Katelyn Harrell
English 8891
Dr. Noble
May 20, 2013
Contentment, Agony, and Death: Dickinson’s Readership Relationship
When one learns of Emily Dickinson’s singular lifestyle and agoraphobic tendencies, one
may anticipate the negative effects of loneliness and isolation upon her work. Because poetry
often aims to describe the human experience, both personal and social, Dickinson’s detachment
from the outer world may initially seem a limitation. On the contrary, Dickinson’s option of
solitude – which she regularly poses as a choice – allowed her to create an atmosphere in which
she could develop her gift and focus on her individual experience, without the interference and
overbearing expectations of her society. She does not deny the agony of loneliness, which she
has difficulty even describing in “The Loneliness One dare not sound”; but her poems “A Prison
gets to be a friend” and “I had been hungry, all the Years,” suggest her ability to embrace
isolation and, in certain circumstances, to find contentment within its confines. “Much Madness
is divinest Sense” underscores Dickinson’s sense of separation from the outside world, while
“The Soul selects her own Society” poses her ability, as a woman, to choose seclusion as a
symbol of power and an expression of independence. Instead of resigning herself to courtship
and marriage, which women were expected to prioritize over profession, Dickinson chose to
nurture her talent as a poet and portrays her solitude as the environment necessary to do precisely
that. Finally, “It was given to me by the Gods” describes Dickinson’s awareness of her gift and
how it separated her fundamentally from other people. The poem reveals what instilled in her the
sense of duty that allowed her to endure years of isolation with a contented soul and prolific
Harrell
2
mind. Because these poems concentrate on Dickinson’s individual experience, which was
unique to say the least, they are oftentimes less relatable, and the reader must try to imagine
Dickinson’s creative mentality in order to find meaning and logic between her seemingly
unaccountable segues and attitude shifts. Such poems are often difficult to identify with, and the
reader tends to leave them feeling as though they have just peered into Dickinson’s world, rather
than found one that resembles their own.
Interestingly, Dickinson’s poems about experiencing pain or misery are those in which
she is most capable of expressing universal feelings with which the average reader can identify –
as opposed to the poems about finding contentment in what most would think of as unfavorable
conditions. While her contentment poems tend to alienate Dickinson from her readership – she
takes a singular pride in being able to find contentment where most others could not – she
focuses on pain and misery in a conceptual manner, as varied facets of the human experience,
with which most readers can empathize and which they can understand. These poems suggest
her awareness that despite often being able to convince herself that her resignation from society
was a necessary sacrifice and that she was capable of achieving contentment in her environment,
she also regularly experienced strong anxiety and depression. These poems are not rare enough
to be exceptions to her usual thought, but run alongside the poems about finding contentment to
suggest at all times the presence or possibility of such feelings’ opposites: those of despair,
loneliness, fear. While Dickinson is often able to name precisely that thing with which she has
grown content, her poems about despair tend to pose the source of her torment as a mystery,
naming not the illness itself but the unusual, troubling appearance of its symptoms; such is true
for “It was not death for I stood up.” “The Loneliness one dare not sound” and “There is a Pain
so utter” indicate Dickinson’s remarkable ability to acknowledge in the scarcest manner the
Harrell
3
existence of utter agony and yet also to avoid its full confrontation in her language as aptly as she
avoids it mentally. Yet, as seen in “I measure every grief I meet” and “Pain has an element of
blank,” there are times when Dickinson cannot avoid contemplating the vastness of her own
misery, which she describes as spanning always existent and never-ending. Despite the
extremity of these poems, they are nonetheless the more relatable within this selection.
Lastly, Dickinson’s poems about death are much like her poems about finding
contentment in solitude, as they too detach Dickinson from her reader by describing an
experience that is quintessentially individual. In these poems, she chooses not to concentrate on
death and fear of death as a universal experience, which every human must eventually face, but
rather to examine it as a solitary activity that one must face alone. She emphasizes this in both
“Because I could not stop for Death” and “Death is the supple suitor,” in which, despite
companionable experiences with the personified Death, the speaker does wind up alone, a state
that she treats ambiguously, neither clearly negative or positive, but which she describes in a
peculiar tone. “’Tis so appalling, it exhilirates” explicitly outlines a “We” “them” dichotomy, in
which “we” includes the dead and “they” or “them” the alive, disconnecting Dickinson from her
readers in a clear and decisive manner. This essay traces Dickinson’s pendulum of sentiment,
first analyzing her universalizing poems about human pain and misery, then those about
singularity and contentment in isolation, and ending finally with her poems about the experience
of death, which is at once a universal and individual event.
