The Life Poem 10th

[Christopher]

AlthoughDickinson was a prolific writer, her only publications during her lifetime were 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems and one letter.[4] The poems published then were usually edited significantly to fit conventional poetic rules. Her poems were unique for her era; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.[5] Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality (two recurring topics in letters to her friends), aesthetics, society, nature, and spirituality.[6]

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born at the family's homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830, into a prominent, but not wealthy, family.[12] Her father, Edward Dickinson, was a lawyer in Amherst and a trustee of Amherst College.[13]

Dickinson attended primary school in a two-story building on Pleasant Street.[22] Her education was "ambitiously classical for a Victorian girl".[23] Wanting his children to be well-educated, her father followed their progress even while away on business. When Dickinson was seven, he wrote home, reminding his children to "keep school, and learn, so as to tell me, when I come home, how many new things you have learned".[24]

While Dickinson consistently described her father warmly, her correspondence suggests that her mother was regularly cold and aloof. In a letter to a confidante, Dickinson wrote she "always ran Home to Awe [Austin] when a child, if anything befell me. She was an awful Mother, but I liked her better than none."[25]

On September 7, 1840, Dickinson and her sister Lavinia started together at Amherst Academy, a former boys' school that had opened to female students just two years earlier.[22] At about the same time, her father purchased a house on North Pleasant Street.[26] Dickinson's brother Austin later described this large new home as the "mansion" over which he and Dickinson presided as "lord and lady" while their parents were absent.[27] The house overlooked Amherst's burial ground, described by one local minister as treeless and "forbidding".[26]

Dickinson was troubled from a young age by the "deepening menace" of death, especially the deaths of those who were close to her. When Sophia Holland, her second cousin and a close friend, grew ill from typhus and died in April 1844, Dickinson was traumatized.[34] Recalling the incident two years later, she wrote that "it seemed to me I should die too if I could not be permitted to watch over her or even look at her face."[35] She became so melancholic that her parents sent her to stay with family in Boston to recover.[33] With her health and spirits restored, she soon returned to Amherst Academy to continue her studies.[36] During this period, she met people who were to become lifelong friends and correspondents, such as Abiah Root, Abby Wood, Jane Humphrey, and Susan Huntington Gilbert (who later married Dickinson's brother Austin).

During the last year of her stay at the Academy, Dickinson became friendly with Leonard Humphrey, its popular new young principal. After finishing her final term at the Academy on August 10, 1847, Dickinson began attending Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (which later became Mount Holyoke College) in South Hadley, about ten miles (16 km) from Amherst.[41] She stayed at the seminary for only ten months. Although she liked the girls at Mount Holyoke, Dickinson made no lasting friendships there.[42] The explanations for her brief stay at Mount Holyoke differ considerably: either she was in poor health, her father wanted to have her at home, she rebelled against the evangelical fervor present at the school, she disliked the discipline-minded teachers, or she was simply homesick.[43] Whatever the reasons for leaving Mount Holyoke, her brother Austin appeared on March 25, 1848, to "bring [her] home at all events".[44] Back in Amherst, Dickinson occupied her time with household activities.[45] She took up baking for the family and enjoyed attending local events and activities in the budding college town.[46]

Dickinson was familiar with not only the Bible but also contemporary popular literature.[51] She was probably influenced by Lydia Maria Child's Letters from New York, another gift from Newton[34] (after reading it, she gushed "This then is a book! And there are more of them!"[34]). Her brother smuggled a copy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Kavanagh into the house for her (because her father might disapprove)[52] and a friend lent her Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre in late 1849.[53] Jane Eyre's influence cannot be measured, but when Dickinson acquired her first and only dog, a Newfoundland, she named him "Carlo" after the character St. John Rivers' dog.[53] William Shakespeare was also a potent influence in her life. Referring to his plays, she wrote to one friend, "Why clasp any hand but this?" and to another, "Why is any other book needed?"[54]

In early 1850, Dickinson wrote, "Amherst is alive with fun this winter ... Oh, a very great town this is!"[45] Her high spirits soon turned to melancholy after another death. The Amherst Academy principal, Leonard Humphrey, died suddenly of "brain congestion" at age 25.[55] Two years after his death, she revealed to her friend Abiah Root the extent of her sadness:

