to
Higginson, April 26, 1862, Letters 254), appear to be of slightly different sort. In her later
years, the poet even stated that she found “no mother” in her (Dickinson qtd. in Chase
145). Apparently, they did not understand each other. The other two family members
that lived in Dickinson’s household were Emily’s older brother Austin and her younger
sister Lavinia. Austin always was Emily’s beloved companion and kindred spirit (Chase
88); they “had formed … a league of mutual support in their rebellion from the more
conventional and colorless part of life in the Dickinson home” (Chase 87). “Without
Austin, Emily says in 1852, there are no jokes at home and no poetry” (Chase 89). Austin’s
wife Susan was Emily’s best girlfriend; the girls knew each other from their early
childhood. Vinnie was not so bright as her siblings were. Though her customs and
behavior represented a source of “constant amusement” for Emily (Chase 87), they
loved each other too. As long as I speak about the family circle, I must not forget about
Emily’s “shaggy ally” (to Higginson, 1863, Letters 260), that is, her dog.
Throughout her whole life, Dickinson “genuinely felt the desire for instruction”
(Chase 67). It is no wonder then, that there were three influential outsiders whom she
perceived as her leaders or “tutors: Benjamin Franklin Newton, the Reverend Charles
Wadsworth, and Colonel Higginson” (Chase 68). Newton was a family friend and he was
the first to praise and encourage Dickinson’s writing; it is claimed that he opened “the
possibilities of the imaginative life” for her (Chase 73). Wadsworth “made the most

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lasting impression upon Emily Dickinson” (Chase 74). Their mutual relationship is
described as “a meeting of minds and a sharing of profound sympathy beyond time and
space” although they did not see each other more than four times (Chase 74). It is stated
that he only “confirmed a way of life” that Dickinson had “already taken” (Chase 105).
The decision to contact Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary critic, was Dickinson’s
own; she felt a need for a literary guidance. Though it appears that she revered both him
and his advice, he did not much succeed in his attempts to emend her poetic style. When
he tried to “lead her in the direction of rules and traditions” and to draw her attention to
her “irregularities…with her usual naïve adroitness she turn[ed his] point” (Higginson
qtd. in Letters 258).
With the exception of a one-year schooling at Mt. Holyoke and few short trips
that she took, Emily Dickinson spent all her life in the house of her family in Amherst. In
1840´s, she attended Amherst Academy, where “she studied English, Classics, French,
Latin, History, Botany, Geology, Mental Philosophy, and German. She practiced at the
piano, but never achieved real competence” (Chase 29, 30). She continued her education
at Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary; however, she thought herself to be rather uneducated
(Chase 27). Her peers recorded her as a jolly, witty, satirical, impious and rebellious
“humorist” (Chase 30, 34, 84, 105). Dickinson’s adolescence was typical of “rather heavy
romanticism” (Chase 34); she frequently fell in love in her ardent imagination (Chase 34).
She never got married. Emily always was very playful (Chase 84). She was very fond of
long walks in the hills and she loved flowers and taking care of them. On the contrary,
Emily always disliked house chores; yet she was still a “dutiful daughter” (Barker 81).
Reading was her great love. Her favorite book was the Book of Revelation and she
admired Shakespeare, Eliot, Keats, the Brownings, Ruskin, Sir Thomas Browne, the
Brontës, and Emerson (Chase 27,113).
Emily Dickinson was open to life, “to the moment” (Barker 89). She loved
“illusion, memory, and imagination” (qtd. in Thackeray 52) but, at the same time, she
always was a realist (Chase 99). Though she was “advanced in her thinking” (Chase 94),
she was very conservative in temperament (Chase 104) and rather “backward in her
manners” (Chase 94). Emily felt her “difference from the others” (qtd. in Chase 73), but
at the same time she seemed to enjoy friends and company. Nevertheless, her attitude
to social life began to turn in her twenties and no one knows why:

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 As early as her twenty-second year Emily Dickinson was going out
of her way to avoid meeting people. A year later she wrote that
she was going to church early to avoid having “to go in after all
the people had got there.” By the time she was twenty-eight it
was a fixed “custom” for her to run whenever the doorbell rang.
By the age of thirty she was retreating to her room when old
friends called and listening to their voices from upstairs. The next
year she inaugurated the habit of dressing exclusively in white
that she was to maintain for the rest of her life. … Emily … in the
eyes of the town … became strange and incomprehensible
(Cody 19).

The Poet

And when, far afterward, a sudden light on orchards, or a new

fashion in the wind troubled my attention, I felt a palsy, here, the
verses just relieve
(to Higginson, June 8, 1862, Letters 255).

Although it is claimed “she wrote well even at the age of eleven” (Chase 28), the
poetry of Emily Dickinson was discovered for the world only after her death. When her
poems were found in her room, “they looked impossible – a jumble of words on odds
and ends of paper, some of it crumpled and torn” (Thackeray 3). The state of the found
collection resulted in “numerous errors” and corrections that has been made “in the
editions of the poems” (Thackeray 3).
Dickinson was a private poet; she wrote only for herself and occasionally enclosed
her poems to the letters that she was sending to her closest friends and family members.
Dickinson was a passionate poet; she was captivated with the idea of “putting down on
paper whatever sudden impression or thought had absorbed her attention” (Thackeray

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4). She created almost 1800 poems but only a few of them were put in print during her
lifetime. In spite of her obstinate refusal to publish, Higginson “clearly recognized her as
a wholly new and original poetic genius” (Thackeray 1-2).
The poems of Dickinson are, even at the first sight, distinct. She broke the
boundaries of conventions in many categories according to which poetry is assessed.
Actually, the concept of Dickinson’s verse that her literary mentor complained about and
labeled “'spasmodic' style” is marked as an “innovative brilliance” in present days
(Reynolds 182, White 91). Such a luck that Dickinson was so stubborn and ignored
Higginson´s calls for corrections.
Despite all her independence, one can still observe that Dickinson’s poetry is not
detached from the world and, hence, utterly uninfluenced. For example, Wadsworth
and New England Calvinism on the whole furnished her with “vocabulary of jewelery,
involving gems, carbon, and diamond, and …vocabulary of royalty, involving thrones,
robes, and particularly, diadems” (Chase 79). Many her figures of speech resemble the
Bible and the plays of Shakespeare. “Dickinson’s verse also invokes and asserts … a
Romantic sublimity” (Wolosky 134); she was bewitched with “the unusual and the
faraway” (Lindsberg 75).
Dickinson’s discourse is “fairly complex and various” (Chase 121). Wolosky even
states that Dickinson succeeded to create a kind of “a textual architecture” that
integrates “a variety of levels of language and experience” (139). Her verse is remarkably
quick with an altering “point of view, role, situation, genre, language, and style” (qtd. in
White 93). Dickinson managed to be “by turns, cory, fierce, domestic, romantic,
protofeminist, antifeminist, prudish, … erotic”, and, I would say, sometimes even more
(Reynolds 183). Her poems can appear as “scenarios in verse” that are constructed
around themes of “love, death, nature, and immortality” (White 91). Chase even claims,
that Dickinson’s poetry has “but one major theme, one symbolic act, one incandescent
centre of meaning” that is “the achievement of status [such as immortality, queenliness]
through crucial experiences” (such as death or marriage) (Chase 121).
As it is apparent (not only) from the following passage of one of her letters,
Dickinson was fascinated with the power of words:

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 We used to think, Joseph, when I was an unsifted girl and you so
scholarly that words were weak and cheap. Now I don´t know of
anything so mighty
(Dickinson qtd. in Lindsberg 17,18).

