1.

Early Life, Family, Work, Basic Introduction (1)

2. Education and its influence… her view on education (2) https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-
dickinson/biography/special-topics/emily-dickinsons-schooling-amherst-academy/ https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/biography/special-
topics/emily-dickinsons-schooling-mount-holyoke-female-seminary/

3. Her life as a recluse… life after education (3,4) Emily Dickinson was a textbook recluse. She spoke to visitors through doors,
gave treats to local children by lowering a basket from a second-story window and listened to her father's funeral from the privacy of her bedroom. She didn't leave the
family property for the last two decades of her life. https://www.hermitary.com/articles/dickinson.html https://hyperallergic.com/372801/emily-dickinson-was-less-reclusive-
than-we-think/

4. Her relationships with people: exploring letters written to Sue https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/12/10/emily-

dickinson-love-letters-susan-gilbert/, and others https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/biography/family-friends/

https://www.sparknotes.com/biography/dickinson/key-people/ (5, 6, 7)

5. Her few published works, Samuel Bowles and her view on fame Emily Dickinson was the definition of a writer. She did it
because she needed to, not for fame or fortune. In fact, she wanted her many books of poetry to be burned after her death, a last wish that her family did not adhere to. She wrote quite a few poems about
the triviality of fame, which is my last reason for being angry. Emily wasn’t the kind of person who enjoyed the spotlight. She wasn’t the kind of woman who begged to be noticed, which makes the idea of a
movie about her life laughable. She wanted to be a nobody:

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you—Nobody—too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise—you know!
How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one’s name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!
Looks like this biopic will make her just that—a dreary frog to we the audience, or, the admiring bog.

https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/samuel-bowles-1826-1878-friend/ https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/poetry/the-poet-at-work/the-publication-question/
https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/samuel-bowles-emily-dickinson-relationship-master-letters

6. Her work: overwiew of style and what she talks about https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/poetry/tips-for-
reading/major-characteristics-of-dickinsons-poetry/ ; Themes: https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/dickinson/themes/ Feminism https://www.jstor.org/stable/25678954 , -

(8) + Writers that influenced her (9) Her unusual off-rhymes have been seen as both experimental and influenced by the 18th-century hymnist Isaac Watts.
Her early influences include Leonard Humphrey, principal of Amherst Academy, and a family friend named Benjamin Franklin Newton, who sent Dickinson a book of poetry by Ralph Waldo
Emerson. Elizabeth Robert Browing, William Blake. Fan of Shakespeare. Dickinson's poetry was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading
of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town, which encouraged a Calvinist, orthodox, and conservative approach to Christianity. One of the most famous poets of the
nineteenth century, English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of Dickinson's favorite writers. Browning's long prose poem Aurora Leigh was one of Dickinson's favorite works of fiction and made a
huge impact on her poetry. George Eliot was the pseudonym of Marian Evans, a renowned English novelist. Her novel The Mill on the Floss was a major influence on Dickinson's writing, and Eliot's portrait hung on the
wall of Dickinson's room. Ralph Waldo Emerson: A favorite writer of both Sue Gilbert Dickinson and Emily Dickinson, Emerson was a major literary figure of the mid-1800s. Through his essays, poems, and famous

lectures, he became the leading voice of Transcendentalism in America. + Poshtumous publication and editors (10) https://blog.oup.com/2016/12/emily-
dickinson-publishing-dilemma/

7. Analysing her early work. Although Dickinson had begun composing verse by her late teens, few of her early poems are extant. Among them are two of the burlesque
“Valentines”—the exuberantly inventive expressions of affection and esteem she sent to friends of her youth. Two other poems dating from the first half of the 1850s draw a contrast between the world as it
is and a more peaceful alternative, variously eternity or a serene imaginative order. All her known juvenilia were sent to friends and engage in a striking play of visionary fancies, a direction in which she
was encouraged by the popular, sentimental book of essays Reveries of a Bachelor: Or a Book of the Heart by Ik. Marvel (the pseudonym of Donald Grant Mitchell). Dickinson’s acts of fancy and reverie,
however, were more intricately social than those of Marvel’s bachelor, uniting the pleasures of solitary mental play, performance for an audience, and intimate communion with another. It may be because
her writing began with a strong social impetus that her later solitude did not lead to a meaningless hermeticism.

Until Dickinson was in her mid-20s, her writing mostly took the form of letters, and a surprising number of those that she wrote from age 11 onward have been preserved. Sent to her brother, Austin, or to
friends of her own sex, especially Abiah Root, Jane Humphrey, and Susan Gilbert (who would marry Austin), these generous communications overflow with humour, anecdote, invention, and sombre
reflection.

They shut me up in Prose –

As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet –
Because they liked me "still" –

Still! Could themself have peeped –

And seen my Brain – go round –
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason – in the Pound –
Emily Dickinson, c. 1862[24]

8. poem 1 – 7 (11 - 15)

9. Looking at her most acclaimed work: main themes, style, use of dashes, what academics
say about it) (16-17)
10. Presentation 7 poems (18-24)
11. 5 more poems (25-29)……….. these 12 poems can be sorted on the basis of themes
12. How Dickinson’s work is appreciated in modern day and its effect on young readers (30)
13. Summary (31)

Education
The Dickinson family was a prominent family of Amherst and was known to have played an
influential and essential role in the founding of many educational institutions in the town. The
district primary school, that was likely attended by Emily and her siblings, was built on land
that had belonged to their grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson. Emily Dickinson attended
Amherst Academy from 1840 to 1847 about which she boasts about in one of her letters. A
quote from the same is :

