Week 10! Emily Dickinson

So, about Emily Dickinson. I have mixed feelings about her. I think everyone reads her wrong, myself included. I know she is considered one of the greats, but I feel like that is because she is so mysterious. Most of her stuff doesn't make much sense to me, and I think that's why people like it. One day we're going to find something she wrote that's going to change our entire thinking of her. Like a big "JUST KIDDING" written at the end of one of her poems. Like when you idolize an actor, only to meet them in real life and find out how much of a jerk they are. Emily is laughing at us all trying to analyze her writings. I bet she had that kind of humor. The sadistic kind.

In reading The Cambridge Introduction to Emily Dickinson by Wendy Martin, I’ve come away with some new ideas about Emily. She was a recluse, but I definitely think this was out of choice, and self-preservation. Martin discusses Dickinson’s ability to have relationships with friends and teachers when she was younger, quoting Dickinson’s letters to her friends. “‘I keep your lock of hair as precious as gold,’ she wrote to Abiah, ‘I often look at it when I go to my little lot of treasures, and wish the owner of that glossy lock were here’” (Martin 5). Martin even calls the relationships Dickinson had “steadfast” (Martin 5). Emily seems to be one of those characters who has a bottomless emotional pit, which may seem like a bad thing, but the only true downside is not being able to connect with anyone on the same level. This could be why she became a recluse. She knew how to have friends, gossip, and be normal. But it wasn’t enough for her. The only true satisfaction she had was in her writing.

Martin mentions Emily receiving a copy of Jane Eyre when it was first published (Martin 10), written by “Currer Bell”, and not Charlotte Brontë because it was unacceptable to be a literary woman in that day and age. Martin states “Critics complained that Jane Eyre’s heroine was too self-reliant, independent, and common to be a moral model for women” (Martin 10). Yet, it seems Emily was such a person already. Instead of breaking out and doing as she wished as Charlotte Brontë did, by publishing anyway, even under a pseudonym, Emily imploded in a way, she locked herself in, and wrote and wrote and wrote and did not become very popular until after her death. I think she could have had more had she had a different personality type.
To sum up, I don’t think she was crazy, even if I can’t understand her. I think that’s the point. She was just as sane as anyone was; she was just ahead of her time. She could have been famous before her death, but chose the easy path. The path, which made her happy, even if she didn’t seem overly happy. I think to say she was crazy is to agree with everyone she was fighting in her own time. She was regarded as odd then, and if you agree she is still now, then what was her point in hiding away? It’s all in perspective. And Emily Dickinson had a lot of perspective.

Anyone agree? Disagree?

Martin, Wendy. The Cambridge Introduction to Emily Dickinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.