She perceived “each word” as a “dynamo of implication and associations” (Thackeray

10); each word signified a piece of immortality, a bit of “terrifying, mysterious power
which approached omnipotence”, to her (Thackeray 12, 14). Dickinson loved to employ
her imagination in a constant play with words. This sport frequently ended in the
creation of “a metaphor, a paradox,[and] a riddle” with an extreme density of meaning
(qtd. in Lindsberg 16). This Dickinson’s attitude to words could result in nothing else than
in the foundation of her “private language” (Barker 83) in which she employed
vocabulary of all the dialects she had ever met. With her own language, Dickinson
created a kind of her private world, where she delighted in “potential” (Chase 106) and
where she could do speak precisely as she wanted. For example, she could easily
translate “a proper name into an abstract word”, or vice versa, she could treat abstract
words as the concrete ones (Chase 106). Nonetheless, in this her “secret communiqué”
(Mitchell 198), she still aimed to be “concise, specific and economic” above all
(Thackeray 26), still having tried to verge on but not to directly state “the obvious”
(Lindsberg 17).

Dickinson and colors

I tell you I have been dreaming, dreaming a golden dream…

(Dickinson qtd. in Chase 96)

Be it a gift or damnation, Emily Dickinson was endowed with the “extreme

intensity” of sensation (Thackeray 9). It is no wonder then that she was rapt with “vision
and visual metaphors” (Kohler). As it appears, the phenomenon of color occupied both
Dickinson’s mind and writings to a considerable degree. The use of colors is cited to be
one of the characteristic features of her poetic vocabulary (Chase 109). She was aware of

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the interrelation that exists between a language and colors and she knew that color
would always evoke some kind of interpretation (Kohler).
Originally, Dickinson’s poems were colorful not only within their textual
boundaries but also in their physical form. When the collection of Dickinson’s poetry was
discovered, some of the poems were written on “pink scraps, blue and yellow scraps” of
paper (qtd. in Thackeray 3). Let us rather come back to her textual employment of
colors. The color that appears in Dickinson’s poems most frequently (by its name) is
purple (54 poems), followed by red (35 poems), blue (30 poems), white (28 poems), and
yellow (27 poems). Dickinson could name approximately 50 colors (indigo, cochineal,
vermilion, scarlet, crimson, etc.), many of which are not commonly used. She employed
different names of substances - such as minerals (e.g. amethyst, beryl), or materials (e.g.
ivory, alabaster) - to evoke the visual effect that color brings too. It cannot be said that
the use of colors in her poetry would be typical for some period of her life as they
stagger throughout her whole work. She used colors for many different purposes and
filled them with various meanings; many of the meanings are not possible to set with
certainty. I will provide you with some excerpts from Dickinson’s letters, to illustrate her
sense of colors better.
It seems that Dickinson became enrapted by the magic of colors very easily. Just
the look of an ordinary Saturday could overwhelm her mind with colors, which
apparently marked her mood as well:

To-day is very beautiful – just as bright, just as blue, just as green

and as white and as crimson as the cherry-trees full in bloom, and
the half-opening peach-blossoms, and the grass just waving, and
sky and hill and cloud can make it, if they try
(to Austin Dickinson, May, 1854, Letters 103).

Even when she described such a common thing as grapes, she did not only label it
purple. Dickinson was so taken with its hue that she did not stop to think about the color
and she must have made a remark about its hue: “I fancy the robes of kings are not a tint
more royal” (to Austin Dickinson, October 2, 1851, Letters 77). Colors started not only her
thinking but also her imagination:

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 Though it is almost nine o’clock, the skies are gay and yellow, and
there’s a purple craft or so, in which a friend could sail. To-night
looks like “Jerusalem”
(Dickinson’s letter qtd. in Chase 108)

When she once commented on “the famous 'Yellow day'” (changed atmospheric
conditions that produced visual effect of fire on the sky), she calls it “mysterious
morning” (to Samuel Bowles, September 6, 1881, Letters 191)
However, Dickinson did not use colors only as means of a physical description.
Readers can note that also abstract terms can be labeled with some color in her
discourse: “Duty is black and brown – home is bright and shining” (to Austin Dickinson,
October 1851, Letters 78). Another excerpt reveals that even months had their own
colors in Dickinson’s mind: “till my heart is red as February and purple as March” (to the
Hollands, 1855, Letters 140); it was the same with days. Dickinson could perceive them
“red and gold, and ribbon” for example (to the cousins, Autumn 1863, Letters 209).
Dickinson connoted colors with emotional states too. It is usual that color evokes
emotional response. Nevertheless, this, let me say connotative, process could work the
other way round in Dickinson’s mind as well. It seems that an emotional state could recall
color in Dickinson; she projected the states of her mind into colors:

Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A circus passed the house
– still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out
(to the Hollands, 1857, Letters 142).

As she grew older, not only the letters, but also the meaning of colors became still
more and more incomprehensible - as if remote from reality. It appears that colors
became charged with a kind of private importance or symbolism: “We have heard of the
'deeds of the spirit,' but are his acts gamboges and pink?” (to her cousins, Spring 1881,
Letters 241),

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DICKINSON AND WHITE

I must tell you about the character of Amherst. It is a lady whom the
people call the Myth. She is a sister of Mr. Dickinson, and seems to
be the climax of all the family oddity. She has not been outside of
her own house in fifteen years, except once to see a new church,
when she crept out at night and viewed it by moonlight … She
dresses wholly in white, and her mind is said to be perfectly
wonderful. She writes finely, but no one ever sees her. Her sister …
invited me to come and sing to her mother sometime … People tell
me that the myth will hear every note – she will be near, but unseen.

(an unnamed visitor of Amherst qtd. in Cody 12)

Here we are presented a rough portrayal of Emily Dickinson as seen by a stranger.

The manner in which Dickinson’s image is presented gives evidence that Dickinson was
(despite her isolation) known about and that she was, in her way, an outstanding
character of the village. Please note that the features used for the creation of Dickinson’s
image are the most notable ones, the ones that are perceived as unusual, or even odd.
Hence, Dickinson’s wholly white garment was recognized as one of her most striking
characteristics. It is claimed that she introduced this habit of dressing at the age of 31
(Cody 19). It is believed that it was not a product of her “eccentricity” but her conscious
decision, which should tell something about her (Cody 34). Yet it stays uncovered what
she wanted to tell.
Then, there is no doubt that whiteness had its certain position and bore some sort
of personal significance in Dickinson’s life; whatever her most private connotations with
the color were. There have been some ideas proposed that try to explain this import of
white color. One, which presents itself as “a very superficial understanding”, states that
Dickinson’s habit of dressing was a result of “her frustrated love for a married man, [and]
that she dressed in white in order to be the priestess at the altar of love” (Chase 104).
Another opinion is stated in Cody and he appears to be very certain that “her
[Dickinson’s] practice of dressing in white” should declare “her private secession from

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society through the assumption of a worldly death that paradoxically involved
regeneration” (34). Elsewhere in his book, the same author claims, that “the perpetually
impending, frigid, virgin bride” Dickinson expressed through her habit of dress “her
kinship” to “the pure [read asexual] spirits in heaven” (254). Personally, I do not believe
that the person who wrote (not only, but for example) “Wild nights! Wild nights!” could
have been as cold as Cody describes.
Wolosky presents another view; she claims, that “in her white dress, she
[Dickinson] wants both to be in the body and to be bodiless; to be gendered and yet to
be genderless; to be in the world and yet to be in the spirit” (137). If this view was right, it
would mean that Dickinson perceived white as a symbol of the impossible possibilities,
of possibilities that are impossible to come reality in conditions of human existence,
hence, possibly, a symbol that is as comprised as universe, symbol of illimitability,
infinitude.
Not surprisingly, there is another view. Chase believes too, that Dickinson´s
custom was symbolic; in his opinion her white dress should tell about “the final queenly
estate, to which she would accede on the fulfillment of her covenant with God … who
fulfills His part of the agreement by 'removing' the 'relative'” (180, 181). Whiteness is
linked with an unreal world here, again. However, the world is a little more specified
(than that which Wolosky proposes) this time; its existence is conditioned by God’s
presence. Unlike Wolosky, Chase seems to recognize that there is just one possibility
hidden behind white, and that is the possibility of heaven. I must add, that on the same
pages, he proposes a slightly differing view. He states that “whiteness signified the
Absolute, the final transcendence of time, change and nature” for Dickinson. However,
he connects both his opinions with God. It is worth to mention that Dickinson was fond
of another sensual experience which resembles white color in its quality; as she liked
white, Dickinson liked silence.

