Essay on Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson's unusual character and style has made her become one of the world's most famous poets throughout the 1800s. In her poems, she expresses her feelings about religion, nature, death and love. Her poems tell a great deal about her lifestyle, which was very secluded and withdrawn from society. Even though she was a famous poet, less than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst Massachusetts. She was brought up by a stern and austere father. In her childhood she was shy and already different from the others. Her family expected her to live as a Christian but she rebelled against this traditional way of life as she developed and lived by her own personal beliefs. She never tells if she believes in the existence of God, but she does say that she disagrees with the church in the poem, "Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church." She explains in this poem that any worshiping that she does only happens in her own home. Like all the Dickinson children, Emily was sent for formal education in Amherst Academy. After studying for seven years at the Amherst Academy, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst (Spengemann). She was inspired by the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson which helped her develop into a free-willed person. During the 1850s, Emily's strongest and most affectionate relationship was with Susan Gilbert. Emily wrote over three hundred letters to Susan and Susan played a primary role in Emily's creative processes (Spengemann). Soon after, Emily's mother became effectively bedridden with various chronic illnesses which eventually led to her death in 1882 (Pettinger). This took a tragic toll on Emily so she decided to revise poems that she had previously written. She made clean copies of her work and put it in manuscript books. The forty fascicles she created from 1858 through 1865 eventually held nearly eight hundred poems (Pettinger). But sadly, no one was aware of the existence of these books until after her death.
Dickinson always wrote her poems in her room as a way of escaping from the world and woman’s duties (Pettinger ). She also expresses her interest in nature, by comparing it to human behavior. This is shown in "Nature is a Haunted House," which explains that a man must come out of his puny self, which is a jar, and in order to reach the dimension of the sea which is his real self and be free (Lynn René). I think she relates most of her poems to her own life because when she was growing up she wanted to be free from religion and god. She also gives advice in the poem, "nature is what we see" by implying that like nature, humans cannot predict things in life that seem to be going well and to always remain the same (Lynn René). Dickinson’s writing style was somewhat modern. Her disregard for the rules of grammar and sentence structure is one reason twentieth century critics found her so appealing. She also left off the endings of verbs and nouns. Her style was so unique that it made her writing very recognizable. Most of Emily’s poems seem that she is fascinated by death. In her poems, “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” and “I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died,” are both about one of life's few certainties which is death. Although Dickinson wrote both poems, their ideas about what lies after death differ. In one, there appears to be life after death, but in the other there is nothing. A number of clues in each piece help to determine which poem believe in what. The clues in “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died,” point to a disbelief in an afterlife. In this poem, a woman is lying in bed with her family or friends standing all around waiting for her to die. While the family is waiting for her to pass on, she is waiting for “The King,” which symbolizes some sort of god that will take her away. As the woman dies, her eyes (or windows as

Show More

Emily Dickinson Essay

Emily Dickinson Beliefs

Emily Dickinson Conformity

Emily Dickinson Personification

Emily Dickinson Paraphrase