The Role Of Anxiety In Emily Dickinson's Poems

Emily Dickinson was born in the 1830s, in Massachusetts. She grew up in a prominent family. In her poems, it seems like she drew it from a very dark place. In Emily Dickinson’s poems especially I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, it makes us think that maybe she was dealing with death, depression, or a mental illness; researchers have found evidence that could be the meaning behind all of her dark poems. In the paragraphs below, they discuss articles about what she may have been dealing with. In the 1800s, people did not know of such a thing, called anxiety. When Emily went to see someone about her troubles, they would misdiagnose her. In The Norton Anthology American Literature, the author talks about Emily Dickinson’s life and work; “her poems

This article is about how the author was “listening to a book-on-tape of poems and letters by Emily Dickinson, the author found in one letter that she admits to an experience of ‘terror’ she ‘could tell to no one” (Ancher). After the author had read and looked into her life and her poems, because he wanted to understand “Dickinson’s ingenious artistry in light of her mental illness or ‘terror’” (Ancher). I wonder if this means that she used her poems to express herself, and her writing was almost an escape for her. Once the author studied more of her adult life he found that she was having panic attack which led to her mental illness, panic disorder. This article shows how she deals with her emotions. This article supports my thesis, (in Emily Dickinson’s poems especially I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, it makes us think that maybe she was dealing with death, depression, or a mental illness; researchers have found evidence that could be the meaning behind all of her dark poems) because Dickinson uses her writing as an escape from her illness. This source dives into her history. Some of her poems may sound odd after the first read through. In her poem, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain she discusses how she is struggling with the idea of death and afterlife. This shows how she is surviving with this idea of a mental illness and