In “It was not death, for I stood up,” Dickinson’s vocabulary of undiagnosed illness may
suggest either that she does not understand the source of her depression – arguably unlikely for
one so prone to self-examination – or that she is reluctant to diagnose herself for fear that the
word, the naming of that disease, will convince her of its presence. Without the term “clinical
Harrell
4
depression” at her disposal, Dickinson must corner her affliction by ruling out those sensations
that seem most similar but which she knows do not apply to her:
It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.
It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Not fire for my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.
Her language resultantly becomes circuitous, circumnavigating the subject at the center. Even to
those of us who are intimately familiar with depression and its symptoms – if not by personal
experience, then by the numerous pharmaceutical commercials – Dickinson’s description aptly
defamiliarizes how it feels to be depressed. She does not use the sterile, trite terminology of
fatigue, loss of interest, or irritability; her depression “tastes like” death, night, frost, and fire.
She imagines a corpse, feeling breathless and trapped, frozen in time. It enters our lives with the
same capriciousness of chaos: it may be come suddenly like death, smoothly and regularly like
nightfall, may fall on us like frost and evaporate, or burn us up in mere minutes. The poem ends
on a note of hopelessness: the feeling is “stopless… / Without a chance or spar, -- / Or even a
report of land / To justify despair.” It arrives without reason, without a foreseeable end. Her
suggested inactivity does not stem from contentment – there is no right way to live with it – but
from powerlessness, a numbness and confusion. Although she speaks of these depressive
feelings as applying only to her and focuses on her own struggle, she nonetheless touches upon a
common human experience, rather than one that alienates her from others people.
Such is also true in “Pain has an element of blank,” which is, rather undeniably, a dismal
poem about the nature of human suffering. The poem is brief, which, if anything, only underlies
the thoroughness of its subject: it comes, it settles in, and that it is all there is to it. Dickinson
Harrell
5
describes it as never-ending and consuming, so much so that she, as the poem’s hidden
protagonist, makes pain the subject in her stead. In reality, is not the pain but Dickinson herself
who can’t remember when her pain began or whether there was ever a time it did not exist. She
describes the way in which pain convinces its host that “It has no future but itself” – that pain
will continue forever – and that just as the sufferer cannot imagine a time it did not exist, she will
also not be able to envision a time that it will not. Just as someone freezing cannot imagine
being warm, or someone who has long been sick can no longer imagine how it felt to be well,
someone in pain cannot imagine how it is not to feel pain. Once more, there is no suggestion of
a solution, no way to grow contentment out of this. The poem serves instead as an exploration of
a universal phenomenon, even if Dickinson wrote it to describe a deeply personal affliction.
Although not many can imagine finding contentment sealed up inside one’s home for years at a
time, the concept of being overwhelmed by an emotion to the extent that it seems everlasting is
not so unfamiliar and, perhaps despite Dickinson’s intentions, connects her with other people.
“There is a pain so utter” describes, as its first line reads, an agony so encompassing that
it alters the reality of its sufferer, creating a vacuum into which all else is “swallow[ed]” and
leaving behind an “Abyss.” Dickinson writes that the abyss is then “cover[ed]… with Trance -- /
So Memory can step / Around—across—upon it,” evoking a sense of numbness, a state in which
one is impervious to pain yet which is often brought on by great amounts of it. The “Trance”
serves as a coping mechanism, one which relieves the victim of that pain so long as the trance
continues. She similarly likens this period to a blackout or “Swoon,” when a person faints due to
a lack of oxygen, brought on by extreme emotion. This too allows the person to cope by not
coping, to circumvent the upsetting event by losing consciousness. The sufferer must walk
around or across the abyss with closed eyes, a state connoting denial or refusal to acknowledge a
Harrell
6
disturbing sight, for “an open eye— / Would drop him—Bone by Bone.” The image recalls that
of a tightrope walker – the aphorism “don’t look down,” for doing so would lead one to realize
one’s height off the ground, and the acrobat would no longer be able to trick his mind into
believing that he is walking on solid ground; similarly, the sufferer must not look into the abyss
of pain below because doing so would end the trance, would open his eyes once closed to pain,
and cause what Dickinson describes—“Bone by Bone”—as a slow, agonizing decomposition,
resulting ultimately in death. In this poem, she describes the common state of denial, which
many of us have entered, whether in a stage of grief, at the end of a relationship, or at some other
failure or unexpected ending. The deterioration she describes mimics the way in which we
slowly sink into our feelings. Dickinson terms it an “abyss”; we similarly use the words “rut,” “a
dark place,” “a low spot,” once more indicating that Dickinson, at her most dark, is capable of
striking eloquently at universal human experiences.
