"The Poetess in White": How Society Smothered Emily Dickinson's Genius

“Matty: here’s freedom” Emily Dickinson said to her niece as they entered her bedroom, Dickinson turning around to mimic locking her bedroom door with an imaginary key, a gesture symbolic of her hermetic existence. Standing there in 1855 neither woman could have predicted that this bedroom would fascinate scholars of Dickinson’s poetry for centuries after her death. It was secluded within this room that Dickinson spent most of her life, a fact that has prompted much discussion and research. Particularly due to the staggering discovery one thousand eight hundred unpublished poems found carefully bound together and tucked away in her desk. Whilst she was an awe-inspiring genius and pioneer of an unconventional poetic style, the way Dickinson was, and still is remembered does not do her justice. Her reclusiveness is taken to signify girlish fearfulness and mental instability, the white robes she donned are seen as symbols of purity and naivety, and her interest in sombre themes is perceived to be the result of a tragic affair with a man, a poignant reminder of the male-centred society she lived in, and an incorrect hypothesis at that. It seems that the views of the patriarchal society of Dickinson’s time have not yet been overturned, since her true genius remains shrouded by the femininized fabrication of her character, popularly known as ‘the poetess in white’.

(How did society react to her isolation & poetry?)

Emily Dickinson’s choice to remain secluded drastically affected her public image. Thomas Higginson, a contemporary of Dickinson and one of her editors, described her as “partially cracked”, a view that soon became a popular trend. Many of her later biographers have latched onto Higginson’s depiction and portray Dickinson as unstable or ill. One of her biographers, Lyndall Gordon, even attributes her seclusion to epilepsy[i], though he lacked any concrete evidence to support his assertion. Given the sombre themes of mental illness and suicide that many of Dickinson’s poems explore, it is certainly likely that she dealt with depression at some point in her life, though if she did, the link between this and her seclusion is not explicit. Much research has been undertaken to find a man with whom Dickinson can be associated romantically in a misguided attempt to find the root of her sorrow. No trace of such a man has been found. It has more recently been suggested that several of Dickinson’s poems indicate that the poet was attracted to women, a fact that was naturally overlooked in favour of a male centrepiece. Whilst many of these theories are more fiction than fact, it is unsurprising that they have arisen considering the extent to which Dickinson isolated herself. Indeed, she barely left her home and did not leave the town of Amherst more than three times from 1847 until her death in 1886. When her friend and mentor, T.W. Higginson, suggested Dickinson visit him in Boston she firmly replied, “I do not cross my father’s ground to any house or town.” Contrary to popular opinion, however, Dickinson did not fear the outside world and was in no way shy or naïve. She was also far less introverted than is imagined, maintaining a network of connections from behind locked doors. In reality, Emily Dickinson was made to appear more fragile than she truly was due to popular desire for her to fit the female writer’s trope. The sentiment behind this trope was rooted in the belief that women’s role in society was to stay at home, raise children and provide entertainment for guests. As such, women were expected to write light-hearted, often romantic literature and looked down upon if they dared stray too far into darker themes. George Eliot’s essay Silly Novels by Lady Novelists¸ published during Dickinson’s lifetime, criticises the majority of novels written by and for women. The title alone encapsulates the 19th century public opinion that women writers were frivolous and naïve and explains why Dickinson’s image was so quickly and easily distorted.

It is frequently assumed that Dickinson did not publish the vast majority of her poems due to a feeling of inadequacy, fear, or naivety. This is not the case at all. Rather, it is far more likely that Dickinson was aware that the unorthodoxy of her poetry was ahead of its time and would not have been accepted by Amherst’s puritanical residents. While her unconventional thematic and linguistic choices would have alarmed 19th century readers, her use of grammar and punctuation breaks poetic norms most startlingly. Dickinson almost always punctuated her poems with a heavy-handed application of dashes, rather than the expected array of full stops and commas. She also regularly capitalised words within sentences, a choice not in accordance with the laws of grammar. These techniques are in fact what make her poems so notoriously tricky to understand. Struggling through her perplexing grammatical structures can often put off the most enthusiastic readers of her poetry, a point that may offer some explanation as to why only ten of her 1,789 poems were published.

