Emily Dickinson
...she became obsessed with death at an early age when one of her dearest childhood friends, Sophia Holland, died in 1844. As an adult, Dickinson endured the pain of mourning for many dear friends and family members throughout her life. Dickinson’s poems are sometimes so obscure that it’s difficult to be certain of what she’s describing. When she uses the word “he” she could be describing God, a lover, or even death. For example, the poem “He fumbles at your Soul,” is ambiguous. We are never given an implication of what the poem is veering towards. Nevertheless, Dickinson’s poetry is rich in rhetoric and creativity. Her poetry is just as mysterious as her life was and perhaps Dickinson wanted things to turn out the way they did. It seems that even her romantic life was just as ambiguous as her poetry. Many critics believe that Dickinson was in love with Susan Gilbert, her best friend who later became her brother’s wife. There are many poems that Dickinson wrote which biographers believe to be distinctly about Susan. After a four-year break, Dickinson began to write poetry once again in 1858 with three principle themes: death, nature and Susan, about whom she wrote about ten of approximately fifty poems written in this year. With one exception, “One sister have I,” the poems Dickinson wrote about her sister-in-law are sullen and perplexed. Critics believe that Dickinson was feeling empty after Susan’s marriage to Austin, as though she lost a lover. In 1858 she describes her heart as a coffin in “It did not surprise me”(# 39): It did not surprise me— So I said—or thought— She will stir her pinions And the nest forgot, Traverse broader forests— Build in gayer boughs, Kennedy 4 Breathe in Ear more modern God’s old fashioned vows— This was but a Birdling— What and if it be One within my bosom Had departed me? This was but a story – What and if indeed There were just such a coffin In the heart instead? Paula Bennett believes that this is not an efficient poem but still helps establish how closely Dickinson’s feelings for Susan were fixed into the first stages of her poetic maturation. It seems that Dickinson connected the loss of Susan with the idea of death from the start. In “I never told the buried gold,”(#11) which Dickinson sent to Susan, she creates an obscure comparison between her brother Austin and the pirate captain Kidd, implying that he abducted Susan. It seems that Austin is depicted as a pirate-sun who cowers over and hoards his prize. Dickinson hints that he neither won nor deserved the prize he acquired. Only the speaker appreciates the gold at its true value. “The sex and sexuality of the gold”, Bennett states, “are presumably established in the poem’s third stanza. But the speaker does not dare reveal her knowledge because she is ‘too close’ to the ‘sun’.”(Bennett; 51-2) He stood as near As stood you here— A pace had been between— Kennedy 5 And also because she fears his phallic might; Did but a snake bisect the brake My life had forfeit been. If Bennett’s theory is correct, “I never told the buried gold” confirms that six years later this belief didn’t subside. It seems that despite the union of Susan and Austin, and in spite of Dickinson’s long period of depression and recluse, she was still in love with Susan and mortified by her loss. Even in 1862, Dickinson dealt with her feelings of having lost Susan indirectly through her poetry. The similarities between “The Malay—took the Pearl—”(#452) and “I never told the buried gold” are evident. In both poems, a treasure (a Pearl and gold) has been carried off by a man who cannot appreciate it and the speaker’s own anxieties and inhibitions keep her from getting involved as she stands by helplessly watching her rival carry away his prize. Not being able to contend openly, she never lets on that she “wooed it—too.”(Bennett: 53) It is believed that Dickinson had a passionate relationship with Susan Gilbert. Shewrote three times more poems to Susan than to anyone else. They became close friends and shared many interests. Their relationship soured when Susan became engaged to Austin and remained that way for two years. Susan and Austin then moved in next door to Dickinson and their relationship was rekindled given that Dickinson would send Susan (love) letters and poems. Feminist scholars who have examined these letters and poems tend to believe that the two shared more than just friendship, that in fact they shared a blatant, passionate relationship. No one knows how Susan responded to Dickinson’s letters and poems. When Dickinson died, all of her letters from Susan were destroyed, so it will never be confirmed nor denied that they had a love affair. Dickinson’s poems could suggest an eroticism that could be intentional, subconscious or perhaps even coincidental. No matter who Dickinson made have had passions for during her life, she had a truly indescribable definition of love: Kennedy 6 Love is anterior to life, Posterior to death, Initial of creation, and The exponent of breath. Just as in her poems of love, the separation she so often writes about often deals with a permanent separation: death. Death was only one more thing that Dickinson knew of which kept people apart. The death of her friends and family forced her to acknowledge the loneliness and separateness of this world. Dickinson’s preoccupation with death began when she was a young child and continued throughout her life. (Wolff: 84) She was a meditative child, sensitive and serious, and began to marvel over the mystery of death and new birth at a very early age. It was Dickinson’s belief that after death, life on earth was over in all aspects and people lost all connections with previous lives and gained morbid equality. 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 played, Their lessons scarcely done; Kennedy 7 We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible. The cornice but a mound. Since then 'tis centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity. The thing that frightened yet fascinated Dickinson the most about death was the “gradual isolation of an increasingly helpless self moving toward the horror of the utterly unknown…”(Wolff; 221). By 1884, Dickinson experienced the anguish of losing four people who were dear to her heart, her mother, her nephew Gilbert, and her close friends, J.G. Holland and Charles Wadsworth. It was in 1884 that she wrote a poem which exemplified her own collapse that very year; So give me back to Death— The death I never feared Except that it deprived of thee— And now, by Life deprived, In my own Grave I breathe And estimate its size— Its size is all that Hell can guess— Kennedy 8 And all that Heaven surmise— This is Dickinson’s personal confrontation with loss through death and death itself. It seems that Dickinson is assessing the ‘measure’ of death, looking at it from a distance, finding meaning and understanding in it, and having no fear of it. Just as death fascinated Dickinson, religion also played a perplexing part in her life and poetry. Dickinson may be represented as an agnostic, a heretic, a skeptic, and a Christian. She grew up in a Christian family, but she was not devoted to religion. As a schoolgirl, she resisted the religious stirrings of her circle. Throughout her life, it seems there were moments in which she yearned for faith. In a late poem “Those—dying then”(#1551) she wrote; Those—dying then, Knew where they went— They went to God’s Right Hand— That Hand is amputated now And God ...