Dickinson describes this same process of slow decay in “Crumbling is not an instant’s
act.” A person’s collapse, even if it manifests in a sudden, quick manner—a “pause”—is
nonetheless the result of an elongated and complex deterioration—“organized Decays”—of that
person: death is the result of years of physical decomposition, just as a nervous breakdown is the
result of one’s gradual mental decline. Helen Vendler, author of Dickinson: Selected Poems and
Commentaries, writes that Dickinson compares the soul to a house: the “Cobweb on the Soul”
suggests spiritual neglect; the “Cuticle of Dust,” Vendler says, originates “from Latin cuticula,
[or] ‘little skin,’” so that the surface of the soul is now covered wholly in dust from disuse; “A
borer in the Axis” suggests decay at the core, as a worm burrows into an apple, which, in turn,
causes it to rot from the inside out, the definition of corruption, the “Elemental rust” that results
(Vendler 387). As is true for many of these poems, not only does this poem describe the process
Harrell
7
by which Dickinson distanced herself from disturbing or harmful thoughts or feelings, but the
poem itself, by the very form in which it is written, also distances Dickinson from the experience
she describes by alluding to the poem’s subject as a concept, rather than as a personal
experience, which makes is accessible, and perhaps more applicable, to her readers.
Among this selection, the most universalizing poem about pain is “I measure every grief I
meet,” in which Dickinson describes the way in which she analyzes strangers and wonders how
closely their experiences with pain correspond with her own. She writes:
I wonder if it weights like Mine –
Or has an Easier size –
I wonder if They bore it long –
Or did it just begin -…
I wonder if it hurts to live –
And if they have to try –
And whether – could They choose between –
It would not be – to die –
This poem reveals her need for empathy, to know that others feel what she feels and to the same
or similar degree (although note that she doesn’t consider whether their pain might be greater
than her own, but only “Easier). Rather than focus on events or feelings that would separate her
from other people, she concentrates wholly on her similarities to them, contemplating their
thoughts and projecting her familiarity with her own experiences onto what she believes may be
theirs, which allows her to feel empathy for them, rather than polarization. Because of her
experiences, she is able to recognize in others the tendency to feign happiness, as evidently she
has:
I note that Some – gone patient long –
At length, renew their smile –
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil –
Harrell
8
She understands that there are multiple sources of this pain, the “various Cause[s],” whether the
“grief of want – and Grief of Cold” or the “sort they call ‘Despair,’” though she admits that she
is often incapable of judging which kind of pain the other person suffers from. This concession
suggests her knowledge that negative feelings often manifest outwardly in similar,
indistinguishable ways, which makes it easier to empathize with each person’s pain because no
matter what he or she is truly feeling, we can easily convince ourselves that they are feeling the
same kind of pain as we are. Dickinson projects onto others the same grim contemplations that
have clearly plagued her: whether these other people would rather die than continue living with
their pain, if it as pervasive and consuming as hers, if they have experienced it for so long that
they no longer know another way of living.
She references her own sense of isolation in this poem, fully acknowledging it as a
possible source of despair, when she writes that one source of grief is “Banishment from native
Eyes - / In sight of Native Air,” or, in other words, being banished from a place that is constantly
before you, as though in a cruel, tantalizing manner. This is the first place in which she admits
openly the pain of “banishment”—in which she poses her isolation not as a choice or a source of
contentment, but where the agency and power belongs to whomever has “banished” her, making
that rejection a source of despair. The notion of shared experience peaks in her reference to
Calvary, the hill on which Christ was crucified and experience the ultimate agony. She describes
the feeling with which “passing Calvary” instills her:
To note the fashions – of the Cross –
And how they’re mostly worn –
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like my own –
The poem thus ends with a sense of solace and ultimate, genuine contentment. She recognizes
that the “fashions / of the Cross” are “worn,” suggesting that pain has existed forever, just as she
Harrell
9
is unable to determine when hers began or know if it will ever end, and that, she notes, connects
her to everyone else.