“Viny and I both go to school this term. We have a very fine school. There are 63 scholars. I
have four studies. They are Mental Philosophy, Geology, Latin, and Botany. How large they
sound, don’t they? I don’t believe you have such big studies.”
– Emily Dickinson to Abiah Root, May 7, 1845 (L6)

Amherst Academy, was founded in 1814 by a group of town leaders including her
grandfather and Noah Webster, who sat together on the school’s first Board of Trustees. The
Academy quickly became known as one of the best private academies in the state, and helped
to raise the educational aspirations of the town. Edward Dickinson, Emily’s father and
Austin, her brother, both attended Amherst Academy. Edward Dickinson attended it in its
first year while Austin attended it in 1850. The college prospered under the family’s efforts.
Samuel Dickinson, Emily’s grandfather, staked most of his fortune on Amherst Academy.
Such pride as shown in the above letter was apparently common for the Dickinson family
because of their influence in the town’s educational institutions. Emily Dickinson attended
Amherst Academy from 1840-1847. The school had fallen upon more precarious times by
then, and in 1861, with the opening of Amherst’s first public high school, it closed
completely. During the years that the Dickinson children attended the Academy, most of the
teachers and even the principals were recent graduates of Amherst College or various female
seminaries, and in general they taught for a year or less. Still they were young and
intellectually curious, and Dickinson writes of them with great fondness: “you know I am
always in love with my teachers.”

Dickinson is evidently a curious and intelligent student, and the laid back structure at
Amherst Academy gave her valuable freedom. Daniel Fiske, who became principal of the
Academy at the age of twenty-three, recalled that Dickinson’s “compositions were strikingly
original … and always attracted much attention at the school and, I am afraid, excited not a
little envy” (Sewall, p. 342). Dickinson herself joked that her school compositions proved
“exceedingly edifying to myself as well as everybody else” (L6). The exchanged notes and
little jokes written in the margins of the Latin schoolbook she used at the Academy (now in
the Amherst College Special Collections) suggest that she wasn’t always paying attention in
class. These were social and lively years for her, full of pleasurable activities with “the five”
as she called her circle of girlfriends. (L11)

This gives us an insight into her social side as compared to her later years in which she
slowly isolated herself and lived as a recluse.

The Amherst academy had an ambitious curriculum. Both the Classical and English programs
were available to girls as well as boys. Academy students were permitted to attend lectures at
Amherst College, and while there is no definitive evidence that Emily Dickinson did so, it
seems likely. The famous geologist Edward Hitchcock became President of Amherst College
during Dickinson’s years at the Academy; many Academy students attended his lectures, and
the school used his Elementary Geology as a textbook.

Dickinson’s poetry has a far larger and richer scientific vocabulary than that of most of her
contemporaries, and her years at Amherst Academy were surely a source of that knowledge
and interest. An example of this is her poem: Faith is a fine invention.

After Amherst Academy, Dickinson attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

After completing her schooling at Amherst Academy, Emily Dickinson attended Mount
Holyoke Female Seminary in 1847-1848. Founded ten years before, the seminary was located
eleven miles south of Amherst in South Hadley, Massachusetts. The school offered a
curriculum that was based on a college course of study and was among the most rigorous
academic institutions a young woman could attend at the time.

Dickinson was sixteen when she entered the seminary, younger than most of the other 234
students. Students who attended came primarily from New England but also from Indiana,
Kentucky, Missouri and the Cherokee Indian Nation. The poet shared a room with her cousin,
Emily Norcross, who graduated at the close of the 1848 year.
 Dickinson took examinations during her first week at the seminary and scores placed her in
the first of three academic levels. By midterm, she was promoted to the middle class.
Dickinson remarked that Mary Lyon, the seminary’s founder and principal, was “raising her
standard of scholarship a good deal…& on account of that she makes the examinations more
severe than usual” (L18). Mount Holyoke’s curriculum reflected Lyon’s interest in science
(she was a chemist by training) and courses included botany, natural history and astronomy.
Early in her time at the seminary, Dickinson reported to her brother, Austin, that she was “all
engrossed in the history of Sulphuric Acid!!!!!” (L22). Other courses included English
grammar, Latin, history, music, algebra, philosophy and logic. Mount Holyoke’s curriculum
was innovative with its emphasis on individual discovery through laboratory science and its
insistence that students engage in physical exercise – Dickinson mentions practicing
calisthenics. All students also were required to help maintain the seminary by participating in
some form of domestic work. Dickinson’s job was to carry, wash and dry knives at every
meal table “morning & noon & night” (L18). Like most other educational institutions at the
time, Mount Holyoke also believed that students’ moral and religious lives were part of its
responsibility and conducted revivals that encouraged students to profess their faith.

Dickinson did not return to the seminary after her first year, a decision that has sparked
considerable scholarly speculation. Some believe the poet suffered from religious oppression
at the school; others contend the curriculum was not challenging. Still others argue that she
was too homesick to continue to live apart from her family. One possibility that bears noting
is that most young women did not return to the seminary for a second or third year. Societal
attitudes at the time maintained that women did not need higher education since their primary
adult responsibilities would center on domestic life. Less than 20 percent of the students
during Dickinson’s year returned to the seminary for additional study. Many of them married
missionaries or became teachers in the United States, as did the poet’s cousin, or in schools
abroad established by the American Board of Missions. Whatever the reason Dickinson chose
to leave Mount Holyoke, the seminary and its formidable leader, Mary Lyon, left the poet
with an enduring legacy: the belief that women were capable of and entitled to a life of the
mind.

I have attached the full poem (202) here:

“Faith” is a fine invention

For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency!
This poem was most likely influenced by her time at these institutions. Emily Dickinson,
much like her modern counterpart, Sylvia Plath, breaks the general stereotype about poets’,
especially female poets’ inclination towards the Arts. Both these poets were highly intelligent
and loved, appreciated and excelled in the Sciences.

