In 'Much Madness is divinest Sense' (435), a definition poem, Emily Dickinson criticizes society's inability to accept rebellion, arguing that the majority is the side that should in fact be considered 'mad.' The perception of madness and insanity are a common theme among Dickinson's poetry, as she fought against society's tainted view of herself as crazy. She focuses on how judgmental society is on non conformist views when she describes the majority as 'discerning' (line 2). As similar to most of her poetry, she writes in iambic meter and uses slant rhyme, as lines one, three, and seven end with 'Sense', 'Madness', 'dangerous', and lines six and eight, in 'sane' and 'Chain' in seemingly rhyme scheme. Dickinson credits the majority with prevailing, however, anyone who disagrees is considered a threat to society and sentenced to punishment.
MacDonald agues that 'Much Madness in divinest Sense,' (435) features one of Dickinson?s more disturbing themes, using ?dark imagery of confinement and fear? (1) to draw the reader into the subject of madness. A division between society?s view of acceptable and appropriate is made between that which is considered against the norm, or mad. Tying into a current issue at the time MacDonald suggests among contemporary writers of the time, Dickinson?s poetry is in response to the Civil War, as it questions ?the purity of the nation,? (1) challenging readers to understand the sanity of the war itself. However, this critique does not limit Dickinson?s poem in response to the Civil War, as ?madness? can suggest more than simply the immorality of slavery in the late 1880s. This ?madness? is also compared with the normalcy during the 1800s that ?women should marry and lead lives for the benef...
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...fined only by authority. Dickinson does not conform to society?s norm with her slanted rhyme scheme, random capitalization, and peculiar use of punctuation, fitting herself into the society?s view of ?mad?. She illustrates to the reader that individually, we have the choice whether or not to choose the desires set for ourselves or conform to the desires others have for us. Through her writing Dickinson also proves the awareness she had of the perception society held of her.
Works Cited:
Kattleman, Beth. Poetry for Students, Vol. 16, Gale 2002. Critical Essay
Source Database: Literature Resource Center
MacDonald, Deneka Candace. Poetry for Students, Vol. 16, Gale 2002. Critical Essay
Source Database: Literature Resource Center
Oates, Joyce Carol. Soul at the White Heat: The Romance of Emily Dickinson?s Poetry.
Vol. 13, No. 4. 1987. pp. 806-824.
Dickinson has strong imagery, distinct structure, and a point of view that presents the concern related to darkness. Starting with “we,” Dickinson allows the reader to share the same feeling of nervousness as the author by entering into the unknown that the darkness brings together. Darkness is something one must alter
The first poem in the fascicle, “I dreaded that first Robin so”, shows us a Dickinson who is intimidated by even the most harmless creatures in the world around her. Despite the title she gives herself, “The Queen of Calvary”, her fears seem to hinge on a feeling of inferiority to these small harbingers of spring (24). The first chirp of the robin holds some awful power, while the daffodils become fashionable critics of Dickinson’s simplicity. These comparisons set Dickinson up as someone very small and “childish”—she cannot even stand up to birds and flowers without fear of being exposed to them and found lacking (26). The next poem, “I would not paint—a picture—” continues this idea, but with a slightly more pleasant spin. While somewhat paradoxically rejecting the idea of making art herself (even devoting a stanza to why she should not write poetry), she gives a sense of the exhilaration she finds in being the audience for any kind of art. Ultimately,...
Emily Dickinson’s response to the Civil War was once discounted as nonexistent, but in the last few decades her works have been added to the Civil War canon. The previous belief that Dickinson’s poetry was not influenced by the Civil War is preposterous given that her most successful years as a poet coincided with the Civil War. Like any American during the war, she too experienced loss when a person from her childhood had been killed in a battle, and she kept her correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson throughout the war. No American was left unscathed; the war had influenced the country in many different ways – political, personal, and literary. This is why it would be the most logical to assume Dickinson had written about the Civil
The dash in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, initially edited away as a sign of incompletion, has since come to be seen as crucial to the impact of her poems. Critics have examined the dash from a myriad of angles, viewing it as a rhetorical notation for oral performance, a technique for recreating the rhythm of a telegraph, or a subtraction sign in an underlying mathematical system.1 However, attempting to define Dickinson’s intentions with the dash is clearly speculative given her varied dash-usage; in fact, one scholar illustrated the fallibility of one dash-interpretation by applying it to one of Dickinson’s handwritten cake recipes (Franklin 120). Instead, I begin with the assumption that “text” as an entity involving both the reading and writing of the material implies a reader’s attempt to recreate the act of writing as well as the writer’s attempt to guide the act of reading. I will focus on the former, given the difficulties surrounding the notion of authorial intention a.k.a. the Death of the Author. Using three familiar Dickinson poems—“The Brain—is wider than the Sky,” “The Soul selects her own Society,” and “This was a Poet—It is that,”—I contend that readers can penetrate the double mystery of Emily Dickinson’s reclusive life and lyrically dense poetry by enjoying a sense of intimacy not dependent upon the content of her poems. The source of this intimacy lies in her remarkable punctuation. Dickinson’s unconventionally-positioned dashes form disjunctures and connections in the reader’s understanding that create the impression of following Dickinson through the creative process towards intimacy with the poet herself.