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COLORS

Colors are an illusion. They actually do not exist. In fact, humankind is not able to
define what colors are (Baleka 42). They come to appear only because every object
reflects certain wavelengths of light (and absorbs the others). These are recognized by
sight and consequently labeled in brains as red, brown, etc. (Hornung 14). While black
absorbs, white color reflects all wavelengths. Each individual perceives the same
wavelengths a bit differently, i.e. everyone perceives colors in a slightly different,
personal, manner. Nevertheless, colors will always “make effect upon our psyche,
influence our emotions and behavior” (Brožková 9) and they will ever carry meanings
(Finlay 1). Language of colors is the universal one (Holtzschue 6).
Colors can recall “six levels of response” in people; these are:

Personal relationship
Influence of fashions, styles and trends
Cultural influences and mannerisms
Conscious symbolism-association
Collective unconscious
Biological reactions to a color stimulus
(Holtzschue 40).

While the two last points represent people’s unconscious responses to colors, the rest
represents all the knowledge about colors that culture or life taught us. As for the
meanings that they carry, colors can either “symbolize or be associated with noncolor
ideas”. While the first type of meaning is culturally assigned, the second one varies from
one context to another. “Cultural associations of colors with ideas are so ingrained that
they lie in subconscious memory”. Although colors may lose their symbolic meanings in
time, it is claimed that the associations they recall remain the same. (Holtzschue 40)

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Colors through history

The first substance that was used by human beings as a color was blood,
immediately followed by the white clay. This was in the dawn of history, when
mysterious powers were ascribed to colors which were mighty instruments handled by
shaman and wizards to influence the rest of their tribe. If we move further in time, we
will find out that inhabitants of Mesopotamia knew more tints and colors than cave
dwellers had known. Yellow, for example, became a symbol of the divine attributes and
power there. In that time, the symbolism of colors and conviction about their
importance began to develop (Brožková 22).
Egyptians invented and used ink of many colors. They could dye textile and
managed to create “the first artificial blue pigment called iryt (artificial)”, later known as
Egyptian blue (Delamare 20). They employed colors chiefly for two purposes. The first
one was painting; they pictured landscapes and images from everyday life. The other
purpose was religious; for this aim, only six colors were used. These were endowed with
a significant symbolism and each of them was complemented with a precious stone or
metal (Delamare 20).
Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that colors have a power to cure. Actually, it
was not only a blind faith as the substances they used for healing purposes really had
positive effects; however, it was not due to their colors but because of their chemical
composition. Pigments were widely used for the creation of mural paintings, frescoes
and for coloring sculptures; Romans could dye even glass (mostly into blue). Cinnabar
red became a significant color. As it was the most expensive paint, the presence of
cinnabar on an art work signified its owner’s wealth. In this era, purple was “associated
with supreme power in cultures from Israel to Persia”. This color was generally
considered as nice and costly; only members of the royal family were entitled to wear
purple garments. Those who dared to break this unwritten law were punished by capital
penalty under the rule of Nero. The survival of the tradition is apparent in the
employment of red on the gowns of Catholic clergy; only the highest clergymen were
allowed to wear “a band of purple on their white robes” (Delamare 37). (Delamare 31-37)
In the Middle Ages, the specter of colors became broader since brighter tints
were introduced (Delamare 35). Color symbolism grew firmer and firmer (Brožková 26).

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This era is well-known for universal clerical domination; all was ruled by Church and
directed by God’s will. Because Pagan occultism was still close to lower classes so Church
just converted Pagan symbolism into the Christian one. The colors of garments in which
the Godly creatures were portrayed stood as symbols for their characteristics; purple, for
example, was to symbolize God’s power (from ancient times). (Brožková 24,25)
Painters and dyers collected more objective facts about colors (Brožková 28).
Thanks to the textile industry, which flourished in Europe in medieval times, and due to
the new materials (such as parchment, canvas or paper) that came into use both in art
and communication, new dyes and pigments could be introduced too. Those brightest, a
kind of novelty then, were apprehended as the most luxurious ones (Delamare 39, 40).
Dyed garments were the matter of rather richer and socially higher classes in the
medieval Europe. “Clothes and ornaments meant for display often bore the heraldic
colors of their owners: Persian or azure blue, emerald green, saffron yellow, scarlet,
purple, or black” (Delamare 39). In its publicly perceived importance, red color was
replaced by blue. (Delamare 39-41)
After the discovery of a new continent, faith and rather mystical attitude to colors
were replaced by experiment and observation. In this spirit, Da Vinci made his attempts
to inspect color; he began to search for patterns inside of the world of colors. For
example, he stated that white is the origination of colors while black is their end. Isaac
Newton with his trilateral prism found out that sunlight is not simply white but that it is
composed of many colorful lights. Goethe made a revelation of importance similar to the
Newton’s. On the bases of nature and self-examination, he wrote a whole book about
colors, their interrelations and human responses to them. In fact, his book Farbenlehre
“created a new basis for color examination and it became a starting point for
physiological and psychological view of colors” (Brožková 34). He claimed that all colors
can exist thanks to light and darkness; he wrote that yellow is created when the intensity
of white light is changed; when darkness is raised, blue color should be born. Goethe also
described after-image and color induction, divided colors into cold and warm, passive
and active and ascribed them the power to influence human soul. (Brožková 28-34) From
then on, constant attempts have been made to come closer to the core of colors in both
scientific and non-scietific field. However, their symbolism remained the same.

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Symbols

The history of art is a record of humankind’s most moving and

meaningful symbols.
(Fontana 63)

The word symbol comes from Greece symbolon (indication, identification sign) and
originally it denoted a piece of skeleton (or some other object) that served for a personal
identification. However, this expression has rather different denotation in present days.
Symbol “has a sensual form” and “conceals and at the same time shows the meaning it
was given” in particular place and time. It is not rare that the same symbol is understood
differently in different cultures, countries, eras. (Baleka 355)
Symbols have always been handled by artists to “express [their] beliefs and
preoccupations” of the world that has surrounded them (Fontana 63). As it has always
been faith that has shaped life attitudes above all, it consequently must have modified
the meaning of symbols most of all outer influences. Faith was adherent to symbolism
from the Oldest times; magic symbols along with prayers and rituals were used to
warrant peace in an afterlife, for example. (Fontana 63)
“A sense of shared existence with nature” is another element imprinted into
history of symbolism. Animal sketches, spirals, geometric themes, and, later, in Hellenic
art, abstract forms such as “triangles, meanders and swastikas” were the most common
natural symbols (Fontana 64,65). “It was not until the 8th century BC that symbolism in
Greek art reached new levels of pictorial expression and clarity” (Fontana 65). In those
days, images depicting “stereotyped animals and human figures, rituals and battles
began to appear” (Fontana 65).

As for literature, even the oldest literary forms, myths, contain symbols.

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Symbolism of colors

Shapes and colours are the building-blocks of all visual symbols,

but are also deeply significant in their own right
(Fontana 87).