Her Life After Returning from The

Seminary
As discussed before, Dickinson returned back from the Seminary after attending it for only
one year. She stayed at the seminary for only ten months. Although she liked the girls at
Holyoke, Dickinson made no lasting friendships there. The explanations for her brief stay at
Holyoke differ considerably: either she was in poor health, her father wanted to have her at
home, she rebelled against the evangelical fervour present at the school, she disliked the
discipline-minded teachers, or she was simply homesick. Whatever the reasons for leaving
Holyoke, her brother Austin appeared on March 25, 1848, to "bring her home at all
events". Back in Amherst, Dickinson occupied her time with household activities. She took
up baking for the family and enjoyed attending local events and activities in the budding
college town.

Her Life as a Recluse

To begin to understand the reclusiveness of the American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-
1886) requires empathy with her personality and with what she crafted from her psychology
and life experiences. As her personality defined itself over the years, she shaped the
reclusion for which she became famous. Poetry and her talent and creativity refined and
confirmed to her, like ongoing feedback, her distinct view of solitude and the universe.

This is not to deny the valid argument of many feminist literary scholars who note that men
writers are seen as using literary creativity to transcend their circumstances, while women
writers are seen as using that creativity merely to cope. Emily Dickinson is indeed probably
the greatest American poet and a most original voice, and the fact that she never published or
intended to publish her poems is a strong statement of "art for art's sake," of creativity for
personal transcendence versus fame and the need for external forces to validate her identity
and values. This motive is enough to put Dickinson in an estimable status.

When she submitted a few poems to a leading scholar and critic of the day (Thomas
Wentworth Higginson) for his opinion as to whether her poems "breathed," she received a
discouraging note saying that the poems were "not for publication." He was to call them
strange and bizarre in later years, though not directly to Dickinson. Her reply was bold and
confident:

I smile when you suggest that I delay "to publish" -- that being foreign to my thought, as
Firmament to Fin.

It was at this point in her life (1862) that she determined to pursue her art the more
vigorously, eventually producing 1, 775 poems up to her death at 55, but unawares to
anyone, even to her closest kin. And with the perfection of her art followed the perfection of
reclusion.

The clues to Emily Dickinson's personality begin early in her life. Her reclusiveness was the
result of an intensely-lived private world that she felt no one could share or comprehend. Her
father was a conservative personality, unsuccessful in many worldly pursuits but respected
for his consistent integrity. He was overprotective of his wife and daughters to an extreme,
intellectually dull, and personally stubborn. Hence, despite his driving need for conformity
and public repute, he refused until close to his deathbed to affirm the Christian
Evangelicalism of his day, to the discomfit of all his "saved" colleagues and associates. The
patriarch ruled the household with a looming presence, though often away on legal, political,
and business affairs that never enhanced his effectiveness in local Amherst or Massachusetts
society.

Emily Dickinson's mother fit the role of traditional housewife. Her mother was gentle and
soft-spoken but a neurasthenic overwhelmed by her husband yet with an organizational skill
upon which he depended. She suffered the same psychological distance from her children
that her husband did, for different reasons, being perpetually anxious, sickly and made small.
Dickinson was to write that she was like a motherless child, except when the relationship
reversed during her mother's last years as an invalid, when daughter became mother and
mother became childlike.

Dickinson recorded her perception of marriage based upon the observation of her parent,
where the poem refers to marriage as a kind of burial at sea, the distinct persona of the
woman, whether "pearl or weed" fathoms below the surface:

She rose to His Requirement -- dropt

The Playthings of Her Life
To take the honorable Work
Of Woman, and of Wife -- ...

Her Relationship with Others

Sue Gilbert

Four months before her twentieth birthday, Emily Dickinson met the person who became her
first love and remained her greatest — an orphaned mathematician-in-training by the name of
Susan Gilbert, nine days her junior. Throughout the poet’s life, Susan would be her muse, her
mentor, her primary reader and editor, her fiercest lifelong attachment, her “Only Woman in
the World.” Susan Gilbert had settled in Amherst, to be near her sister, after graduating from
the Utica Female Academy — one of a handful of academically rigorous educational
institutions available to women at the time. She entered Dickinson’s life in the summer of
1850, which the poet would later remember as the season “when love first began, on the step
at the front door, and under the Evergreens.”

Poised and serious at twenty, dressed in black for the sister who had just died in childbirth
and who had been her maternal figure since their parents’ death, Susan cast a double
enchantment on Emily and Austin Dickinson. Sister and brother alike were taken with her
poised erudition and her Uranian handsomeness — her flat, full lips and dark eyes were not
exactly masculine, her unchiselled oval face and low forehead not exactly feminine.

“She loved with all her might,” a girlhood friend of Dickinson’s would recall after the poet’s
death, “and we all knew her truth and trusted her love.” No one knew that love more
intimately, nor had reason to trust it more durably, than Susan. Where Austin’s love washed
over her with the stormy surface waves of desire, Emily’s carried her with the deep currents
of devotion — a love Dickinson would compare to the loves of Dante for Beatrice and Swift
for Stella. To Susan, Dickinson would write her most passionate letters and dedicate her best-
beloved poems; to Susan she would steady herself, to her shore she would return again and
again, writing in the final years of her life:

Show me Eternity, and I will show you Memory —

Both in one package lain
And lifted back again —
Be Sue — while I am Emily —
Be next — what you have ever been — Infinity.

Something of the infinite would always remain between them. Thirty years into the
relationship, Susan would give Emily a book for Christmas — Disraeli’s romance
novel Endymion, titled after the famous Keats poem that begins with the line “A thing of
beauty is a joy for ever” — inscribed to “Emily, Whom not seeing, I still love.”

