Edna Millay Research Paper

Born in Rockland, Maine in the year 1892 Edna St. Vincent Millay was the daughter of Cora Buzzelle Millay and Henry Tolman Millay. Millays parents divorced when she was 8 and she was raised by her mother who inspired many of her works. Millay was a very independent child and published poetry by the time she was a teen. Millay had gained recognition as a poet and writer by her mid-twenties. She wrote poems about love, sorrow, death, and everlasting nature. Millay also completed many plays and short fiction works underneath the name Nancy Boyd. As Millay got older she married a man named Eugene Jan Boissevain in 1923. She had devoted a sonnet in memory of his first wife who was also an idol of Millays. Millay had an open marriage and many sexual partners.

Edna was a woman of modern color and her poems suggested this was very normal for her. Ednas downfall started after her close friend, a poet named Elinor Wylie, died in 1928. Three years later her mother passed away and her father died in 1935. A car accident in 1936 and the three deaths that included her closest friend and her parents lead up to her nervous breakdown in 1944. As Millay was unable to write anything for two years her husband took care of her while she recovered slowly. her husband died of lung cancer and a stroke due to a loss of strength and care for himself. Edna died alone at the bottom of the staircase in her house.As Kelly Fineman states “Whether her death was an accident or intentional is unresolved,”. Kelly also says that people who have been in the house believe the stairs are difficult to navigate and that Ednas substantial drinking habit could have caused her to fall down the stairs and eventually lead to her death. Due to the death of loved ones in her life Edna St. Vincent Millay used imagery of nature and elevated diction to express loneliness and sorrow in believing that pain is all that remains after the loss of love and loved