Nowadays, color can symbolize whatever can or even cannot come onto your
mind. In form of a flag, it can represent a whole nation; it can stand for a company,
institution, or even for a sheer product. (Holtzschue 6) Colors can provide us with
information, speak to us. (Brožková 15)
Symbolism of colors is “significant understanding of colors based on their psycho-
physiological effectuality” (Baleka 356). In other words, when color conveys some
meaning or stands for something, we can say that it is used symbolically. Again, there are
many aspects influencing such understanding of colors, for example: personal
associations, instant aesthetic system, or historic conditions. (Baleka 356)

…in Europe yellow connotes deceit and cowardice, but it is the

imperial colour in China and in Buddhist tradition it stands for
humility and renunciation
(Fontana 25).

Simply said, this area of human interest is influenced by both personal experience
and cultural background. Therefore, to what extent these spheres will differ for a
person, to the same level color symbolism will vary. Of course, all influences can mix,
interconnect and result in the creation of new, different connotations. For instance,
western Church built its color symbolism on the bases of pagan and oriental traditions.
Colors as symbols are sometimes bound to different minerals, animals or plants too.
(Baleka 356)
Different artists can approach colors quite independently, a different manner,
with different levels of stress either on reality or symbolism (Baleka 356). “It [color] is a
medium that reflects [their] life attitudes in [their] works” (Baleka 356). Of course, we
are all individuals and we all perceive in a specific way. This rule is readily applicable for

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colors too; each of us might always react on the same, unchanged stimulus in her/his
own manner. (Fontana 26) Another important fact to be mentioned is that through
colors, we can express meanings that are not communicable by words or images that are
more specific. (Fontana 88)

WHITE

... white, although often considered as no colour (a theory largely

due to the Impressionists, who saw no white in nature), is a
symbol of a world from which all colours as a definite attribute has
disappeared. This world is too far above us for its harmony to
touch our souls. A great silence, like an impenetrable wall, shrouds
its life from our understanding. White, therefore, has its harmony
of silence, which works upon us negatively, like many pauses in
music that break temporarily the melody. It is not a dead silence,
but one pregnant with possibilities. White has the appeal of the
nothingness that is before birth, of the world in the ice age

(Kandinsky).

Only light can be perfectly white, without any hue (Holtzschue 59). The whites
that we can see, the imperfect ones, reflect almost (but not completely) all rays of light
(Finlay 113) and provoke eyes (Eiseman 57). White is a color that contains all the others. It
is the color that European painters valued the most for centuries (Finlay 113).
In Christian art white stands for purity, peace and conciliation; in Scriptures, it is
used in connection with 24 elders, angels, saints, St. Peter the Apostle, and Jesus Christ
in the Book of Revelations (when he represents purity, victory and the pure light of
spirit) (Baleka 47). It can also refer to different animals, manna, garments, the great
throne of judgment, etc. Some Christian ceremonial habits are white and even before
Christianity it was a color of priesthood (Baleka 47). The usually white halo and images of

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God with long white beard began to appear after 15th century (Fontana 222) and “the
white lily, for example, is a symbol of Mary’s purity and humility” (Fontana 63).
According to non-Christian western color symbolism, white is for light, virtue,
truth, joy, celebration, innocence, purity, clarity, simplicity, chastity of brides, virginity; it
appears delicate. In the context of present days, expressions like cleanliness, pristine,
untainted, unflawed, spotless, immaculate, sterile, or cold are added to the specter of its
possible symbolic meanings (Eiseman 58).
One of the ancient legends portrays Zeus as a white bull (Fontana 154); Buddha’s
body is white (Finlay 117). In cults of old ages, white was perceived as a magic medium
that should protect before evil; it was the color of ghosts and sacrified animals too.
White is often connected with both the beginning and end of life (however only when
this end means the beginning of something else). In the French regal court, it was the
color of mourning. The same attitude prevails in the countries of Orient, especially with
people who believe in reincarnation; (Pleskotová 47). It is claimed that in China and
Japan white signifies death, disease, and burial (Finlay 113). In Chinese philosophy, white
represents Yin – the untouched matter, the receptive, the cold, passive, receiving,
malleable. Alchemists connected white with red, and it stood on the way to the “mystical
ascendance into God”. (Liungman 58)

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WHITE IN DICKINSON´S IMAGES OF HEAVEN

In this chapter, I will present poems that contain images in which white is not
used in connection with the world of living but with the sphere of the afterlife. This
notion is very abstract and vague, and its concept, or understanding, is different not only
in different cultures and religions; it certainly slightly varies with each of us. Some people
even think it unreal or absurd. Though Emily Dickinson was an unbeliever (Chase 163) - in
the conventional sense of the word, we can find out from her writings that she, at least,
took into consideration the possibility of God’s and heavenly existence. In this context, it
seems relevant to present Dickinson’s attitudes to church and belief.

Dickinson and faith

…I open my window, and it fills the chamber with white dirt. I

think God must be dusting;
(to her cousins, March, 1873, Letters 229)

The religion of the time and society Emily Dickinson grew up in was “New England
Calvinism, the most legalistic of religions” (Chase 146). All the members of her family
circle were religious (Chase 27). However, Emily was different already in her childhood; it
appeared that she “had less of conventional piety” than her peers; “[s]he regarded
herself as a 'free spirit'” (Chase 30). It is easy to understand that something that lays
“down rules, confinements, constrictions, and expectations that would keep society’s
members … 'in line'” (Barker 81), as the Church does, must have been to such a spirit
unacceptable.

Rather than being forced to spend the Sunday listening to the

pastor’s sermon (that would have been sandwiched between chat
and gossip before and after the service), she can keep her own
company, and uncensored, articulate her own thoughts to the
family member whose companionship she most valued
(Barker 79).

- 22 -
 Though Puritanism surrounded her in both the schools she attended too, she did
not yield; at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (that was her second school), Dickinson
“publicly reject[ed] the orthodox theology” (Thackeray 5). Till the end of her life, she
remained aloof from the institutional religion but at the same time took on “some of the
myths of Christianity” (Chase 184).
That Dickinson “was skeptical about Christian doctrines” (Reynolds 170) does not
necessarily mean she did not believe in God. From her letters and poems it appears that
she did not completely reject him and, at least, supposed His existence. The fact that she
“pictures God in a variety of ways” (Chase 177) supports either the claim that she was
unable to identify him (Thackeray 37) or the opinion that she did not have much respect
for him (Chase 179); maybe both these options are right. It is evident from her letters to
Samuel Bowles, that she felt a need for faith and religious discussions (Mitchell 179). It is
true that she “at once asserts a possible faith and, no less painfully, questions and denies
such faith” (Wolosky 132) in her poems.
Dickinson’s disavowal of the Puritan dogma does not alter the fact that she was
influenced by Christianity, its art and tradition; Calvinism is even said to be the strongest
influence she received (Chase 183). “Puritanism is the type and source of her imagination
in its deepest and most characteristic quality” (Chase 164). It is believed that Dickinson
“wrote conscientiously in the Puritan Manner” (Chase 164). No matter whether she did it
on purpose or not; the style of her writing very much resembles the style of the King
James Bible. She uses plenty of rhetorical figures, symbols, metaphors that are to be
found in the Scriptures. One of the books of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation,
where a “new world … is promised” (Chase 108), became Dickinson’s “favorite book
[not only] of the Bible” (Chase 185). It was “a frequent source of her ideas about the
future life and its relation to the great events of life in this mortal world” (Chase 160).