Lavinia Norcross Dickinson

One of the most significant people in Emily Dickinson’s life was her sister Lavinia. Born two
years after Emily, on February 28, 1833, the two were raised as if of an age. They
began attending Amherst Academy together in the spring of 1841 at ages ten and eight, and
shared a room and a bed into their twenties. Each, however, had her own circle of friends and
very different personality. As Emily once told a friend, “if we had come up for the first time
from two wells where we had hitherto been bred her astonishment would not be greater at
some things I say” (Sewall, Lyman Letters, 70).
Vinnie grew to be the practical sister, who did the errands and managed the housekeeping. “I
don’t see much of Vinnie – she’s mostly dusting stairs!” (L176) Emily once sighed. Clever
and pretty, musical and an accomplished mimic, Vinnie had a sharp tongue and sometimes
shaded the truth, nor was she a serious student. After eight years at Amherst Academy and
two terms imbibing an “abbreviated course” at Ipswich Academy, she settled into an active
social life in Amherst for several years. Her friendly flirtatiousness attracted the Amherst
College students, but despite several proposals of marriage, including a long-term
“understanding” with the Dickinsons’ friend Joseph Lyman, Vinnie, like her sister, remained
unwed. Lavinia Dickinson died at age 66 of an “enlarged heart” on August 31, 1899. Her
health and spirits suffered greatly the last two years from the strain of the lawsuit with Mabel
Loomis and David Todd, the death of her nephew Ned, and recriminations that flew between
the Homestead and The Evergreens.

Austin Dickinson

The world of the close-knit Dickinson family revolved around Austin. The oldest of the three
Dickinson children, William Austin Dickinson was born on April 16, 1829, about a year and
half before his sister Emily.

Emily Dickinson was especially close to her brother in their youth. Her letters to him when
he was away from home reveal their shared interests in intellectual pursuits, nature, and local
affairs, as well as Emily’s—indeed the entire household’s—deep affection for him: “Our
apples are ripening fast—I am fully convinced that with your approbation they will not
only pick themselves, but arrange one another in baskets, and present themselves to be eaten”
(L48).

After Austin settled into The Evergreens, his relationship with Emily changed. With his
attention pulled in other directions, he had less time for sisterly concerns. Once, when Austin
stayed at the Homestead while his wife and children were out of town, Emily noted: “It
seemed peculiar—pathetic—and Antediluvian. We missed him while he was with us and
missed him when he was gone” (L432). Yet Austin did care for his sisters, especially after
their parents’ deaths, and he was by Emily’s side when she died.

Austin’s personal life was complicated. Despite the joy that their children brought to the
household, Susan and Austin did not maintain that joy in their own relationship. In 1882
Austin met Mabel Loomis Todd, an accomplished young woman twenty-seven years his
junior and the wife of an Amherst College astronomy professor. The two fell in love and
were involved in a deeply committed relationship for almost thirteen years, although each
remained married and the affair was known to their spouses.

While Austin was not directly involved in the posthumous editing of his sister’s poetry, his
affair with Todd, who served as a principal editor of Dickinson’s work, created additional
tensions with his wife and surviving sister. Austin died from heart failure on August 16,
1895. He was 66.

Emily Norcross Dickinson

Emily Norcross Dickinson was born in Monson, Massachusetts, on July 3, 1804, to Betsy Fay
and Joel Norcross. The eldest daughter of nine children, Emily Norcross had an extraordinary
education for a young woman in the early nineteenth century. From age seven to nineteen,
she attended co-educational Monson Academy, which her father had helped to found. She
then went to a New Haven, Connecticut, boarding school for one term.

In 1826 Emily Norcross began a courtship with Edward Dickinson. Unlike her future
husband or her daughter the poet, Emily Norcross Dickinson had little interest in writing.
Edward sent her seventy letters and she responded with only twenty-four extant replies.
When her fiancé inquired about her lack of writing Emily stated, “I am sensible that I have
never exercised that freedom [of expression] which I presume you have desired me to”

After a two-year courtship the couple married on May 6, 1828. Eleven months later Emily
Norcross Dickinson gave birth to their first child, William Austin Dickinson. In the fall of
1830 the Dickinsons moved into the Homestead in Amherst where Emily gave birth to their
two daughters: Emily in 1830 and Lavinia (Vinnie) in 1833.

Emily Norcross Dickinson kept an immaculate house and was praised for her cooking. She
appears to have had little interest in family conversations on politics, history and literature
(though she was capable) but instead focused on housekeeping and gardening. She
particularly loved roses of all varieties and was also known for her figs, a difficult fruit to
grow in the western Massachusetts climate.
Although she suffered one severe bout of depression after the family moved back to the
Homestead in 1855, Emily Norcross Dickinson was in good physical health and outlived
most of her siblings. Almost a year to the day after her husband’s death in 1874, Mrs.
Dickinson had a stroke that left her paralyzed. For the next seven years, until her death on
November 14, 1882, her daughters took care of their mother. Later the poet wrote of her
mother: “When we were Children and she journeyed, she always brought us something. Now,
would she bring us but herself, what an only Gift”

Edward Dickinson

“His Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists.”

– Emily Dickinson to T.W. Higginson, July 1874 (L418)

Edward Dickinson embraced the conservative Whig political party and embodied its ethics of
responsibility, fairness, and personal restraint to a point that contemporaries found his
demeanor severe and unyielding. He took his role as head of his family seriously, and within
his home his decisions and his word were law. An incident Emily Dickinson described speaks
volumes about life within her home: “I never knew how to tell time by the clock till I was 15.
My father thought he had taught me but I did not understand & I was afraid to say I did not &
afraid to ask anyone else lest he should know” (L342b).

