Emily Dickinson read about the world around
her, but for most of her adult life, she did not live in it. She
spent much of her life behind locked doors, refusing visitors and
producing poem after poem in her room. However, politics engaged
Dickinson's attention for some time. Her father, Edward Dickinson,
was a United States Congressman. Dickinson's ancestry traced back
to the beginnings of New England history. The Dickinsons had come
to America with John Winthrop in 1630 and had settled all over
the Connecticut River Valley by the time Emily Dickinson was born
two hundred years later.
During Dickinson's life, a number of important events
and movements took place. A social and religious movement called
the Great Revival renewed religious fervor among the people of
New England. It resulted in the closing of saloons all over Massachusetts and
Connecticut. Dickinson's father joined the Great Revival movement
in supporting the temperance pledge, but Dickinson looked on the
movement with skepticism.
During the 1840s and 1850s, the abolitionist movement–a
social movement organized in the North to abolish the institution
of slavery–gained support. On May 30, 1854, Congress passed the
Kansas-Nebraska Act. This bill made the Kansas and Nebraska territories
full-fledged states. As a result of granting Kansas and Nebraska
statehood, the slave debate in America intensified, for the new
bill permitted slavery, enraging some United States citizens. The
Kansas-Nebraska Act stated that the new states would decide to
adopt slavery or not based on "popular sovereignty," or the will of
the inhabitants of the territory. Leaving the adoption of slavery up
to the individual states directly contradicted the Missouri Compromise,
which barred the extension of slavery into new states. Edward Dickinson
fought vehemently against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The bill passed,
and as a result, Edward Dickinson and about forty other U.S. Congressmen
began planning an entirely new political party, which would come
to be called the Republican party.
The Civil War also touched Emily Dickinson's life. Her
brother Austin paid a conscript to take his place in the war, avoiding
it, but Emily's great friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson led the
first black regiment in the Union army, and one of her dearest
friend's husbands was killed by an explosion in the conflict.
The American literary world was not closed to female writers, but
it did not welcome them, either. Harriet Beecher Stowe was the notable
exception to the unspoken rules barring women from the literary
club. In 1852, Stowe published the immensely popular, controversial
novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Despite the gains made
in fiction by women like Stowe, poetry was still considered a man's
arena, especially in New England, where heavyweights like Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Walt Whitman practiced their art.
Dickinson's father was liberal in some respects and conservative in
others. He would have disapproved if he knew Dickinson spent her
time writing in her room, so she kept her massive collection of writings
locked in a secret drawer in her room. Dickinson's only publicly
disseminated poems were those she sent to friends and family as
notes, birthday greetings, and Valentines. In her lifetime, Dickinson
published only seven poem out of the nearly 2,000 that would eventually
be published after her death. During Dickinson's life, nearly all
of the seven published poems were published anonymously in the
Springfield Republican newspaper. Dickinson, socially brilliant
as a young woman, became increasingly reclusive as her life progressed.
In her mid-twenties, she began wearing only clothing that was white.
Eventually, she stopped receiving most visitors, even refusing to
see dear friends that came to her house.
Dickinson's great poetic achievement was not fully realized
until years after her death, even though Dickinson understood her
own genius when she lived. Many scholars now identify Dickinson's style
as the forerunner, by more than fifty years, of modern poetry. At
the time in which Dickinson wrote, the conventions of poetry demanded
strict form. Dickinson's broken meter, unusual rhythmic patterns,
and assonance struck even respected critics of the time as sloppy
and inept. In time, her style was echoed by many of our most revered
poets, including Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. However, while she
lived, the few publishers could not appreciate the innovation of Dickinson's
form. Her unique technique discomfited them, and they could not
see beyond it to appreciate her jewels of imagery and her unexpected
and fresh metaphors.
Dickinson's niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Dickinson's sister
Lavinia collected and published some of Dickinson's poetry after
her death, but the world was still slow to recognize Dickinson. In
1945, the collection of poems titled Bolts of Melody was
published. In 1955 Dickinson's letters and selected commentaries
on her life and work were published, and in 1960, her complete
poems, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, were published. At last the
world began to recognize Dickinson's innovation and brilliance.
Today, Dickinson is ensconced in the canon and almost universally
considered one of the greatest poets in history.
In recent years, many scholars have rejected the popular
view of Emily Dickinson as a heartsick recluse who spent her entire
life pining for an unnamed lover, foregoing sex and companionship
in order to concentrate more fully on her writing. Some scholars
have argued that research on Emily Dickinson has focused too heavily
on her personal life and on the importance of men to her poetry.
There can be no doubt, however, that her poetry was a forerunner
to modern poetry and that her poems contained some of the most
unusual and daring innovations in the history of American poetry.