“The Loneliness One dare not sound” traces Dickinson’s steps inward, back toward a
place she is capable of understanding, which leaves the rest of us attempting to bridge the
experiential gap. Oftentimes we are unable to empathize as well with the emotions of these
poems, which become increasingly abstract, as we are able to comprehend the poems about
negative feelings. In this poem, she explains how one can live if one does not look down, if one
is able to skirt around the abyss forever. The question left is, What does it look like, practically,
when a person ‘does not look down’? How does one live constantly in denial, and is that really
living? The poem thus reveals the magnitude of Dickinson’s choice of isolation, which subjects
her to this lifestyle of constantly avoiding overwhelming negative feelings, a perpetual state of
denial. Her despair reaches so deeply, she refuses to investigate its depths, and she likens the
foolishness of doing so to jumping down in one’s own grave just to “ascertain the size.” One
tends to discover the size of one’s grave only when one is being lowered into it; similarly
Dickinson fears that, in an effort to understand her loneliness, merely by thinking of it, she will
be plunged into it. This is the same “speak into being” method of creation to which she refers in
“It was not Death, for I stood up.” These poems are similar in that, in both poems, she is
impressively able to describe each poem’s true subject – in the other, depression, and in the this
one, soul-consuming loneliness – by pointedly avoiding the subjects themselves. She fears
becoming lost in “Its Caverns and its Corridors,” which pose the possibility of either
“Illuminat[ing]” some new truth or “seal[ing]” her inside. Thus the “Horror [is] not to be
surveyed – / But skirted in the Dark” – carefully avoided – “With Consciousness suspended” and
“under Lock” so that the mind cannot touch upon it, even accidentally. Both in her language and
Harrell 10
in the format of the poem, Dickinson distances herself from the poem’s subject, first by referring
to loneliness as a concept – ‘there exists a loneliness like the one I’m describing’ – rather than
claiming it as a personal experience, and second by skimming on the surface of the subject, just
as she suggests must be done in order to continue living an un-lonely life. Unlike other poems,
this one does not suggest a means of coping with loneliness, but rather a method of living
alongside it.
While “The Loneliness One dare not sound” suggests Dickinson’s inability to confront
her loneliness, “A Prison gets to be a friend” makes the opposite assertion, stating the speaker’s
capacity to become accustomed to captivity. As Lauren Vanderhurst writes, the poem
“explore[s] the ways in which the home exists as a sanctuary, within which she can separate
herself to cultivate her mind, through introspection” (Vanderhurst). Initially, the prison is not a
friend, but it “gets to be” one, suggesting a transitional phase between a place of captivity and
the “sanctuary” to which Vanderhurst refers. Dickinson humanizes the prison by giving it a
“Ponderous face” and “narrow Eyes,” into which the speaker “come[s] to look with Gratitude”;
she writes that there is a “Kinmanship” between them. Again suggesting a period of adaptation,
Dickinson writes that we “learn” to accept the singular shuffle of our feet against the “planks,” a
sound that is “miserable… at first.” And although the sufficiency of the prison never compares to
the “sweet[ness]” of fond childhood memories, it offers a “Demurer” source of comfort – it is
enough. She writes that “the Cheek of Liberty” is “not so real… / As this Phantasm steel – /
Whose features – Day and Night – /Are present to us – as Our Own.” While the so-called liberty
of the outside world is artificial and fleeting, the prison is self-invented to meet the needs of the
person within it. Dickinson’s choice of confinement thus leads her to exchange the false “Hope”
offered by the outside world, for the “Content” made attainable by solitude. In the final stanza,
Harrell 11
she relinquishes the notion of “the Liberty we knew,” that we once enjoyed as innocent children,
as a freedom truly attainable only in heaven, if indeed even there. The suggestion is that, in the
temporal world, true freedom does not exist, but contentment does, and Dickinson finds herself
most capable of experiencing it in her self-constructed prison. Common notions of prison depict
it as a place one generally does not go willingly; that Dickinson chooses this place as the site of
her growth and as her choice of a place to be disconnects her from her readers, who likely find it
difficult to understand her choice.