During the time Edward was establishing his legal practice, his father’s great effort and
financial overcommitment in helping found Amherst College led to the collapse of the
family’s wealth in land holdings. Within a few years all members of his immediate family,
one way or another, left Amherst for the rest of their lives. Edward remained, devoting
himself to his legal career and laboring to restore his father’s blighted reputation as well as to
regain some of his family’s financial well-being.
Edward for over forty-five years led a disciplined, civic-minded public life that included
several times representing Amherst in the state legislature, serving thirty-seven years as
treasurer of Amherst College, and being elected to the Thirty-third Congress from his region.
He was a prominent citizen, active in several reform societies, on the board of regional
institutions, and involved in major civic improvements, such as leading the effort to bring the
railroad to town in the mid 1850s.
Ever respectful of her father’s nature (“the straightest engine” that “never played” [L360]),
Dickinson obeyed him as a child, but found ways to rebel or circumvent him as a young
woman, and finally, with wit and occasional exasperation, learned to accommodate with his
autocratic ways.

Her early resistance slowly shifted to a mutual respect, and finally subsided after his death in
pathos, love, and awe. Despite his public involvements, the poet viewed her father as an
isolated, solitary figure, “the oldest and the oddest sort of foreigner,” she told a friend
(Sewall, The Lyman Letters, p. 70), a man who read “lonely & rigorous books” (L342a), yet
who made sure the birds were fed in winter.

Edward Dickinson’s lonely death in a Boston boardinghouse following his collapse while
giving a speech in the state legislature the hot morning of June 6, 1874, was unbearable to the
whole family. The entire town closed down on the afternoon of his funeral, and his eldest
daughter later paid this tribute: “Lay this Laurel on the one\ Too intrinsic for Renown -\
Laurel – vail your deathless Tree -\ Him you chasten – that is he -” (Fr1428).

Emily Dickinson did not leave her room for his funeral downstairs and attended it in the
privacy of her own chambers.

Frances and Louisa Norcross

Frances and Louisa Norcross were Emily Dickinson’s first cousins, the daughters of Emily
Norcross Dickinson’s favourite sister, Lavinia Norcross Norcross. They were born on August
4, 1847, and April 17, 1842, respectively. Fanny and Loo, as Emily affectionately called
them, are considered to have been some of Dickinson’s closest friends. When the cousins
were orphaned in 1863, Dickinson offered her home as a refuge: “What shall I tell these
darlings except that my father and mother are half their father and mother, and my home is
half theirs, whenever, and for as long as, they will. . .” (L278).
Thomas Gilbert Dickinson

Thomas Gilbert Dickinson, Emily Dickinson’s second nephew, was born on August 1, 1875.
Susan and Austin Dickinson had been married for almost twenty years when their third child
was born; their eldest Ned was already fourteen and daughter Mattie, eight, by then. The
whole family doted on “little Gib.” Many of Ned’s letters, for example, describe the antics of
his little brother with clear pride and affection: “Gib is all right and as naughty as ever,” he
declares in a letter to their mother (Jan 11, 1879). “Gilbert has a most tremendous reputation
for brilliant remarks out here,” he boasts in another (Oct 10, 1881). Emily Dickinson’s letters
suggest that she, too, took great pleasure in her youngest nephew’s beguiling wiles.

Martha Dickinson

Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi, or Mattie, was born on November 30, 1866, the only
daughter of Austin and Susan Dickinson. After her two brothers’ early deaths and the deaths
of her parents, she became the last surviving member of the Dickinson line.
In her early thirties, Bianchi began writing poetry. Her work appeared in numerous
publications, including Harper’s and The Atlantic Monthly. She also wrote several novels,
including The Cuckoo’s Nest (1909), A Cossack Lover (1911) and The Kiss of
Apollo (1915).

Bianchi, however, is best known for her work editing her aunt’s poetry. After her mother
Susan and her aunt Lavinia died, Bianchi inherited the Dickinson manuscripts that remained
in her family (the other significant portion of the manuscripts was held by Mabel Loomis
Todd). In 1914 Bianchi published The Single Hound: Poems of Emily Dickinson, which
helped revive interest in her aunt’s work. She published several more books of Dickinson’s
poetry and letters as well her own reminiscences about her aunt. Bianchi and her secretary,
Alfred Leete Hampson, like editors before them, edited Dickinson’s poetry with the intent of
making it easier to read by removing dashes and changing line breaks. Some of Bianchi’s
collections of Dickinson’s poems may still be found at bookstores today.
Her Few Published Works, Samuel
Bowles and her view on Fame
Emily Dickinson was the definition of a writer. She did it because she needed to, not for fame
or fortune. In fact, she wanted her many books of poetry to be burned after her death, a last
wish that her family did not adhere to. She wrote quite a few poems about the triviality of
fame. Emily wasn’t the kind of person who enjoyed the spotlight. She wasn’t the kind of
woman who begged to be noticed. She wanted to be a nobody:

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you—Nobody—too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise—you know!
How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one’s name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!

Samuel Bowles was the owner and editor-in-chief of the Springfield Republican, New
England’s most influential newspaper of the day. Under Bowles’s direction, the paper
became one of the country’s “most progressive and influential” newspapers (Habegger, p.
377). Progressive in his own politics, he helped to establish the Republican party, supported
the antislavery movement, and advocated for social reform on a number of fronts.

