Dickinson and her Religion Emily Dickinson was one of the greatest woman poets. She left us with numerous works that show us her secluded world. Like other major artists of nineteenth-century American introspection such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville, Dickinson makes poetic use of her vacillations between doubt and faith. The style of her first efforts was fairly conventional, but after years of practice she began to give room for experiments. Often written in the meter of hymns, her poems dealt not only with issues of death, faith and immortality, but with nature, domesticity, and the power and limits of language. 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. Dickinson was educated in a traditionally Protestant, provincial community and in a religious conservative schools and churches in Amherst and South Hadley. This affected Dickinson as a poet of religious concern, stimulating her to opposition as well as reverence. The Calvinist God she was taught to worship was an arbitrary God of absolute power. She struggles prodigiously in her writing against such an image of God, but also invokes it normally. Emily Dickinson’s imagination is dynamic partly because she thinks of her mental world as always in flux and prefers not to adhere for long to any preconceived religious of philosophical doctrine. At different times she advances opposed positions on such central questions as the goodness of God, the reality of heaven, or the presence of the divine in nature. As a child of her culture, the fixed positions of her local Calvinism are inscribed in her mind and heart, while at the same time she distrusts them and seeks an alternative faith that will be truer to her moral conceptions. Since she takes different positions on religious questions, it has proved hard for commentators to summarize her religious perspective. At the start of her career she assembles her poems in fascicles and sets, thus giving them a separate existence as poems, while later she experiments increasingly with a style of letter writing in which the border between verse and prose tends to disappear, and she writes poetically wherever she wants to (Martin).
The first word of the poem is a slight to society; the “Some” in question are the people who feel they must abide by society’s conventions, and attend church to exhibit their piousness. Hypocrites and doubters attend church because it is what is expected of them, and they must maintain the façade. In this one word Dickinson is able to illustrate how “Some” people buckle under the pressure of conformity. The first two lines of the stanza create a chiasmus, emphasizing the “going” of the people and the “staying” of the speaker. The people who attend church for the mere formality of it are actually giving away some of their faith, but by staying at home and truly living with God, the speaker is keeping something for herself.
Approaching Emily Dickinson’s poetry as one large body of work can be an intimidating and overwhelming task. There are obvious themes and images that recur throughout, but with such variation that seeking out any sense of intention or order can feel impossible. When the poems are viewed in the groupings Dickinson gave many of them, however, possible structures are easier to find. In Fascicle 17, for instance, Dickinson embarks upon a journey toward confidence in her own little world. She begins the fascicle writing about her fear of the natural universe, but invokes the unknowable and religious as a means of overcoming that fear throughout her life and ends with a contextualization of herself within both nature and eternity.
“Although Emily Dickinson is known as one of America’s best and most beloved poets, her extraordinary talent was not recognized until after her death” (Kort 1). Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her life with her younger sister, older brother, semi-invalid mother, and domineering father in the house that her prominent family owned. As a child, she was curious and was considered a bright student and a voracious reader. She graduated from Amherst Academy in 1847, and attended a female seminary for a year, which she quitted as she considered that “’I [she] am [was] standing alone in rebellion [against becoming an ‘established Christian’].’” (Kort 1) and was homesick. Afterwards, she excluded herself from having a social life, as she took most of the house’s domestic responsibilities, and began writing; she only left Massachusetts once. During the rest of her life, she wrote prolifically by retreating to her room as soon as she could. Her works were influenced ...
close to God and would convince her to join the church. In Dickinson.s hands, however, the
any scholars shudder at the idea of dissecting any of the simple, yet strikingly complex, poems of the great American author Emily Dickinson. When a reader first views one of the multitudes of Dickinson’s texts, their first response is one of simplicity. Due to the length of her poetry, many people believe that they will turn out to be simple. Yet, once someone begins to read one of Emily Dickinson’s poems, it does not take long to realize the utter complexity of the text. As said by Wiggins, author of Prentice Hall’s, American Experience Volume 1, “Dickinson’s poetry was printed as she had meant it to be read, and the world experienced the power of her complex mind captured in concrete imagery and simple but forceful language.” Through this,
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).
Dickinson's poetry is both thought provoking and shocking. This poem communicates many things about Dickinson, such as her cynical outlook on God, and her obsession with death. It is puzzling to me why a young lady such as Emily Dickinson would be so melancholy, since she seemed to have such a good life. Perhaps she just revealed in her poetry that dark side that most people try to keep hidden.
The life led by Emily Dickinson was one secluded from the outside world, but full of color and light within. During her time she was not well known, but as time progressed after her death more and more people took her works into consideration and many of them were published. Dickinson’s life was interesting in its self, but the life her poems held, changed American Literature. Emily Dickinson led a unique life that emotionally attached her to her writing and the people who would read them long after she died.
Emily Dickinson’s poems are famous for their use of faith, death, and the supernatural as central themes. She is often the subject in literature classes, but with nearly 1800 poems and writings, one can only scratch the surface of the Emily Dickinson catalogue. Her background in the Christian religion can be found all throughout her writings. At times she seems deeply rooted in her faith, yet other times she seems riddled with doubt. She writes about love and joy, but far more of her poems reflect death and misery. This causes great debate among fans of her work. Some view her as a feminist that challenges a religion led and dominated by men, and others view her as a strongly religious woman that progressed Christianity. One fact is for certain, although she uses condescending tones regarding religion at times, she never denies her belief in God. Her criticisms are pinpointed toward others within the Christian faith and at the role God plays within our everyday lives. Emily Dickinson uses her
Although, Emily Dickinson physically isolated herself from the world she managed to maintain friendships by communicating through correspondence. Ironically, Dickinson’s poetry was collected and published after her death. Dickinson explores life and death in most of her poems by questioning the existence of God. Dickinson applies common human experiences as images to illustrate the connection from the personal level of the human being, to a universal level of faith and God. This can be seen in Dickinson’s Poem (I, 45).
In “‘Faith’ is a fine invention” by Emily Dickinson, the author’s comparison of religion and science shows how faith holds an importance in our lives’ as it keeps us in good hopes and lets us perceive our future. Throughout the poem, the author references faith as a microscope joining two debated concepts of religion and science. Emily Dickinson characterizes “faith” as a “fine invention/
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.
Emily Dickinson, a poet of great repute, went beyond the social norms of her era with her poems, such as her stance on religion. Dickinson, being that she lived in her father’s house throughout most of her adult life, secretly wrote to herself many secular poems and expressed her initial doubts about religion. Emily Dickinson, uses her poetry to escape from her family’s beliefs. Dickinson does this through her expression of her lack of choice in “I’m Ceded—I’ve stopped being Theirs”, and her feelings towards religion in “We pray—to Heaven — “. In her two poems, Dickinson expresses in a physical way her growing feeling of secularism and her want of choice in whether she believes in religion. Dickinson also gains newfound confidence in both these
"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)
Emily Dickinson was an unrecognized poet her whole life. Her close family members recognized her talent, and her needs to write poetry, but the literary establishment of her time would not recognize her skill. Even though she was unrecognized, she was still quietly battling the established views through her poetry. Her literary struggle was exposed after her death since, while living, only five of her poems were published.