- 23 -
Poems

In the poem "Why - do they shut Me out of Heaven" (J248), Dickinson imagines a
situation that is, at least for her and for those who believe in heaven, possible to arise. As
the first line implies, Dickinson’s speaker of unknown gender is forbidden to enter the
place. The reason for this remains untold. The speaker obviously did not expect such a
thing to happen, so, at first, s/he expresses her/his lack of understanding by asking
"Why". It is not evident, whether s/he expects to get some answer from someone else or
s/he just asks herself. In the second line, s/he comes with an explanation that, as s/he
thinks, might have caused her/his exclusion from paradise. S/he still neither gets any
answer nor a reaction. After that, the speaker tries to change the unpleasant verdict s/he
has received; s/he wants to rectify her/his mistake by proposing that s/he might try to
behave in a more seemly manner; she proposes to make expiation when promising to
"say a little "Minor" / Timid as a Bird”.
In the second stanza, as the tone implies, Dickinson’s speaker even begins to
beg to be given one more chance; it looks like s/he would like to be shown if s/he really
caused any problems, if s/he really was so troublesome. This at the same time implies
her/his willingness to apologize for her/his possibly unfit behavior, which s/he still cannot
identify or recollect. After s/he says all s/he can say to defend her/himself, there comes
an expression of her/his most urgent wish in "don’t - shut the door!" Still, no one replies.
In the last stanza, the poem’s speaker ponders about how s/he would act in case
the roles were switched; s/he considers what s/he would do if s/he was in place of "the
Gentleman" who, as the only one, can open the door for a petitioner. The whole poem is
closed with a question; s/he asks her/himself, if s/he could be so cruel and would forbid
somebody to enter the paradise or not. Though readers will not find any answer written,
there is one floating in the air, or rather indicated in the tone of the poem. I presume
that no one so obliging as Dickinson is here, could forbid anyone to come in.
White is employed as a part of the "Gentleman / In the "White Robe" metaphor
in the third stanza. This gentleman stands for the character who is to open the gate to
heaven. It is possible for a reader to denote the character’s identity for two simple
reasons. The first clue is the Christian-like topic and imagery used in the poem; the

- 24 -
second one being the usage of quotation marks that should mean that the image of
"White Robe" is borrowed.
Both the clues lead us to Christian art in which the inhabitants of heaven have
been portrayed in white garments. And in this instance, we may go even further with the
identification. As Christians believe, it is Saint Peter the Apostle who welcomes
newcomers to heaven and with his key unlocks heaven’s gate. Hence, the identity of
Dickinson’s "Gentleman" appears to be unambiguous. White alludes to scriptures and, in
the reader’s mind, it should recall the visible quality of the legendary figure’s garments.

In „Publication – is the auction“, Emily Dickinson shows some of her opinions on

a publishing of thoughts. As it ensues from the poem, she generally thinks it to be a dirty
practice. Though it is not possible to recognize whether she speaks in general or has
some specific kind of publication on mind here, I see her lines to be universally
applicable.
The first two lines can be read as Dickinson’s private definition of publication; in
her terms, it corresponds with “the Auction”, in which a person puts forth her/his own
“mind” that at this moment becomes a commodity that anyone can buy; the only thing
that matters is the offer that an auctioneer makes. Dickinson further continues that
“poverty” might be considered as a possible justification. However, she advises us not to
exchange our purity for money as, after we die, “we – would rather” come pure in face
of the God.
The third stanza reveals that Dickinson, moreover, does not see people to be
the original owners of their thoughts. It is the God “who gave” them to us, and we are
nothing less than their “corporeal illustration[s]”. And so daring we are, that we try to
“Sell /The Royal Air“, which does not even belong to us, she claims.
In the last stanza, Dickinson tries to provide us with two pieces of, possibly
worthy, advice. “In the Parcel” consisting of our body and soul, which I see to be a
metaphor for life, she, indeed, allows us to be traders; though only on conditions that
God consents and we remember that we always act only on his behalf – hence, we
should act with a correspondent “grace”. Once we are merchants, we should never
humble any “human spirit” - neither ours nor others´- in the business we make.

- 25 -
Dickinson quite strictly refused publishing in her own life; she “published approximately
ten poems in her lifetime” (Mitchell 202). She neither liked to present herself on the
public nor wanted her poems to become a public matter. The only receivers of her
spoken and written thoughts were her closest.
In this poem, white is used twice in the second stanza:

Possibly -- but we -- would rather

From Our Garret go
White -- Unto the White Creator --
Than invest -- Our Snow --

In the first instance, it stands on its own and acts as a symbol for the quality that people
want to posses when coming to God, i.e. to heaven. Such a quality could be, with
accordance to Christian canon, expressed in other words too; the whiteness signifies
innocence; the state of a person without sins. In the second case, white is a part of the
“White Creator” metaphor that signifies God. Rather than having much symbolic or
denotative meaning, I would read the white here to be a quality Dickinson connotes with
God. However, she probably fixed this connotation on the basis of Christian art, where
God, along with the other inhabitants of heaven, is - though it happens scarcely –
portrayed in white.

It appears that the poem “I suppose the time will come” (J1381), as the first line
suggests, shall express one of Dickinson’s visions; the one that looks so jaunty and
inviting. The identity of its speaker is unexpressed; no persons appear in the poem’s
images. The speaker ponders about some condition which s/he thinks possible to come
some time. At first, s/he does not seem to be completely certain that about her/his vision
to come true; s/he uses the phrase “I suppose” for introduction of her ideas. The
speaker’s expectations are that “the time will come / When” it will be flourishing all
around; there will be plenty of birds in trees, bees will sound amply, the fields bursting
with grain will look so smooth, and apples will be so nice. We may be helpful as well as
make obstructions; in any case, such a dream should come true, s/he says. Having dived

- 26 -
deeper into the vision, it seems that the speaker has become surer than before; in the
third stanza s/he states:

I believe the Day will be

When the Jay will giggle
At his new white House the Earth
That, too, halt a little –

This stanza is filled with one of Dickinson’s great hopes. To be able to write these lines,
she at least must have wanted to believe, that all the Christians´ promises will prove right
one day and that not only people, but all living creatures will come to that “new white
House”, to heaven. Here, we can see the greatest influence upon Dickinson projected
once more. She fuses the Biblical imagery, to create her own metaphor for heaven; she
introduces us into the house of the Lord/God that shines with whiteness, i.e. with his
color of purity and immortality.

Poem “Take your heaven further on” appear to be the last farewell to somebody
who leaves the world of living and makes his way to heaven. It might be only a supposed
situation that is depicted in the poem; however I rather suggest that Dickinson herself is
the speaker and that the poem is her personal goodbye to some of her fellows who died.
In the first line, she leaves the wo/man with her/his dreams and ideas, no matter what
they have been like, because, as the second line implies, the only thing that matters now
is that s/he has died.
In next three lines Dickinson concedes and at the same time thinks over the
possibility, that the deceased person had already came into contact with eternity; it is
not clear though, whether Dickinson thinks that it happened in the wo/man´s dreams, or
s/he once was already close to death. However, the poem proceeds, now it is the time
for the companion to knock on the heaven’s door and to make an apology for all that
s/he did wrong as the human being. And at this moment, the poet places herself higher
than she places God, at least in one respect, and that is her closeness to the departed
soul; the poem continues:

- 27 -
 Nearer to Your Courtesies
Than this Sufferer polite –
Dressed to meet You –
See – in White!

In the last three lines, we can read the description of St. Peter, whiteness being his
essential attribute.

Poem “Our journey had advanced“ is an allegorical one. With the use of symbols,
Dickinson aims to depict a certain moment that came on one wo/man´s life journey. As
she does so many times in her poems, she concentrates on the moment when the soul
leaves our world, that is, on death itself.
In the first line, we can learn that the speaker, accompanied by some other
people, took some journey (read life) which was to come close to its end. The
destination of the travel they shared was known and certain; they all knew that they
headed for “eternity – by term” (read heaven). Before, they were ever used to that their
way had led through places where people lived (read they knew nothing else than life).
However, at the moment the speaker stops with, the travelers came to a place they had
never seen before (read the moment they did not experience before). All of a sudden,
they stood in front of “The Forest of the Dead” (read faced death). It is no wonder that it
filled them with awe and they were no more willing to continue the way (read to die).
Though the group might have considered that they would change the direction they and
return, they could not, as:

Retreat – was out of Hope –

Behind – a Sealed Route –
Eternity's White Flag – Before –
And God – at every Gate –

- 28 -
 As this stanza says, there is no other way to be taken now than the one that leads
to the heaven; though we, readers, still have to bear in mind that to reach God means to
die before. At this moment, Dickinson leaves the company to their fate. If she had
continued, the poem would not leave such a strong impression it does now. A reader
would be robbed of a chance to experience such a perfect mix of hope and despair at
the same time, which Dickinson succeeded to record here.
When it comes to the use of white in this context, it is to denote the color that
Dickinson, as the author, links with eternity. It can be claimed, that she presents white to
be eternity´s symbol even, because this is actually the sole purpose of flags; they
symbolize.