Emily Dickinson’s friendship with Bowles began on a good note. She wrote to Bowles
shortly after meeting him at The Evergreens: “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. Tonight looks
like ‘Jerusalem.’ I think Jerusalem must be like Sue’s Drawing Room, when we are talking
and laughing there, and you and Mrs Bowles are by” (L189). About fifty letters to Bowles
(some also written to his wife, Mary) survive, with the majority written during 1861 and
1862, a particularly difficult time for Dickinson.
Bowles was one of the primary recipients of Dickinson’s poems—about 40 in all. Several of
the poems, written in the early 1860s, allude to the turmoil she was experiencing during that
time but do not disclose its specific nature. After the text of her poem “Title divine—is
mine! / The Wife without the sign,” she wrote to Bowles: “Here’s – what I had to ‘tell you’ –
You will tell no other? Honor – is it’s [sic] own pawn—” (L 250; Fr 194). Although scholars
generally agree that Dickinson’s relationship with Bowles was one of the most significant in
her life, interpretations of the nature of their friendship vary. While some feel he is a primary
candidate for the Master figure, others argue he was simply a close friend whom she trusted
enough to share her deepest troubles.
Although Bowles remained good friends with Austin and Susan, Emily and Bowles may have
endured a long breach that was finally repaired when Edward Dickinson died in 1874.
Bowles was the only person outside of the family to speak with the now reclusive poet at the
funeral, and he sent flowers to the family each year on the anniversary of Edward’s death.
When Samuel Bowles himself died early in 1878, Dickinson wrote to his widow: “Dear ‘Mr.
Sam’ is very near, these midwinter days. When purples come on Pelham, in the afternoon we
say ‘Mr. Bowles’s colors'” (L 536). His loss, like that of Dickinson’s father, was one of a
number that the poet endured with great sadness in her own final years.
Despite Bowles’s prominent position at the Republican, none of the poems that he is known
to have received from Dickinson are among the seven published in the Republican during her
lifetime. It remains unknown how those poems made their way to the paper.

Below is a list of works known to have been published during Dickinson’s lifetime (one letter
and ten poems). Scholars believe that Dickinson did not authorize any of these publications.
All poems were published without attribution.

1850
“Magnum bonum, harem scarum”
A valentine letter published in Amherst College Indicator, February (L34)

1852
“‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’”
Published in Springfield Daily Republican (February 20)
Titled “A Valentine”
1858
“Nobody knows this little rose -”
First published Springfield Daily Republican (August 2)
Titled “To Mrs -, with a Rose.”

1861
“I taste a liquor never brewed- ”
First published Springfield Daily Republican (May 4)
Titled “The May-Wine”

1862
“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers – ”
First published in Springfield Daily Republican (March 1)
Titled “The Sleeping”

1864
“Blazing in Gold, and quenching in Purple”
First published in Drum Beat, Brooklyn, NY (February 29)
Titled “Sunset”
“Flowers-Well- if anybody”
First published in Drum Beat, Brooklyn, NY (March 2)
Titled “Flowers”
“These are the days when Birds come back- ”
First published in Drum Beat, Brooklyn, NY (March 11)
Titled “October”
“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church- ”
First published in Round Table, New York (March 12)
Titled “My Sabbath”
“Success is counted sweetest”
First published in Brooklyn Daily Union (April 27, untitled)
1866
“A narrow Fellow in the Grass”
First published in Springfield Daily Republican (February 14)
Titled “The Snake”
1878
“Success is counted sweetest” (only known publication in a book)
Published in A Masque of Poets (Boston: Roberts Bros.)

Her work: Overview

Major Characteristics of Dickinson’s
Poetry
“I’ll tell you how the Sun rose –
A Ribbon at a time –
The steeples swam in Amethyst
The news, like Squirrels, ran –
The Hills untied their Bonnets –
The Bobolinks – begun –
Then I said softly to myself –
“That must have been the Sun”!
But how he set – I know not –
There seemed a purple stile
That little Yellow boys and girls
Were climbing all the while –
Till when they reached the other side –
A Dominie in Gray –
Put gently up the evening Bars –
And led the flock away –“
(Fr204)
Theme and Tone
Like most writers, Emily Dickinson wrote about what she knew and about what intrigued her.
A keen observer, she used images from nature, religion, law, music, commerce, medicine,
fashion, and domestic activities to probe universal themes: the wonders of nature, the identity
of the self, death and immortality, and love. In this poem she probes nature’s mysteries
through the lens of the rising and setting sun.

Sometimes with humor, sometimes with pathos, Dickinson writes about her subjects.
Remembering that she had a strong wit often helps to discern the tone behind her words.

Form and Style

Dickinson’s poems are lyrics, generally defined as short poems with a single speaker (not
necessarily the poet) who expresses thought and feeling. As in most lyric poetry, the speaker
in Dickinson’s poems is often identified in the first person,“I.” Dickinson reminded a reader
that the “I” in her poetry does not necessarily speak for the poet herself: “When I state
myself, as the Representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person”
(L268). In this poem the “I” addresses the reader as “you.”

Like just about all of Dickinson’s poems, this poem has no title. Emily Dickinson titled fewer
than 10 of her almost 1800 poems. Her poems are now generally known by their first lines or
by the numbers assigned to them by posthumous editors.

For some of Dickinson’s poems, more than one manuscript version exists. “I’ll tell you how
the Sun rose” exists in two manuscripts. In one, the poem is broken into four stanzas of four
lines each; in the other, as you see here, there are no stanza breaks.

The poem describes the natural phenomena of sunrise and sunset, but it also describes the
difficulties of perceiving the world around us. Initially, “I” exhibits confidence in describing
a sunrise. As the poem, like the day, continues, “I” becomes less certain about what it
knows: “But how he [the sun] set – I know not – / There seemed a purple stile.”
One of Dickinson’s special gifts as a poet is her ability to describe abstract concepts with
concrete images. In many Dickinson poems, abstract ideas and material things are used to
explain each other, but the relation between them remains complex and unpredictable. Here
the sunrise is described in terms of a small village, with church steeples, town news, and
ladies’ bonnets. The sunset is characterized as the gathering home of a flock. The shifting
tone between the beginning and the end of the poem, the speaker’s more confident telling of
the sun’s rise than of how its sets, suggests that more abstract questions about the mystery of
death lurk within these images.

