Much Madness is divinest Sense

How ironic is it that Emily Dickinson’s poems are given titles by the majority that she so criticizes? In “Much Madness is divinest Sense”, Emily Dickinson questions the credibility of majority opinion and presents “Madness” as the truth, one not tampered by the hardened shell of sugarcoated public approval. Dickinson, herself a recluse in her later life, creates a speaker who conveys that it isn’t the status quo that defines the inherent purpose of something, that popularity doesn’t justify conviction. The poem pulls the curtains off and, under a gossamer veil of contempt, shows that perhaps it isn’t the commonly upheld belief that withstands the erosion of time, but rather the unprecedented, the radical, the insane, that preserve human integrity.

To start us off, the speaker throws us off balance by juxtaposition of the first line. How can “Much Madness” be the golden view of which we revere if it is indeed madness? Perhaps “Madness” isn’t synonymous with insanity; instead “Madness” is challenging the depth beyond what we see on the surface, we as the majority because the dissenter may be the one who truly makes “Sense” of reality.

In the second line, the speaker reveals the view’s beholder. In contrast to what we believe, it isn’t the ignorant or the deranged that give light to this perspective; it’s the perceptive, the insightful, the “discerning Eye”, who extol this view of “Madness” as the truth.

Once again, the speaker gives us a contradiction parallel to her first argument. How can “Much Sense” be prisoner to a straightjacket, “the starkest Madness”? In this regard, sense isn’t the truth, but rather a perception of what “the Majority” claims to be true. Sense, then, isn’t the consequence of reason or logic, but con...

... middle of paper ...

...the word that came before it. Examples of this include the dashes after “prevail”, “dangerous”, and “Chain”, where the dash serves to reflect upon what came before it.

In just eight lines Emily Dickinson manages to send such a powerful message about the sins on society. Maybe what we all perceive as the truth is but the history written by liars. Maybe the wisdom spoon-fed to us since birth are nothing more than exaggerations of the truth, contorted to give benefit to the one telling the story. Dickinson, isolated from her contemporary society, reveals the inner thoughts of a mind not perverted by the convictions of others. And through this, Dickinson, the “dangerous”, the recluse, the one who dared “demur” from society’s conventions, frees herself from the chains of timid feminism and immortalizes herself against the entropy of father time.