Unsurprisingly, the few poems that were published during Dickinson’s lifetime were often modified or femininized by her publishers to be more fitting of a female writer. Moreover, in 1971, almost a century after her death, the way in which Dickinson was represented on a commemorative stamp is quite clearly inaccurate. One stamp issue sported the description ‘Some 2000 poems were found tucked away in a bureau; fifty or so were great poems.’ A rather patronising and unnecessary addition. More remarkable, however, was the poem chosen to represent Dickinson on the stamp. One of the most conventional of her poems, If I can stop one heart from breaking explores the stereotypically feminine themes of romance and altruism. The use language within the poem is rather uninspired by Dickinson’s standards and is, overall, untypical of Emily Dickinson’s provocative and philosophical poetic style. Poet Adrienne Rich goes so far as to describes it as a ‘girl scout prayer’ (p45) in her essay Vesuvius at Home[ii]. As such, the stamp is demonstrative of the distorted, verging on fictional way in which Dickinson is remembered. The poem Hope is a thing with feathers, often credited with being the most popular of Dickinson’s poems today, is likewise unrepresentative of her originality. An extended metaphor, it likens the concept of hope to a feathered bird that is permanently perched in the soul of every human. Her use of punctuation is far less startling than in most of her other poems and the message conveyed is by no means uniquely Dickinsonian. Though it is undoubtedly a beautifully crafted poem, it is more typical of the naïve and girlish character attributed to Dickinson than of the ingenious poet she truly was.

Her true nature comes through in the language and imagery she employs in her poems. Volcanic metaphors are a recurring theme of her poetry, such as in the poem My life had stood a loaded gun[iii] where she likens her smile to a ‘Vesuvian face’ letting its pleasure show. In this poem, Dickinson imagines herself as a gun, a vessel of deadly vesuvian power which she encapsulates in her final lines ‘for I have but the power to kill without the power to die’. Surprisingly, it is the masculine figure of the hunter that transforms the gun into a companion, giving it life and sentimentality. In this way, the poem subverts male and female stereotypes, a choice that is representative of Dickinson’s unorthodox style. Dickinson’s self-professed volcanic character is so integral to her life and work that Poet Adrienne Rich chose the title Vesuvius at Home for her essay about Emily Dickinson. Rich describes the way in which Dickinson’s persona was distorted by 19th century society; transformed into ‘the fragile poetess in white’ (p48). This explains how the prevailing perception of Dickinson’s ‘littleness’, used by Rich to mean fragility and immaturity, arose from her isolated lifestyle being misunderstood. Rich’s depiction of Emily Dickinson is the most rational and convincing of the various accounts that have been put forward. Furthermore, it paves the way towards reversing the inadequate interpretation of Dickinson that has so far been the most popular.

(Why did she choose to isolate herself?)

It is clear that Dickinson’s genius has been unjustly remembered and it is likely that her choice to publish only ten of her poems was driven by the knowledge that her powerful intellect and unconventional style would not have been welcomed by society. Her hermetic existence, however, remains a mystery that cannot be completely solved. Though clues can be found in her poetry and in studying accounts of her relatives, as the multitude of various yet often equally implausible responses to her isolation indicate, this mystery has no clear and concrete solution. To many of us, her hermetic existence may seem even more baffling due to the mandatory isolation we are currently living through. And, considering the hugely negative impact of isolation our current society has witnessed, it seems reasonable to suggest that bouts of depression or fear of the outside world are not strong enough reasons alone for a lifetime of seclusion. It would follow that her seclusion must have been an active and informed choice, rather than an unwanted consequence of fear and mental illness that the fabricated portrayal of the ‘poetess in white’ suggests. The combination of her potential struggle with depression and the constraints that society imposed on 19th century female writers offers the most convincing explanation for her choice. Poet Adrienne Rich’s depiction of Dickinson supports this idea. Rich states that ‘the woman who feels herself to be Vesuvius at home has need of a mask, at least, of innocuousness and of containment’ (p51). Here, Rich suggests that Dickinson’s vesuvian character had to be masked for her to live peacefully within society and continue writing poetry. Perhaps Dickinson intentionally submitted to the 19th century stereotype of ‘lady novelists’ in order to avoid the criticism that would almost certainly have ensued were her unorthodox poetry and ideas to be revealed.