Dickinson straightforwardly determines this division between her mentality and that of
the public in “Much Madness is divinest Sense.” Having consciously chosen the isolation of her
home, she sees her agency as a symbol of her freedom, unconfined by what she sees as the
unanimous desire of those within society to conform to customs and environments that are
normatively associated with independence. This poem underlines her feeling of disconnection
with the outside world, who lacks the “discerning Eye” necessary to understand and perhaps
commiserate with her choice of isolation. Although Dickinson contemplates whether they are
truly free, it is likely that none of them would ever consider her so. In her mind, “The Majority”
represents “the starkest madness,” whose sanity is based upon conformity or “assent”; while
Dickinson, by “Demur[ing],” is labeled “straightaway dangerous,” as if a criminal. While, in the
outside world, she would be considered insane and be “handled with a chain,” in the solitude of
her home, she is allowed to roam free and to operate under her own definition of sanity. The
poem underscores a one-sided lack of understanding and appreciation.
“I had been hungry, all the Years” similarly emphasizes Dickinson’s sense of
disconnection. The poem describes a scene in which the “hungry” speaker imagines the
possibility of partaking in a magnificent feast and yet finds, at the last moment, that she doesn’t
Harrell 12
hunger for it as she thought she did. The scene mirrors Dickinson’s choice to withdraw from
society, her feelings of separation, both emotional and experiential, from those within it. She
approaches the table as one unaccustomed to abundance, “trembling” as she “touche[s] the
Curious Wine.” At the start of the narrative, the speaker observes the lavish dinner through a
“Window” and for a moment contemplates its “Wealth” over the simplicity and comparative
poverty of her home, to which she has just been heading. In viewing this scene, she realizes the
difference between her lifestyle and that of the person to whom this feast belongs:
I did not know the ample Bread –
‘Twas so unlike the Crumb
The Birds and I, had often shared
In Nature’s – Dining Room.
In this moment, she begins to see her own environment as meager and comparatively natural,
perhaps uncivilized. She recognizes the difference between her expectations and reality, and
something about this realization displeases and repulses her, giving her pause. The prospect of
taking the first bite suddenly becomes overwhelming as she notes:
The Plenty hurt me – ‘twas so new –
Myself felt ill – and odd –
As Berry – of a Mountain Bush –
Transplanted to the Road.
This stanza suggests once more that she is something natural that has been suddenly cast in this
very unnatural setting, in which she does not belong. The speaker thus retreats, realizing, “Not
was I hungry – so I found / That Hunger was a way – Of persons outside Windows – / The
entering – takes away.” The feast is no longer enticing, and the speaker returns to her place at the
window, as that of an observer, separated by glass as she is by experience. Vivian Pollak writes,
“At some fundamental level of her sensibility, she was convinced that encounters with the world
would impede rather than enhance her capacity for growth. Her desire to escape from such
Harrell 13
bruising encounters forced her into a life in which language sustained her” (Pollak 107). By the
end of the poem, the speaker’s attitude has shifted dramatically. At first, she looks forward to the
meal as one long deserved, purchased by her years spent in isolation. The scene is described as
one in close proximity: “dr[awing] the Table near,” close enough to “touch”; but from that point
forward, the speaker begins to take steps backward, describing the other times she has observed
this scene through windows on her lonely way home. She begins to think of home, mentally
pulling the reader away from the scene before her. For a moment more, she observes the food but
now with an air of awkwardness, of displacement. Accordingly, the end suggests that the speaker
has returned to her place at the window, a place that she understands and to which she is
accustomed. Overall, the speaker suggests that despite occasional temptation by the outside
world, she is ultimately content with her separation from it and, irrespective of her feelings, is
fundamentally different from its society, as she does not hunger for the same things as those
within it. Unlike them, she is able to live without. Because she does not name these things
specifically, her declaration that she does not belong is rendered irrefutable, and the reader is
forced to accept her assertion.