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WHITE IN IMAGES CONCERNED WITH HUMAN WORLD

In this section I will present some of Dickinson’s poems that contain images
which, again, imply white. The thing that connects these images is their relation to the
world of human society. The poems not only portray individuals; one of them pauses on
the relationships that Dickinson thought to be active among people. As I have done in
previous chapters, I will first introduce Dickinson’s attitudes pointing, this time, towards
her society.

Dickinson and the world of people

America that Dickinson lived in is described as a place of “many and profound

transitions”, which took place in almost all spheres of the nation’s life; philosophy,
religion, art, economy and social situation has been under reconstruction (Wolosky 138).
These transformations must have naturally resulted in the rise of “ambiguities and
contradictions” in then society (Chase 92).
Emily Dickinson never seemed to be much interested by “current affairs”
(Mitchell 193). With politics and social movements of any kind, she was never concerned
(Mitchell 194). When she, rarely, commented on such problems as “the lives of servants,
immigrants, condemned prisoners, the victims of industrial accidents and the fatally ill
children of the poor”, she appeared to be “dismissive or whimsical” and employed a
“comic” tone in her voice (Mitchell 193).
If we focus on her attitude to her fellow citizens, we will find out that, it really
appears so, she scorned them. “In a famous comment to Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
she disparaged those townspeople going past the Homestead [the Dickinsons
household] as unthinking masses” (Mitchell 194). Richard Chase even claims that we
should consider her poems “as a privately constructed emendation, even a repudiation,
of the township life she knew” (23). This attitude might have sprung from “the sense of
uniqueness” (Mitchell 196), which she most probably had; it is claimed to be the result of

- 30 -
the Dickinsons´ eminent position in Amherst society. Nevertheless, this does not mean
that Dickinson was a moralist (Chase 179).
There is another explanation for her condemnation of conventional society
proposed; her reason might have been, that the behavior of the lower (as she seems to
have perceived most people) displayed features which were rather dissonant from the
ones that she revered, valued, and – almost certainly - had; she really was brighter,
quicker in reactions, more “concentrated and precise” than is usual (Chase 23). Simply,
Emily was different than others seemed to be:

If her society was exaggeratedly public in its emotional life, her

poetry celebrated the drama of the private soul. If the impetus of
her society was to level emotion and intelligence out into a
uniformity neither limited nor deep, the intention of her poetry
was to affirm a universe in depth, a universe in which dramatic
distinctions must be made between society, man, nature, and God
(Chase 23).

And, for the resoluteness of her character and for her partly Transcendentalist
mind, I think that she did not see conventions to be the reason for converting her mind
(if it is possible to make such a change at all), or for making changes in her attitudes.
Instead, she chose not to take much care about public and fully expressed herself only in
the company of her family members (Mitchell 195). As Mitchell claims, “she rejects the
conventional role of the spiritual, sentimental woman” (195).
Nevertheless, one cannot deny that the character of the then society imprinted
some marks into Dickinson’s character; it is claimed that she inherited some of the
”monotony of the culture” as well as “the spasmodic and unstable emotional texture, the vague
verbal abstraction, and the sense of pervasive incompleteness” (Chase 24). There is described
one other remarkable impact of the society upon Dickinson; “New England scene” made the
poet “better acquainted with death than with life” (Chase 24).
On the contrary, when some unpleasant event afflicted one of her covenants, it is
claimed that no one else appeared to take such a serious care (Mitchell 193). Almost all
her letters to family and friends are written with the tone of deep love and devotion.

- 31 -
Although brief in length, the citation that will follow perfectly illustrates the significance
of kinship for Dickinson: “Friends are gems infrequent” (Dickinson qtd. in Chase 109). If I
am to describe her ideal pattern of a man-woman relationship, I must say that she
preferred the relation to be “a kind of legalized hierarchy” rather than “fusing of souls”
(Chase 140). Just one thing remains to be mentioned, which can explain many of her
attitudes. For Dickinson, the human mind represents a mystery (Reynolds 171).

Poems

The speaker of the poem “Unworthy of her breast” (J1414) acquaints us with
his/her view of a certain situation that can arise between two people quite easily. They
are, as I suppose, a man and a woman. It is not evident, who the speaker is; it may be
either the man or some other person – including Dickinson herself. Only the man’s
feelings about the woman are sketched in the poem’s lines. Neither any explicit action is
said to be in progression, nor any kind of established relationship claimed to exist
between the characters. In the six lines of the speaker’s observation, only rough
characterizations of the two are made; nevertheless, both are taken from the male’s
point of view. He feels very strong, probably sexual, desire for the woman; she appears
to attract him unconsciously but still in a strong manner. The man is devoured by his
desire; he perceives the situation, which he is in, to be a kind of test of his character, or
behavior. At the same time, he does not appear to be much self-confident in the
woman’s presence. As the speaker comments, she appears quite “exacting” and the
man feels inferior to her, whatever reason for his feeling he might have. Perhaps, he
thinks that she would not repay his love (or possibly just sexual desire). So it is most
likely, that he decides to keep his temptations locked inside his mind, not to express his
affection for her, and stay rather innocent in her eyes. This makes the speaker remark:

How counterfeit the white

We chiefly have!

- 32 -
 Here we read Dickinson’s opinion on the character of the innocence that she
observed at people; she claims it to be mostly pretended. It is not evident, whether she
includes herself within the group of the false people or not. As I suggested, white is the
symbol for innocence in this poem. Such a meaning corresponds with one of meanings
commonly assigned to this color in western color symbolism.

The only character that acts in the poem “Her face was in a bed of hair” (J1722)
is a woman whose identity stays uncovered. There is no action going on. Here, we are
offered a portrayal that is made with the tone of amazement or admiration. The
depiction is quite brief, which, nevertheless, does not weaken the impression that it
leaves on a reader’s mind. In fact, the envisioned woman is said to teem with such
qualities, that (as the final two lines claim) it is actually impossible to make a report; only
the person “who witnesses, believes”. The Dickinson’s speaker interprets only the
woman’s physical qualities; we are told about her hair, hands and the grain of her voice
or possibly speech.
White is employed in the second distich to illustrate the quality of the woman’s
hands:

Her hand was whiter than the sperm

That feeds the sacred light.

After reading these lines, the first response of an imagination is, that it creates a picture
of hands of alabaster; hence, it can be claimed that the primary effect – and maybe the
aim - of the color’s employment is to recall a visual experience, to denote a color of an
object. Nevertheless, when read in the context of the whole simile, white is likened to
something untouchable and detached from human experience, something that is not to
be found in the living world, hence, possibly, something that is to be found after death.
Furthermore, it is used in comparison with a notion that is only believed to exist and that
is depicted as a sort of fundamental power of the supposed, sacred world. From these
observations we can induce that the author of the poem’s lines connoted whiteness with
an afterlife (that is in the Christian faith signified by heaven) too. This uncovers one of

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Dickinson’s attitudes to white; we can suppose she felt – either conscientiously or not -
white to be ever present, immortal, eternal.