Dickinson’s dark side that can be inferred from Rich’s suggestion that she intentionally concealed her ‘vesuvian’ traits finds common ground with the account of Dickinson’s editor and biographer Thomas Johnson. Johnson wrote that Dickinson often felt herself possessed by a demonic force, an assertion that appears less far-fetched when shown alongside the phrase ‘ourself behind ourself, concealed – should startle most’, taken from Dickinson’s poem One need not be a Chamber to be Haunted. Dickinson’s words point towards the concealment of her fiery traits that both Rich and Johnson remark upon. The sentiment behind her words is distinctly self-reflexive, indicating that she was aware of her more explosive qualities and was keen to suppress them. If this is true, it would follow that there is some truth to the claims that Dickinson was influenced by fear. Yet, rather than fearing the world outside the shelter of her bedroom, perhaps she feared that she did not possess the qualities her environment desired of her. Whilst it must be noted that the intricacies of this hypothesis consist of some speculation, a number of aspects are historically accurate. It is certainly true that Dickinson’s qualities and intellect would have seemed unusual to many members of the 19th century society she lived in. It is also true that Dickinson’s poetry is strikingly unconventional, a fact she was certainly aware of, and one that is supported by her choice to publish only a small number of her poems. The notion that she felt herself to be possessed by a demonic force, however, is doubtful and seems to stem only from Dickinson’s choice to explore darker themes in her poetry. If attributing provocative poetry to demons was common practice, there would be no poets left. What we can be sure of, however, is that Dickinson’s choice to live in isolation must have been driven to some extent by an awareness of her own genius, a choice formed, as Adrienne Rich states, from ‘knowing she was exceptional and knowing what she needed.’ (p41) And what she needed, was to be concealed, to live in seclusion, and use her extraordinary intellect to write poetry without distraction.

Emily Dickinson’s choice to remain within her bedroom in order to freely explore her intellect echoes the words of Virginia Woolf, composed half a century later in her extended essay A Room of One’s Own[iv]. At first glance, the similarities between Dickinson’s declaration of “here’s freedom” and Woolf’s famous phrase ‘“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”, are hard to miss. What’s more, the freedom of mind that Woolf prizes is apparent in much of Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson’s poem I dwell in possibility, offers a clear example of this. The poem imagines the poet’s house as one unconstrained by written and unwritten laws, the epitome of freedom. No cynics are allowed in as highlighted by the phrase ‘of visitors – the fairest’ and the house’s roof is ‘everlasting’, an idea that is reminiscent of the modern metaphor of the glass ceiling, a metaphor that Dickinson unknowingly turns on its head. This is where Dickinson says she dwells, highlighting the importance of one’s home as place in which expression is unconstrained. As such, the parallels between the philosophies of Woolf and Dickinson are clear. This begs the question, why is this likeness significant? The answer is simple. Both women, living in times of far more pronounced gender inequality than of the modern day, recognised the difficulties faced by female artists. Unlike their male counterparts, women were subject to a more critical eye based purely on their sex. Woolf even goes so far as to suggest that ‘Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman’, a tactic she seems to suggest was employed in order to avoid gender-based criticism. They key, as both women recognised, to being able to write without discrimination was to have private place in order to express their minds freely. For Dickinson, this could only be achieved in the secluded privacy of her own room as she herself told her niece when she said “Matty: here’s freedom.”

[i] Gordon, Lyndall. Lives like loaded guns: Emily Dickinson and her family’s feuds. Virago, 2011. Print. [ii] Rich, Adrienne. Essential Essays. California: W. Norton & Company, 2018. Print. [iii] Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1975. Print. [iv] Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One's Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929. Print.