objects that may not fit into the every day norm. In Emily Dickinson's "Much Madness is
The very first line proclaims the intense metaphor of books sustaining life. By equating words to food, or something worthy of consumption, Dickinson creates an idea of literature essential to the continuation of human life. The capitalization of the word “Words” lends itself to the idea of words as their own entity, and as something with more substance than merely the words themselves. Continuing to the next line, the theme of words as food persists. The connotations of the word robust are most commonly well-fed and vigorous, so the point the narrator makes is the nourishment of the spirit can only literature can facilitate. By
Dickinson, on the other hand, was a free-style writer. She was carefree of how her writings do not include any type of meter or structure. She did not use standard punctuation. Instead, she referred to the use of dashes, unsystematic capitalization, and broken meter. It is not clear as to why she chose such a unique style of writing, but it worked for her. She was not concerned with correctness but with structure that would include considerate features. In “Defrauded I a Butterfly,” Dickinson left little room for meter or style used from European models in her time being it only consisted on two lines. Also, in “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” the reader may recognize that the she did not use a traditional rhyme scheme that would usually be able to identify in poetry. She used AABC instead of the more noticeable and most often used ABAB or a more rare scheme ABCB.
Emily Dickinson is one of the great visionary poets of nineteenth century America. In her lifetime, she composed more poems than most modern Americans will even read in their lifetimes. Dickinson is still praised today, and she continues to be taught in schools, read for pleasure, and studied for research and criticism. Since she stayed inside her house for most of her life, and many of her poems were not discovered until after her death, Dickinson was uninvolved in the publication process of her poetry. This means that every Dickinson poem in print today is just a guess—an assumption of what the author wanted on the page. As a result, Dickinson maintains an aura of mystery as a writer. However, this mystery is often overshadowed by a more prevalent notion of Dickinson as an eccentric recluse or a madwoman. Of course, it is difficult to give one label to Dickinson and expect that label to summarize her entire life. Certainly she was a complex woman who could not accurately be described with one sentence or phrase. Her poems are unique and quite interestingly composed—just looking at them on the page is pleasurable—and it may very well prove useful to examine the author when reading her poems. Understanding Dickinson may lead to a better interpretation of the poems, a better appreciation of her life’s work. What is not useful, however, is reading her poems while looking back at the one sentence summary of Dickinson’s life.
Dickinson was unique and the “exception” in creating a private relationship with her self and her soul. In “Emily Dickinson and Popular Culture”, David S. Reynolds, a new historicism critic, wrote that it 's no surprise that the majority of Dickinson 's poetry was produced between 1858-1866, “It was a period of extreme consciousness about proliferation of varied women 's role in American culture.” It was a time where women were actively searching for more “literary” ways of self expression” (Reynolds 25). Dickinson was able to express her ideas and beliefs as a woman, something that was scandalous during this time period.
Dickinson’s Christian education affected her profoundly, and her desire for a human intuitive faith motivates and enlivens her poetry. Yet what she has faith in tends to be left undefined because she assumes that it is unknowable. There are many unknown subjects in her poetry among them: Death and the afterlife, God, nature, artistic and poetic inspiration, one’s own mind, and other human beings.
The main theme of her poem is that one who seems insane may in fact be the one who has figured everything out. In this excerpt, “Demur – you’re straightway dangerous -/And handled with a Chain – “, the same person is a minority and is considered to be dangerous to the majority of society and must be held with caution. In Dickinson’s time women were held to certain duties, which consists of marrying a man, having children, taking care of the house, and cooking. This interpretation of the poem makes sense if Dickinson is speaking about herself and how she is a recluse compared to the rest of her society. She rebelled against the majority and decided not to do what was common, but instead sit inside and write poems. In return people probably did not think she was sane and treated her like a crazy person. This connects to the middle-class subject because many people think of middle-class as average and somewhat boring. Just because the majority of middle-class people work boring jobs, drive boring cars, and end up living boring lives does not mean all of them do. One can stray away from the majority and live a very interesting life without having to be higher in the social class system. This backs up that ensuing a middle-class life can be rewarding after
Emily Dickinson was an intricate and contradictory figure who moved from a reverent faith in God to a deep suspicion of him in her works. (Sherwood 3) Through her own intentional choice she was, in her lifetime, considered peculiar. Despite different people and groups trying to influence her, she resisted making a public confession of faith to Christ and the Church. (Sherwood 10) She wanted to establish her own wanted to establish her own individuality and, in doing so, turned to poetry. (Benfey 27) Dickinson’s poems were a sort of channel for her feelings and an “exploration” of her faith (Benfey 27).
"Arguing with herself, Dickinson considers three major resolutions for the frustrations she is seeking to define and to resolve. Each of these resolutions is expressed in negative form: living wither her lover, dying with him, and discovering a world beyond nature. Building on this series of negations, Dickinson advances a catalogue of reasons for her covenant with despair, which are both final and insufficient. Throughout, she excoriates the social and religious authorities that impede her union, but she remains emotionally unconvinced that she has correctly identified her antagonists." (Pollack, 182)
The average reader cannot help but be affected by Dickinson’s style. The capitalized words draw the reader’s attention. They highlight important key words of the poem. The dashes set apart specific words and phrases, forcing the reader to slow down while reading. The dashes compel the reader to contemplate and ponder over the lines. Thus, whether or not Dickinson had a conscious purpose in her unconventional capitalization and punctuation, they have an undeniable effect on the rhythm of the poem and the perception of the reader.
Vendler, Helen. Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2010. 118-20. Google Books. Google. Web. 5 April. 2014. .