Meter and Rhyme

The meter, or the rhythm of the poem, is usually determined not just by the number of
syllables in a line but by how the syllables are accented. Dickinson’s verse is often associated
with common meter, which is defined by alternating lines of eight syllables and six syllables
(8686). In common meter, the syllables usually alternate between unstressed (indicated by a ˘
over the syllable) and stressed (′). This pattern–one of several types of metrical “feet”–is
known as an “iamb.” Common meter is often used in sung music, especially hymns (think
“Amazing Grace”). {Below is an example of common meter from “I’ll tell you how the Sun
rose.”}

However, as Cristanne Miller writes in Reading in Time: Emily Dickinson and the Nineteenth
Century, Emily Dickinson experimented with a variety of metrical and stanzaic forms,
including short meter (6686) and the ballad stanza, which depends more on beats per line
(usually 4 alternating with 3) than on exact syllable counts. Even in common meter, she was
not always strict about the number of syllables per line, as the first line in “I’ll tell you how
the Sun rose” demonstrates.

As with meter, Dickinson’s employment of rhyme is experimental and often not exact.
Rhyme that is not perfect is called “slant rhyme” or “approximate rhyme.” Slant rhyme, or no
rhyme at all, is quite common in modern poetry, but it was less often used in poetry written
by Dickinson’s contemporaries. In this poem, for example, we would expect “time” to rhyme
with “ran.”
Punctuation and Syntax
Dickinson most often punctuated her poems with dashes, rather than the more expected array
of periods, commas, and other punctuation marks. She also capitalized interior words, not
just words at the beginning of a line. Her reasons are not entirely clear.

Both the use of dashes and the use of capitals to stress and personify common nouns were
condoned by the grammar text (William Harvey Wells’ Grammar of the English Language)
that Mount Holyoke Female Seminary adopted and that Dickinson undoubtedly studied to
prepare herself for entrance to that school. In addition, the dash was liberally used by many
writers, as correspondence from the mid-nineteenth-century demonstrates. While Dickinson
was far from the only person to employ it, she may have been the only poet to depend upon
it.

While Dickinson’s dashes often stand in for more varied punctuation, at other times they
serve as bridges between sections of the poem—bridges that are not otherwise readily
apparent. Dickinson may also have intended for the dashes to indicate pauses when reading
the poem aloud.

Diction
Dickinson’s editing process often focused on word choice rather than on experiments with
form or structure. She recorded variant wordings with a “+” footnote on her manuscript.
Sometimes words with radically different meanings are suggested as possible alternatives.
Dickinson changed no words between the two versions of “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose.”

Because Dickinson did not publish her poems, she did not have to choose among the different
versions of her poems, or among her variant words, to create a “finished” poem. This lack of
final authorial choices posed a major challenge to Dickinson’s subsequent editors.

Analysing Her Work

I.

They shut me up in Prose –

As when a little Girl

They put me in the Closet –

Because they liked me "still" –

Still! Could themself have peeped –

And seen my Brain – go round –

They might as wise have lodged a Bird

For Treason – in the Pound –

Emily Dickinson, c. 1862

This poem speaks volumes about her feelings about the society of that time and her rebellion
towards it. She mentions that “they” shut her up in Prose which is an interesting metaphor
because unlike poetry, it is rigid and binding. In fact, even Emily Dickinson’s style of poetry
breaks the rules of her era. Her eccentric use of dashes and unconventional Capitalization are
hence, symbolic of her rebellion. One can appreciate Emily Dickinson because of this quiet
but extremely powerful rebellion of hers just through her words. Even though her poems are
now 300 years old, they are as relevant when read today and make her remembered as one of
the Greatest poets to have been.

This poem is also a great example of how Emily Dickinson was a great Feminist writer. She
manages to rebut all social norms in a manner that is both subtle and bold. She talks about the
patriarchal ‘closet’ that a girl is put in and the patriarchal expectation that a woman must be
still. The lines – “Still! Could themself have peeped –
And seen my Brain – go round –’’ show an intelligent rebuttal of this expectation. She might
be a recluse and may have been still for most of her life, but her mind was ever flowing with
the greatest poetry ever written.

II.

HOPE IS THE “THING” WITH FEATHERS

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops - at all –

The speaker defines "Hope" as a feathered creature that dwells inside the human spirit. It is
not mentioned what this creature is to leave an impression of magic.
This feathery thing sings a wordless tune, not stopping under any circumstances.

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

Its tune sounds best when heard in fierce winds. Only an incredibly severe storm could stop
this bird from singing. The "Hope" bird has made many people feel warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me

The speaker has heard the bird's singing in the coldest places, and on the weirdest seas.
But in the speaker's experiences, even the most extreme ones, the bird has never asked for
anything in return.
In, summary, the poem argues that hope is miraculous and almost impossible to defeat.
Furthermore, hope never asks for anything in return—it costs nothing for people to maintain
hope. By extension, then, “Hope is the thing with feathers” implores its readers to make good
use of hope—and to see it as an essential, deeply valuable part of themselves.

The next poem will help us explore another aspect of Dickinson’s mind, that is, her aversion
with the feeling of being known. This may explain the reason she did not publish any
significant number of her poems when she was alive.

III.

