Emily Dickinson

Minority Culture in Literature
1. Animalistic Imagery
  1. links to Douglass & Poe
    1. The Black Cat
      1. Cat seen as symbolic of black slave minority
        "entirely black and sagacious to an astonishing degree"
        "My pets were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them"
    2. Narrative of the Life
      1. "Men and women...were ranked with horses, sheep and swine. There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children"
  2. Poem 260
    1. "How dreary - to be - Somebody!/How public - like a Frog"
      1. "Somebody" could refer to a public figure/being somebody's wife - a woman only becomes somebody when she marries
      2. animal imagery is here representative of the majority
        Frog is small and can be repressed but if loud and abrupt when free
  3. Poem 656
    1. image of the mouse
      1. "Presuming me to be a mouse"
        negative connotations of female as weak and quiet
      2. Dickinson contradicts image in letter to editor: "I have a little shape – it would not crowd your Desk – nor make much Racket as a Mouse”
        uses the image of females as modest and quiet to get her own way
        CONTRADICTORY IMAGE
  4. Image of Birds
    1. Bird song echoes poetic form
      1. Poem 861
        "Split the Lark - And you'll find the Music"
        Now, do you doubt that your bird was true?"
        rhetorical question
        Both nature and poetry extracts the truths from people and concludes in soothing sounds.
    2. Bird as personification of hope
      1. Poem 254 - "Hope is the thing with feathers"
        "Yet never, in Extremity,/ It asked a crumb - of Me"
        Nature is an ever-giving symbol of hope
        Nature relating to God OR Science - God/Science is ever-giving hope
2. Power
  1. Volcanic Imagery
  2. Recluse Status & Image
    1. Contradictory of her as a "powerful feminist"
  3. Poem 479
    1. Marriage as death/complete loss of power
      1. Image of woman being subjected to death after school life
        only clear image in poem
      2. house/domestic is the image of a grave
        "a House that seemed/A Swelling of the Ground - /The Roof was scarcely visible - /The Cornice - in the Ground
        entrapment of females in the house/domestic sphere means that their opportunities have died
      3. death is a masculine character
        "Because I could not stop for Death - /He kindly stopped for me"
        mutual agreement between women & society
      4. melancholy tone
        "We passed the Setting Sun"
  4. Dickinson described as a literary terrorist in C19th America
  5. Poem 857
    1. Power is completely held by men - Patriarchal Society
      1. "She rose to His Requirement - dropt/The Palythings of Her Life/To take the honorable Work/Of Woman, and of Wife"
        capitalisation of "His" - Husband/God/Father?? - suggests a higher power
        satirical/sarcastic comment & tone
        image that is creates and manifested itself from Angel of the House (Coventry Patmore)
3. Dickinson's poetry was edited and reworked after her death - no respect or trust in a woman writer
  1. Just through the act of writing, Dickinson was defying social normalities in mainstream America
    1. ideas in Angel of the House by Coventry Patmore
      1. women as purely domestic regardless of happiness
4. Emerson's idea of literature in "American Literature"
  1. "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit
    1. of Happiness"
    2. evidently did not manifest itself in C19th America
Multiplicity of Voices & Moods in Poetry - Contradiction & Contrast

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Emily Dickinson

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