“Best Things dwell out of Sight”(#998) describes one of America’s greatest poets. She dwelled out of sight for most of her life and her poems, with the exception of seven published anonymously, remained out of sight until well after her death. Many literary scholars have attempted a biography on this mysterious woman and poet and yet none are conclusive. Dickinson remains an enigma even today but biographical speculation allows us to analyze some of her poetry even though we may be completely inaccurate about what we presuppose.
There are some facts about Emily Elizabeth Dickinson that we know for certain. She was born on December 10, 1830 and is recognized as one of America’s greatest poets. She had an older brother, William Austin Dickinson, born on April 16, 1829, and a younger sister, Lavinia Norcross Dickinson, born on February 28, 1833. She was raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, which was a small and tradition-bound town in the nineteenth century. Emily’s father, Edward Dickinson, was a grand figure in Amherst.
In his letters, he comes across as a remarkably ambitious man—“a typical success-oriented, work-oriented citizen of expansionist America,” in Richard Sewall’s characterization. Educated at Amherst College and Yale, he soon became the leading lawyer in town. For thirty-seven years he was the treasurer of the college that his father helped establish in 1821. Besides this, Edward had accomplished much success in his life but biographers of Emily’s life believe that he paid for his public success through his emotional destitution.
Emily’s father was a rigorous Calvinist and dominated the Dickinson family. His concept of life was rigid religious observance and obedience to God’s law as stated in the Bible. He prompted his children to read the Bible and attend church every Sunday. People who knew the Dickinsons referred to Edward as a “severe, latter-day Puritan, a power minded tyrant…”(Sewall: 8). However it seems that as ignorant as critics made him sound, Edward was modern-minded enough to educate all his children. Edward Dickinson adamantly believed that women should be educated, and sent his daughters to prominent schools.
Emily attended Amherst Academy where she graduated in 1847 and later attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for one year. Her parents withdrew her because of ill health but there is speculation that she returned home because she did not like the religious environment. After leaving school she returned home and spent the remainder of her life there. She took occasional trips but always returned home to her sanctuary and eventually stopped travelling and even leaving her house completely. She corresponded with her confidantes and friends through letters, rarely seeing them.
The men she corresponded with during her life include Benjamin Newton, a law student; Reverend Charles Wadsworth, a Philadelphia minister; Thomas Higginson, a literary critic and Civil War hero, and Otis Lord, a judge who had been her father’s closest friend. She regarded these men as intellectual advisers as well as friends. Although many of them found her poetry to be fascinating, none advised her to publish them. Dickinson wrote the majority of her poetry during the 1860’s at which time she had become increasingly reclusive. She began wearing only white dresses and she hardly left her home, let alone Amherst.
Although she occasionally visited friends, by the time she was forty years of age, she refused invitations to leave home and spent the remainder of her life taking care of her parents until they died (her father died in 1847, her mother died in 1882). Emily herself became bedridden during the last year of her life and her sister, Lavinia, nursed her until her death on May 15, 1886. Although there is much biographical information about Dickinson, it seems that the key details are missing. What is the connection between the events in Dickinson’s life and her poems?
The majority of her poems are about love, death, and religion. There are many explications of her biography through her poems but they are by no means factual. Critics also believe that she became obsessed with death at an early age when one of her dearest childhood friends, Sophia Holland, died in 1844. As an adult, Dickinson endured the pain of mourning for many dear friends and family members throughout her life. Dickinson’s poems are sometimes so obscure that it’s difficult to be certain of what she’s describing. When she uses the word “he” she could be describing God, a lover, the cosmos, or even death.
For example, the poem “He fumbles at your Soul”(#315) is ambiguous. We are never given an implication of what the poem is veering towards but then again that may be Dickinson’s intention. Nevertheless, Dickinson’s poetry is rich in rhetoric and creativity. Her poetry is just as mysterious as her life was and perhaps Dickinson wanted things to turn out the way they did. It seems that even her romantic life was just as ambiguous as her poetry. Many critics believe that Dickinson was in love with Susan Gilbert, her best friend who later became her brother’s wife.
There are many poems that Dickinson wrote which biographers believe to be distinctly about Susan. After a four-year break, Dickinson began to write poetry once again in 1858 with three principle themes: death, nature and Susan, about whom she wrote about ten of approximately fifty poems written in this year. With one exception, “One sister have I,” the poems Dickinson wrote about her sister-in-law are sullen and perplexed. Critics believe that Dickinson was feeling empty after Susan’s marriage to Austin, as though she lost a lover.