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

The poem begins with an introduction from the speaker, who announces themselves as
“Nobody!” This is smart word play. The Nobody in capital lets the reader interpret it as the
speaker’s name.
This speaker then asks the identity of the addressee—which could be the reader—and if
they’re "Nobody" too.
Assuming that the answer is affirmative, the speaker expresses that together they make a
“pair” of “Nobodies.”
The speaker instructs the addressee not to tell anyone about this, because other people would
make a fuss—something they assume the addressee already knows.
“How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –"

The speaker talks about how boring it would be to be a “Somebody.” It would leave nothing
private. The speaker then changes this adjective from “boring” to “public”. The way she says
it makes it sound like something distasteful. The speaker likens being a somebody to being a
frog. Like a frog, they are open to the public eye that can monitor the frog’s activities day by
day. This helps us understand Emily’s life as a recluse.

“To tell one's name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog!”

“Somebodies” spend their time talking themselves up to anyone who will give them attention
and admire them, comparable to frogs making their noises in a swamp. Thus, this adds one
more thing that the speaker detests about being a Somebody, that is, having a name. This is
an interesting hint to the very first line of the poem where there is a double entendre using the
word Nobody: which can either mean being literally nobody or being someone called
Nobody.
Hence, in its essence, the poem expresses hatred towards the feeling of being somebody and
towards socially active people who live up to the attributes mentioned by her in the poem.

Another poem that explores this theme is:

IV.

Fame is a fickle food

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a

Guest but not

The second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect

And with ironic caw

Flap past it to the Farmer's Corn –

Men eat of it and die.

IV.

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air -

Between the Heaves of Storm –

I could hear a fly buzzing around the room at the moment I died. The room felt very still, like
the calm, tense air in between the gusts of a storm.

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset - when the King

Be witnessed - in the Room -

The people gathered around me had cried until they had no tears left, and everyone seemed
like they were holding their breath, waiting for my final moment and anticipating the arrival
of God in the room.

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away

What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was

There interposed a Fly -

I had signed a will that gave away all my possessions, dividing up all the parts of my life
that could be divided up. And then, suddenly, a fly interrupted the proceedings.

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -

Between the light - and me -

And then the Windows failed - and then

I could not see to see -

The fly looked blue and buzzed around the room erratically. It flew in front of the light,
blocking it. Then the light from the windows faded away, and I could not see anything at all.

“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” attempts to imagine the transition between life and death.
While the poem does have questions about whether there is an afterlife, it conveys its
uncertainty by focusing on the actual moment of death itself. Told from the perspective of
someone who seems to have already died, the poem is mysterious and paradoxical—
obviously, no one has yet been able to describe what it feels like to actually die! Dickinson
tries to imagine it anyway—and her take is decidedly less sentimental than most, as the
speaker’s final moments are interrupted by a buzzing fly. Perhaps this suggests the sheer
mundanity of mortality—there is nothing so ordinary as a bug—or that no matter how well
one prepares to face the other side, it’s impossible to be ready for something unknowable.

V.
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess – in the Ring –

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –

We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –

The Dews drew quivering and Chill –

For only Gossamer, my Gown –

My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground –

The Roof was scarcely visible –

The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses' Heads

Were toward Eternity –

This poem very astoundingly personifies death. “Because I could not stop for death” is an
exploration of both the inevitability of death and the uncertainties that surround what happens
when people actually die. In the poem, a woman takes a ride with a personified “Death” in
his carriage, by all likelihood heading towards her place in the afterlife. The poem’s matter-
of-fact tone, which underplays the fantastical nature of what is happening, quickly establishes
this journey as something beyond the speaker’s control. It's not clear if the speaker is already
dead, or she is traveling towards death. Either way, her death is presented as something
natural, strange, and inescapable.
This poem is my personal favourite because when I see poets discuss and romanticise death,
they are very much using the pleasures of living to do so. This then comes off as a celebration
of life instead.

The next poem is another beautiful piece that is themed around death.

VI
I FELT A FUNERAL IN MY BRAIN

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through –

The speaker feels as though a funeral service is taking place within his or her own mind. It
feels like the funeral attendees are pacing back and forth inside the speaker's head, so much
so that whatever they're walking on might break under the strain and then cause reason itself
to fall through the newly created hole in the speaker's mind.

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My mind was going numb –

The mourners finally take their seats for the funeral service. Yet this service doesn't contain
any words. Instead, the speaker can only make out a repetitive, drum-like noise. This noise
overwhelms this speaker, causing the speaker's mind to go blank, as if numb.

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

Now the service ends and the funeral procession begins. The mourners lift a coffin and carry
it as they walk across the speaker's soul, which creaks like an old wooden floor. Everyone in
the funeral procession wears heavy boots made out of lead, which is why their walking once
again puts such a strain on the speaker's mind. Suddenly, there's the sound of a bell ringing,
but rather than coming from a single source it seems to be coming from the whole world at
once.

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here -

Even the sky (and possibly Heaven itself) rings like a bell. The speaker says that people exist
only to listen to the world's ringing. The speaker—whose mind has been reduced to a numb
silence—feels as though he or she is no longer human but instead has become some strange
creature. The speaker is alone in his or her own body and mind, as if shipwrecked there.

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -

Finally, one of the metaphorical floorboards in the speaker's rational mind does
break, creating a hole through which the speaker falls further and further down. While falling,
the speaker seems to collide with entire worlds, until the speaker's mind shuts down
altogether and the speaker is no longer able to understand anything at all. Just as the speaker
is about the say what comes after this state, the poem ends.

Dickinson's poem depicts the difficulty of understanding the mysterious thoughts and feelings
that happen inside people. Often interpreted as chronicling a nightmarish descent into
madness, the poem can be read as depicting the terror and helplessness that accompany losing
one’s grip on reality.