In the first stanza of the poem “Bless God, he went as soldiers”, the Dickinson’s
speaker provides us with a portrayal of some unspecified male character, who was
probably seen only once. Though a reader might be tempted to view him as a soldier, my
interpretation slightly differs. As Dickinson’s verse is claimed to “strain[s] always toward
the universal” (Reynolds 182), I see that the man is just compared to a soldier, because of
the qualities he had. I suppose that his anticipated virtue of braveness and the
impressions he left on the speaker’s mind were soldier-like (or maybe even more
forceful), so he is depicted in such a manner. What is sure, a remembrance of him is
marked with the tone of deep affection (which is induced by expressions “Bless God”
and “Grant God”).
The second stanza communicates the speaker’s vision, which (as the opening
phrase “Please God” implies) has a character of/a tone of a wish; this might be to see the
man once more. Further we learn that if such a situation came, the man’s presence alone
would release the speaker of a poem from fright; our hero would stop the fear of both
foes – whoever Dickinson means them to be – and struggling. On this occasion, the man
is portrayed “In epauletted white”.
In connection with epaulets, a uniform comes first onto one’s mind; one would
suppose that white sets a color of an uniform. This can be true. Nevertheless, no
American soldiers of Dickinson’s times wore white uniforms; hence, Dickinson chose the
color of a dress according to her own taste, fantasy. For this reason, I see it quite
possible that the phrase carries some personal symbolism.
In my view, “epauletted” is employed to promote our hero to the position of a
commander, leader or master in the vision. This implies that the speaker would be willing
to follow him without distress. However, it is not possible to certainly set the meaning of
white. Personally, in connection with the other Dickinson’s implications of white, I read
that it signifies the man’s true, genuine existence, his rightness, his unaffectedness.

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WHITE IN IMAGES FROM NATURE

In this chapter, as you may suppose, the poems will be presented, in which white
is somehow linked with images of nature. Nevertheless, before, let me present
Dickinson’s attitude to the natural world.

Dickinson and nature

Nature is a haunted house, but art a house that tries to be haunted

(Dickinson qtd. in Chase 124).

Emily Dickinson was never ignorant of the natural world. From the childhood, she
liked to make excursions to nature. There she could, unobserved, contemplate whatever
fetched her attention. Her sensitivity and “wonder of a child” (Thackeray 17) must have
played a significant role in her observations of nature. And then “her constant attempts
to 'feel' deeper and to 'see' more” (Thackeray 39); what better place than nature she
could employ to exercise them in their full.
It appears that the hills around Amherst and the Dickinsons´ garden were hers.
Particularly, she loved flowers, though we cannot say that she would have been ignorant
of other representatives of natural world. In her epistolary writing, she often makes
notes about the plants she grew and tries to share the beauty that she was able to see in
nature.
Although some of her poems deal with “nature in the spirit of light verse” (Chase
168), the idea of nature that Dickinson bore in mind was not only the idealistic one. As
she dived deeper and deeper into the secrets of this world, she became more and more
aware of its dark sides, of its fatality, too. This resulted in her “strangely divergent views
of nature” (Chase 156). It is no wonder then, that in the writings of her later years,
“nature appears in two basic modes: as a symbol of the mysterious processes of death
and as a child’s garden of flowers and birds” (Chase 111). Nevertheless, it remains true
that nature was one of Dickinson’s greatest loves and it represented a great source of

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inspiration for her as a poet; as I have already mentioned, it is one her leading poetic
themes.
Dickinson herself avowed that there were people who have made their share on
her approach to nature. About Mr. Newton, one of her tutors (as she called few
influential and leading men of her life) she stated that he showed her “what was most
grand or beautiful in nature, and that sublime lesson”, which she could get from natural
world and project in her poetry (Dickinson Qtd. in Chase 70). Even though their views do
not fully correlate, Ralph Waldo Emerson is claimed to be another great influence on
Dickinson’s apprehension of nature (Chase 70).
It is claimed that it was mainly in the later period of her life, when Dickinson used
nature as a source from which she drew symbols; the gentian, for example, should have
act as the symbol of nature itself as the “man’s voracious and inescapable enemy”
(Chase 112). It is said that she tended to “use nature as a decoration for her moods, for
her spiritual or sentimental adventures” too (Chase 111). From the same natural world,
which is claimed to be “the supreme and unsurpassable example for the poet”,
Dickinson drew many her poetic figures too (Thackeray 63).
Although “her nature poetry is distinctive for its spiritual overtones” (Thackeray
44), Dickinson often presents nature “as pageant” (Chase 168). On the whole, she does
not see God as present in there:

So far as one can perceive it, the essence of nature beheld in

relation to human life, its impermanence, anxiety and
disintegration. So striking to Emily Dickinson is this difference that
she does not easily imagine any natural phenomenon to be
symbolic of Deity. … God remains unscrutable. But nature is
aggressively a fact so consequential and inclusive a fact that it
symbolizes itself. Thus nature is both symbol and reality
Chase 166.

Nevertheless, the message of these lines changes nothing on the fact that
Dickinson found the relations in nature that resembled the relations between
people and God to her (Chase 140). Furthermore, where else she could have

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looked for “the awe-inspiring mysteries” which she was involved in (Thackeray
26) than in nature itself.

Poems

The poem “Through the Dark Sod – as Education –“ (J392) records Dickinson’s
observation of a lily’s growth from “the Dark Sod” to the “Meadow”. The implication of
expressions that represent human attitudes and qualities for specification of the plant’s
evolution brings/carries the effect of personification. The growth is presented as the
flower’s conscious process, which is taken with both belief and sureness; as if the plant
was conscious of its procession; as if it was the lily’s aim to get out of the ground into the
light. In the second stanza, we meet the plant in its full life in the air, after the
completion of the journey it took. It looks like the flower rejoiced in “swinging her Beryl
bell” - without the least remembrance of all that preceded its flowering. Finally it can live
in “Ecstasy”.
In the first line, the plant’s growth is likened to/compared to “Education”. This
process is, however, typical of the human race. As I suppose, it signifies that Dickinson
felt a sort of resemblance between a growth of a plant and a growth - or cultivation - of
the human spirit, which education actually is. This would mean, that (at least) two levels
of meaning are comprised in the poem; not only an observation of nature, but
Dickinson’s view of education too. In this connection, the poem reveals that she thinks
that education is a way from the darkness to enlightenment, distresses of which are
forgotten after its completion; she believes that knowledge can bring a wo/man even to
an ecstasy.
White is employed as a part of the “white foot” noun phrase that should stand
for an “internal portion of the Easter lily bulb which nourishes the germinating embryo
of the plant during the winter, never rising from the ground itself but enabling the lily to
sprout in the spring” (ED lexicon). If we read the poem on the level of a nature’s
observation, white carries its literal meaning only; it denotes a visible/physical quality.
However, if we read it in the level of a wo/man’s spiritual growth, the whole noun phrase
should represent the core of human being, or, the human spirit. This would mean, I

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believe, that Dickinson connected the core of a spirit with white color; that Dickinson
could have seen the human core as white, that is, pure, untainted.

No certain time, scenery or situation is established in “This was in the White of

the Year –” (J995). The central aim of this poem is to acquaint a reader with one
Dickinson’s view of time’s flow and the continuity of natural, or universal, conditions.
While the first half of the poem is an observation that concentrates on the depiction of
the changes that come in nature in general, the second part tries to tell us about the
lesson that people can learn from the first stanza observation.
As the first stanza conveys, time flows, only conditions change. Once, it was
snow outside; then it was green all around and snow became forgotten, unexpected to
come, difficult to imagine; people simply stopped thinking of it. However, the poem
continues, there is a cycling in nature, so now it is winter again, and at this moment it is a
flower we cannot think of to find outside. The whole second stanza serves as a
conclusion. The best we can do with history, the speaker states, is to make use of it.
Because, as we could observe, the conditions repeat, recur, it is possible to predict some
future events on the basis of the past ones. In short, by looking to the past we can partly
look to the future.
In the poem, white has its fixed position within a noun phrase; we must
consider it as a part of a figurative expression “White of the Year”. This metaphor clearly
stands for the season when snow lies in the country, that is, for winter. The figure makes
use of the common connotation of whiteness with snow.