“The Soul selects her own Society” inverses the relationship between Dickinson and
society as established in previous poems; she is not the excluded, but the excluder. The poem
describes a sort of courtship process, in which the soul, given a female identity, selects, from a
variety of suitors, only “One” as her companion. “Chariots – paus[e] – / at her low Gate” and “an
Emperor [is] kneeling / Opon her Mat,” suggesting that both figures pining for her favor are in
positions of power, yet the soul remains “unmoved” and admits neither into her home. Her
ability to choose “from an ample nation” and to reject both of her imperious suitors conversely
places her in an authoritative position. Dickinson affords the soul an air of dignity and
Harrell 14
resoluteness, for, having chosen “One,” the soul “close[s] the valves of her attention – / Like
Stone.” The words “Door,” “Gate,” and “Mat” set the poem in her home, which seems
impervious to outsiders: all she must do is “shu[t] the door,” and they are “Present no more.”
This poem mirrors Dickinson’s own choice to shut out the world in favor of the “One” she
selected. While the identity of that “One” is open to speculation, one might suggest that it is her
work, which she did choose as her companion, while shutting out the others, whose romantic
intentions would have drawn her away from her profession. Thus her writing is not posed as the
source of her loneliness, but as a companion more worthy of her attention than all others. To the
reader, of course, this poem allows Dickinson to remain aloof, giving her the power to close the
door to the public and to seal them off from her private world.
Death, which features prominently in Dickinson’s work, appears to be the foil, the
exception, to the dichotomy of personal and universal experiences established by her poems.
While death is, of course, a universal phenomenon, Dickinson portrays it (accurately) as a
uniquely personal experience: everyone must face death, God, emptiness, heaven, or hell – alone.
Paradoxically, death is universally a singular experience. While Dickinson adamantly warns
against trying to come to grips with one’s own loneliness or misery, in “I felt a Funeral, in my
Brain,” followed (perhaps significantly) by “’Tis so appalling – it exhilirates,” she suggests that
confronting one’s own death (as opposed to one’s loneliness or misery) can be a powerfully
liberating and life-changing experience. Her poems about death, like those about living
contently in isolation, return to an individualized perspective, one whose language discourages
an empathetic response from the reader.
“I felt a Funeral in my Brain” may refer either to a direct contemplation of her
Dickinson’s funeral or refer to a mental breakdown so severe it feels like a death. As Dickinson
Harrell 15
imagines this funeral, she feels that after a prolonged period of observing the events of her
funeral “that Sense was breaking through,” then “My mind was going numb… / And then a
Plank in Reason broke,” suggesting some type of epiphany about her state or the event taking
place. In contrast to the many mourners walking across her grave up there, she is “Wrecked,
solitary, here,” left alone with nothing but “Silence,” which may itself be an embodiment of
death or perhaps of her absolute aloneness. Although the reader may not share in this experience
empathetically, he can imagine himself in the vivid physical scene that Dickinson depicts, as
well as the horror that anyone might feel in the described circumstances; but the poem does
describe a personal incident, rather than a universal experience, nonetheless detaching the reader
from Dickinson’s private experience.
That this poem is followed immediately in the fascicles by “’Tis so appalling – it
exhilirates” poses the possibility that they are connected by concept and perhaps narrative. In
this poem, Dickinson imagines that she has come to terms with death, an experience that has
freed her from the continual terror of dying. It is “So over Horror, it half captivates,” a phrase
which, like the title first line, suggests that death, or rather what comes after it, is so terrible, that
it leaves one with a sense of awe or fascination. “The Soul [who] stares after it” feels “secure - /
to know the worst,” which “leaves no dread more”; knowing now what death entails, the Soul
needs no longer to feel afraid or anxious about its future. She depicts the knowledge as harsh, as
“Bald – and Cold –” but nonetheless gratifying because it is “The Truth.” When Dickinson
writes “To scan a Ghost, if faint - / But grappling conquers it,” she conjures the well-known
concept of seeing a ghost – an experience that inevitably strikes terror into its witness, but gives
the hope that, one the ghost and witness are able to confront one another – seemingly in a
familiarizing way – the witness will no longer feel afraid of it, of the unknown, but will be able
Harrell 16
to come to terms with it in a way that is peculiarly and uniquely satisfying, and which enables
him to feel calm and at peace:
Looking at Death, is Dying –
Just let go the Breath –
And not the pillow at your cheek
So slumbereth –
This stanza suggests strongly that this poem and its predecessor may be connected, as it makes
clear that Dickinson is not referring to having this epiphany as a living person, but as someone
who has died. This makes sense of “scanning a ghost,” for when one dies, one may possibly
encounter others who have ‘come out on the other side.’ Now it is not space that distances
Dickinson from others, but the ultimate experience, that of dying, which she uses to elevate
herself above them, as if in a condescending manner that is not at all envious:
If any are not sure –
We show them – prayer –
But we, who know,
Stop hoping, now - …
Others, can wrestle –
Your’s is done –
This place or new state, whether emptiness or paradise, nonetheless seems to offer contentment:
“It sets the Fright at liberty – / And terror’s free - / Gay, Ghastly, Holiday!” This final line
strikes the reader as macabre, “Gay” and “Holiday,” positive ideas, interrupted, perhaps tainted,
by the word “Ghastly” – yet it seems to embody the queasy joy of the entire poem. To be at ease
with the notion of death is liberating and satisfying and allows one to exist without anxiety or
fear – but in order to be at ease with it, one must have experienced it, leaving little hope for
someone living to ever feel this degree of freedom from fear. Although it is a kind of happiness,
Dickinson depicts it as truly bitter-sweet. Dickinson speaks from the plural perspective of “we,”
alluding to herself and those of us who are also dead – but this, of course, excludes her readers
Harrell 17
who are presumably alive. This death poem once more alludes to death as a universal, collective
phenomenon, but one which is still restricted to an individual’s experience.