During the 1850s, Dickinson's strongest and most affectionate relationship was with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert. Dickinson eventually sent her over three hundred letters, more than to any other correspondent, over the course of their relationship. Susan was supportive of the poet, playing the role of "most beloved friend, influence, muse, and adviser" whose editorial suggestions Dickinson sometimes followed.[57] In an 1882 letter to Susan, Dickinson said, "With the exception of Shakespeare, you have told me of more knowledge than any one living."[58]

Susan Gilbert married Austin in 1856 after a four-year courtship, though their marriage was not a happy one. Edward Dickinson built a house for Austin which Gilbert named the Evergreens, a stand of which was located on the west side of the Homestead.[62]

Until 1855, Dickinson had not strayed far from Amherst. That spring, accompanied by her mother and sister, she took one of her longest and farthest trips away from home.[63] First, they spent three weeks in Washington, where her father was representing Massachusetts in Congress, after which they would travel to Philadelphia for two weeks to visit family. While in Philadelphia, she met Charles Wadsworth, a famous minister of the Arch Street Presbyterian Church, with whom she forged a strong friendship that lasted until he died in 1882.[64] Despite seeing him only twice after 1855 (he moved to San Francisco in 1862), she variously referred to him as "my Philadelphia", "my Clergyman", "my dearest earthly friend" and "my Shepherd from 'Little Girl'hood".[65]

Withdrawing more and more from the outside world, Dickinson began in the summer of 1858 what would be her lasting legacy. Reviewing poems she had written previously, she began making clean copies of her work, assembling carefully pieced-together manuscript books.[69] The forty fascicles she created from 1858 through 1865 eventually held nearly eight hundred poems.[69] No one was aware of the existence of these books until after her death.

In the late 1850s, the Dickinsons befriended Samuel Bowles, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Springfield Republican, and his wife Mary.[70] They visited the Dickinsons regularly for years to come. During this time Dickinson sent him over three dozen letters and nearly fifty poems.[71] Their friendship brought out some of her most intense writing and Bowles published a few of her poems in his journal.[72] It was from 1858 to 1861 that Dickinson is believed to have written a trio of letters that have been called "The Master Letters". These three letters, drafted to an unknown man simply referred to as "Master", continue to be the subject of speculation and contention amongst scholars.[73]

The first half of the 1860s, after she had largely withdrawn from social life,[81] proved to be Dickinson's most productive writing period.[82] Modern scholars and researchers are divided as to the cause for Dickinson's withdrawal and extreme seclusion. While she was diagnosed as having "nervous prostration" by a physician during her lifetime,[83] some today believe she may have suffered from illnesses as various as agoraphobia[84] and epilepsy.[85] Julie Brown, writing in Writers on the Spectrum (2010), argues that Dickinson had Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but this is generally regarded as being more speculation than a retrospective diagnosis, and although the theory has been echoed on the internet especially, it has not been advanced by Dickinson scholars.[86]

In April 1862, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary critic, radical abolitionist, and ex-minister, wrote a lead piece for The Atlantic Monthly titled, "Letter to a Young Contributor". Higginson's essay, in which he urged aspiring writers to "charge your style with life", contained practical advice for those wishing to break into print.[87] Dickinson's decision to contact Higginson suggests that by 1862 she was contemplating publication and that it may have become increasingly difficult to write poetry without an audience.[88] Seeking literary guidance that no one close to her could provide, Dickinson sent him a letter, which read in full:[89]

Dickinson valued his advice, going from calling him "Mr. Higginson" to "Dear friend" as well as signing her letters, "Your Gnome" and "Your Scholar".[95] His interest in her work certainly provided great moral support; many years later, Dickinson told Higginson that he had saved her life in 1862.[96] They corresponded until her death, but her difficulty in expressing her literary needs and a reluctance to enter into a cooperative exchange left Higginson nonplussed; he did not press her to publish in subsequent correspondence.[97] Dickinson's own ambivalence on the matter militated against the likelihood of publication.[98] Literary critic Edmund Wilson, in his review of Civil War literature, surmised that "with encouragement, she would certainly have published".[99]

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