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CONCLUSION

Emily Dickinson was not indifferent to the world of colors. Colors not only made
her think. Colors even started and ran her imagination that created and subsequently
provided them back with new meanings and significance. As Dickinson grew older, the
meanings became still more personal; it can be said that the textual employment of
colors became even unintelligible for the reader.
It appears that Dickinson was attracted by white color; undoubtedly, it was the
one of the greatest personal importance to her. I dare to say that it represented one of
her islands of imagination and personal secrets. Dickinson even chose white as the color
that should represent her before the eyes of the surrounding world. In the world of her
imagination, that is, in her poems, Dickinson employed white both as means of a physical
description and as a symbol. Both these kinds of meanings of white in Dickinson’s
discourse reflect deeply the world which she grew up and lived in.
In its literal meaning, Dickinson used white to denote the color of concrete things,
such as a plant, a hand, and countryside in winter. Nevertheless, the most frequent
employment of this denotative meaning we can find in her portrayals of angels, saints,
and God. Here, we can see the influence of Christian art and philosophy, that Dickinson
received, projected.
We can perceive two kinds of symbolic meaning of white in Dickinson’s poetic
discourse. The first one is conventional and it reflects the western symbolism of colors.
From the meanings that this symbolic system offers, Dickinson chose white to stand for
purity and innocence especially. The second sort of the symbolism of white in Dickinson’s
poems is personal. It is difficult (if possible at all) to set the meaning of white color in
Dickinson’s most private and abstract poems. Nevertheless, it is possible to sum up some
of her observations and connotations with the color and to approach her personal
apprehension of white color on this base.
Dickinson did not connect white color only with the earthly existence. She
perceived its presence even at the moment of death and in the time that is to come after
it. As for this world, Dickinson saw white not only on, but she perceived it under the
surface as well. She believed that there is white hidden under ground; both in the soil
and in human spirit. Dickinson felt white to be the color of genuine virtues, of eternity; I

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would say that its significance in her poems almost borders with sacredness. I suppose
that white color was Emily Dickinson’s personal symbol of the perfect, untouchable,
absolute, and unbound; the representative of never-ending possibilities.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources

Dickinsons, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1957.

Secondary Sources

Baleka, Jan. Výtvarné umění: výkladový slovník. Praha: Academia, 1997.

Barker, Wendy. “Emily Dickinson and poetic strategy.” The Cambridge companion to Emily
Dickinson. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambridge: University Press, 2002. 77-90.

Brožková, Ivana. Dobrodružství barvy. Praha: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1983.

Cody, John. After great pain: the inner life of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

Chase, Richard Volney. Emily Dickinson. New York: Dell Publishing, 1965.

Delamare, Guineau and Francois Ber. Colors: The Story of Dyes and Pigments.

Dickinson, Emily. Letters of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Mabel Loomis Todd. New York: The World
Publishing, 1951.1

Eiseman, Leatrice. Color: Messages and Meanings: A pantone Color Resource. Gloucester: Hand
Books Press, 2006.

Finlay, Victoria. Color: A Natural History of the Palette. London: The Ballantine Publishing Group,
2002.

Fontana, David. The Secret Language of Symbols: A Visual Key to Symbols and Their Meanings.
London: Duncan Baird, 1993.

1
Will be referred as Letters.

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Holtzschue, Linda. Understanding Color: An Introduction for Designers. New Jersey: John Wiley
and Sons, 2006.

Hornung, David. Colour. London: Laurence King, 2005.

Kohler, Michelle. “Dickinson’s Embodied Eyeball: Transcendentalism and the Scope of Vision.” The
Emily Dickinson Journal 13. 2 (2004): 27-59.

Lindsberg-Seyersted, Brita. The Voice of The Poet: Aspects of Style in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson.
Uppsala: Almquist & Niksells Boktrycker, 1968.

Liungman, Carl G. Dictionary of Symbols. London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1991.

Mitchell, Domhnall. “Emily Dickinson and class.” The Cambridge companion to Emily Dickinson. Ed.
Wendy Martin. Cambridge: University Press, 2002. 191-214.

Reynolds, David S. “Emily Dickinson and popular culture.” The Cambridge companion to Emily
Dickinson. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambridge: University Press, 2002. 167-190.

Thackeray, Donald E. Emily Dickinson’s approach to poetry. Lincoln, 1954.

Wolosky, Shira. “Emily Dickinson: being in the body.” The Cambridge companion to Emily
Dickinson. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambridge: University Press, 2002. 129-141.

Internet Sources

“Emily Dickinson lexicon.” April 20, 2008. <http://edl.byu.edu/webster/a/109 >2

Kandinsky, Vasily. Concerning the spiritual in art. New York: Dover Publ., 1977. in Project
Gutenberg. April 20, 2008. <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5321>

2
Will be referred as ED lexicon.

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APPENDIX

248

Why – do they shut Me out of Heaven?

Did I sing – too loud?
But – I can say a little “Minor”
Timid as a Bird”

Wouldn’t the Angels try me –

Just – once – more –
Just – see – if I troubled them –
But don’t – shut the door!

Oh, if I – were the Gentleman

In the “White Robe” –
And they – were the little Hand – that knocked –
Could – I – forbid?

388

Take Your Heaven further on –

This – to Heaven divine Has gone –
Had You earlier blundered in
Possibly, e´en You had seen
An Eternity – put on –
Now – to ring a Door beyond
Is the utmost of Your Hand –
To the Skies – apologize –
Nearer to Your Courtesies
Than this Sufferer polite –
Dressed to meet You –
See – in White!

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392

Through the Dark Sod – as Education –

The Lily passes sure –
Feels her white foot – no trepidation –
Her faith – no fear –

Afterward – in the Meadow –

Swinging her Beryl Bell –
The Mold-life – all forgotten – now –
In Ecstasy – and Dell –

615

Our journey had advanced –

Our feet were almost come
To that odd Fork in Being´s Road –
Eternity – by Term –

Our pace took sudden awe –

Our feet – reluctant – led –
Before – were Cities – but Between –
The Forest of the Dead –

Retreat – was out of Hope –

Behind – a Sealed Route –
Eternity´s White Flag – Before –
And God – at every Gate –

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709

Publication – is the Auction

Of the Mind of Man –
Poverty – be justifying
For so foul a thing

Possibly – but We – would rather

From Our Garret go
White – Unto the White Creator –
Than invest – Our Snow –

Thought belong to Him who gave it –

Then – to Him Who bear
Its Corporeal illustration – Sell
The Royal Air –
In the Parcel – Be the Merchant
Of the Heavenly Grace –
But reduce no Human Spirit
To Disgrace of Price –

995

This was in the White of the Year –

That – was in the Green –
Drifts were as difficult then to think
As Daisies now to be seen –

Looking back is best that is left

Or if it be – before –
Retrospection is Prospect´s half,
Sometimes, almost more.

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1381

I suppose the time will come

Aid it in the coming
When the Bird will crowd the Tree
And the Bee be booming.

I suppose the time will come

Hinder it a little
When the Corn in Silk will dress
And in Chintz the Apple

I believe the Day will be

When the Jay will giggle
At his new white House the Earth
That, too, halt a little –

1414

Unworthy of her Breast

Though by that scathing test
What Soul survive?
By her exacting light
How counterfeit the white
We chiefly have!

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1721

Her face was in a bed of hair,

Like flowers in a plot –
Her hand was whiter than the sperm
That feeds the sacred light.
Her tongue more tender than the tune
That totters in the leaves –
Who hears may be incredulous,
Who witnesses believes.

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