Emily Dickinson

“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 ...

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...her poetry in terms of nature. Whatever Dickinson’s beliefs may have been, God had a profound impact on both her life and her poetry.

Emily Dickinson died on May 15, 1886 and left behind a whirlwind of questions. By choosing to live as a recluse, no one is able to give a factual biography of her life. She will remain a mystery forever and so will her poetry. We will never discover for certain what motivated many of her poems. That fact that she decided to remain alone is probably what allowed her to delve into the roots of her mind and soul granting her complete freedom to tune into herself and write freely. Dickinson’s has written many poems, approximately 1775, and I have only managed to scratch the surface of what her poems entail, but of course that is to be expected considering it has taken Dickinson a lifetime to write her poems. The subjects of love, death and religion are dominant in Dickinson’s work but so are nature and life. She is truly an enigma and although literary critics are scrambling to figure out what made her tick, I think the fact that we’ll never know gives her poems much more personality.