Whereas, in “The Soul selects her own Society,” Dickinson shuts out the suitors who pine
at her doorstep, in “Because I could not stop for Death” and “Death is the supple suitor,”
Dickinson personifies death as a courteous and moreover successful suitor who bears her away to
eternity in a peaceful, comforting manner. In the first, she writes of Death, “Because I could not
stop for Death - / He kindly stopped for me,” suggesting his gentlemanly qualities. Their
rendezvous is intimate – “The carriage held but just Ourselves” – but is joined, or chaperoned, by
“Immortality.” The ‘we’ in this poem refers only to those three characters within it. Dickinson
seems to describe a slow, calm, perhaps painless death when she describes their outing:
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his civility –
In this first line, “He” suddenly becomes “We,” suggesting that the speaker has perhaps died by
uniting with Death, and she describes putting away her worldly work and play—her life—to be
with him. The next stanza seems to summarize one’s life in three lines that begin with “We
passed”: “We passed the School, where Children strove / At Recess – in the Ring,” lines that
capture the playfulness and energetic days of childhood; “We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain”
recalls the labor and responsibility of adulthood”; and “We passed the Setting Sun” suggests old
age, like fall transitioning into winter. When she corrects herself, “Or rather – He passed us,”
she seems to lose track of time or sequence, in the way that many on the brink of dying begin to
slip away. She notes that rather suddenly – “The Dews drew quivering and Chill” – she realized
that she is dressed in “only Gossamer, my Gown - / My tippet – only Tulle –”, both garments
made out of natural materials, gossamer being cob- or spider-web and tippet being made
Harrell 18
traditionally out of fur. Finally, they come to Death’s dwelling, “a House that seemed / A
Swelling of the Ground,” and the voice suddenly shifts to one that is recalling this as a longpassed event:
Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –
She seems to refer to the point, in her life, when she realized she was dying, headed toward
Death, and once more time seems altered, a passed century that feels less than a day ago. That
the speaker ends up alone – no longer “we” but “I” – as she reflects on her death, which implies
once more the singular experience of dying, for Death personified no longer accompanies her. It
seems as though his courtesy and flattering courtship is merely a ploy to bring her to her end and
that, once he has accomplished this, he abandons her. Appropriately, this poem about death ends
in the same solitude as those about learning to live alone.
This general narrative is repeated “Death is the supple suitor / That wins at last,” in which
she describes Death’s courtship in much the same manner:
A stealthy Wooing
Conducted first
By pallid innuendoes
And dim approach
Her words again suggest a kind of teasing, of false pretense, evoking the image of a long, bony
finger beckoning her towards him. But once Death has succeeded in wooing her, his attentions
become “brave at last with Bugles / And a bisected Coach.” That the coach is bisected once
more attests to the singular experience of death; now that Death has her in his grips, the truth is
revealed, that they will not be together as those in a proper, human courtship, but that he is
merely her escort to death, which she must face alone. The coach “bears away in triumph / To
Harrell 19
Troth unknown / And Kinsmen as divulgeless / As Clans of Down –”, which again suggests a
quiet, perhaps unsatisfactory ending, to a place of mystery where no one (the divulgeless
Kinsmen) can or will illuminate the “Troth” of her new existence. As was so in the end of
“Because I could not stop for Death”, she may as well be alone. Like her other poems about
death, this one similarly separates her from her readers by describing an experience that is, by its
nature, solitary. Dickinson chooses to not to explore the universality of dying but the individual
experience of her own death.
In her poems, Dickinson seems to correlate strong emotions with specific places, usually
positive feelings with either physically confining spaces or those that are totally unknown, such
as those of the afterlife, which hold a mystery for her that seems at once dreadful and alluring.
Any space outside of this seems to offer false freedom or to threaten her sense of well-being,
spaces which sometimes include the world outside of her home or which can simply refer to a
particular mental state that she often ends up referring to as an “abyss” of some kind. She
continually relates death as the ultimate exception, merely because she cannot possibly know
what it will feel like, whether these same worldly anxieties and miseries will afflict her there as
they do in the present life, which keeps it a source of fascination that she regularly explores.
However, her tendency to see Death as a powerful suitor leads her to impose her worldly
disappointments with love on Death himself, who ultimately leaves her alone and unfulfilled.
Despite her extreme feelings about her surroundings, about what it means to be free or alive or
contented, she never seems capable of feeling any of these things consistently or dependably.
Although a confining space may, in one poem, be a source of great comfort, it another it subjects
her to the most dismal and consuming negative thoughts and feelings, making it the enemy, one
that must be avoided.
Harrell 20
The most intriguing aspect of this selection of poems is that those about finding
contentment in isolation and those which imagine encounters with death, distance Dickinson
from her reader because they are, ultimately and by their nature, solitary experiences.
Conversely, her numerous poems about pain and strong negative feelings, which she seems most
reluctant to examine, bring her closer to her reader by exploring universal experiences, which,
like it or not, Dickinson shares with most of humanity. Alternate the pairings, and the superficial
and at times weak persuasions about finding contentment in solitude may be pitted against her
poems about what it is to feel extreme pain, loneliness, or misery, which strike the reader as
inarguably genuine and heartfelt. These poems, in which some certainty lies in terms of their
conviction, stand in contrast to her poems about death, in which she always describes imagined
experiences that inevitably borrow details or circumstances from reality (and which are naturally
neither convincing nor implausible because, like Dickinson, the reader has no way of knowing
the truth). Dickinson transitions easily, sometimes within the poems themselves, between these
emotions and constantly plays with the distance between herself and her reader, represented
inadvertently in the poems as “They,” the ‘other’ that often stands in opposition to her in her
contentment poems, and beside her in her poems about pain.
What does it mean that Dickinson fluctuates so dramatically between contentment and
despair? There is no public poetic project to be accomplished or failed, nor a targeted audience
to disappointed or satisfy. Dickinson’s life work must be evaluated with the same emotional
leniency as should a diary, even if composed in a format befitting of publishable material. Just
as the near-illegibility of her scrawl suggests a lack of expectation, and thus consideration, for
unfamiliar eyes, so too does the lack of consistency do more for the fulfillment of the author than
that of the reader. The back and forth of her poems about the advantages and consequences of
Harrell 21
solitude suggest that Dickinson struggled as most would in her surroundings and as many do,
even with the liberty and agency to go anywhere. While at times adamant that she has been able
to find contentment in isolation, she also tailspins into hysterical periods of doubt, when the
friend once more becomes a prison, and her definition of sanity appears to slip. Unable to
moderate these strong emotional responses to everyday life by altering her surroundings,
Dickinson experiences extremes. What becomes most extraordinary, then, is her ability to touch
on deeply personal, psychological, and emotional experiences that are as timeless as they are
ubiquitous.
Harrell 22
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily, and R. W. Franklin. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2005. Print.
Pollak, Vivian R. Dickinson, the Anxiety of Gender. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984. Print.
Vanderhurst, Lauren. “‘A Prison Gets to Be a Friend’: Emily Dickinson, Agoraphobia and
Introspection.” Emergence: A Journal of Undergraduate Literary Criticism and Creative
Research, vol. 2 (2011). Web. 18 May 2013. <http://journals.english.ucsb.edu>.
Vendler, Helen. Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010. Print.