Emily Dickinson

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Emily Dickinson

• American Literature
• Cecilia H.C. Liu
• 12/27/2004

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Outline

• Emily Dickinsons Brief Biography
• Common Questions on Emily Dickinson
• Dickinson and Higginson
• Death in Victorian Era
• The Fascicles
• References

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Emily Dickinson 1830-1886

• Dickinson was born on December 10th, 1830, in
  Amherst, Massachusetts, and died on May 15th,
  1886, from Brights Disease, a vague and
  obsolete term for disease of the kidneysacute or
  chronic, followed by stroke.
• She lived out her life in only two houses and
  seldom left Amherst, which the period she left
  are listed as follows
• Amherst Academy 1840-46
• Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary 1847-48
• During her fathers term in the National House of
  Representatives, Dickinson visited him in
  Washington and stayed briefly in Philadelphia on
  her way home.
• In 1864-65, she went to Boston for eye treatment.

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Emily Dickinson and Her Family
Father Edward Dickinson 1.Graduated from Yale 2.Helped found Amherst College 3. A treasurer of Amherst College for 36 years 4.A state representative and a state senator Mother Emily Norcross Dickinson In 1874, Edward Dickinson died and Emily Norcross Dickinson became paralyzed, leaving Emily and Lavinia, her daughters to take care of her.
William Austin Dickinson (Emilys older brother) Married Susan Gilbert A justice of the peace in 1857 He followed his father, and also became a treasurer of Amherst College William Austin Dickinson (Emilys older brother) Married Susan Gilbert A justice of the peace in 1857 He followed his father, and also became a treasurer of Amherst College
Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson
Lavinia (Vinnie) Dickinson Helped with seeking for publishers for Dickinson after she died Lavinia (Vinnie) Dickinson Helped with seeking for publishers for Dickinson after she died
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The Writers Dickinson Admired

• Shakespeare minute and personal
• Keats
• Charles Dickens revered sombre Girl
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Bronte Sisters
• George Eliot
• George Sand

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Publication of Dickinsons poems

• Thomas Wentworth Higginsons Letter to a Young
  Contributor
• Only 7 poems published in her life, which were
  all anonymous and published by friends secretly
• Lavinia (Vinnie) Dickinson found thousands of
  poems written by Emily after her death.
• Helped by Mrs.Todd, the figure of literary
  prominence with whom the poet corresponded, Todd
  selected and edited several hundred poems from
  the mixed cache discovered by Lavinia.

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Publication of Dickinsons poems

• Poems 1890
• Poems Second Series 1891
• Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel
  Loomis Todd, 2 vols 1894
• Poems Third Series 1896
• The Single Hound 1914
• Further Poems 1929
• Unpublished Poems 1936
• Bolts of Melody New Poems 1945
• The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H.
  Johnson, 3 vols 1955
• The Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas
  H. Johnson. 3 vols 1958

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Dickinsons Relationship of Passion

• Has all been a mystery
• Samuel BowlesAn editor of the Springfield
  Republican
• Reverend Charles WadsworthA minister
• Judge Otis Phillips LordHe was two decades older
  than Dickinson, as well as a life long friend of
  Mr. Dickinson, whom might have proposed to her,
  if Dickinson had not rejected him

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Questions on Dickinson

• Q What did Dickinson mean by "circumference"?
• A Significance for Dickinson
• Circumference Derived from the Latin root
  meaning "to carry or go around," which the
  emphasis of the word is the sense of
  encompassing.
• "Emily Dickinson's most frequent metaphor for
  ecstasy was Circumference. Each of the
  negotiations which consciousness conducted
  between the me and the not me established a
  circumference. . . . The circle had long been a
  symbol for the spirit in activity" (Gelpi 121).
• Earlier, in a letter to Thomas Wentworth
  Higginson (2 July 1862), she said, "My Business
  is Circumference.
• In a letter, she writes, "The Bible dealt with
  the Center, not with the Circumference."

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Questions on Dickinson 2

• Circumference is a double metaphor, which
  signifies extension and limit.
• Typically, Dickinson connected this concept with
  feelings of awe and the sublime the sublime has
  an element of fear or terror mingled with
  aesthetic perception.
• "Circumference comes to serve as a complex symbol
  for those disrupted moments when in some sense
  time transcends time. . . It is an
  indispensable defense perimeter which separates
  man from God" (Gelpi).

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Questions on Dickinson 3

• Why does Emily Dickinson use the dash?
• To indicate interruption or abrupt shift in
  thought
• As a parenthetical device for emphasis.
• As a substitute for the colon introducing a
  list,series, or final appositive.
• To keep a note of uncertainty or undecidability.
  Dashes are fluid and indicate incompletion, a way
  of being in uncertainty,and mark without cutting
  off meaning.
• The dash both joins sentences so that they have a
  boundary in common and resists that joining it
  connects and separates.
• Its a falling away, an indefinite rather than a
  definite end to a line.

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Questions on Dickinson 4

• Why did Dickinson capitalize so many words?
• German, a language Dickinson knew, typically
  capitalizes nouns.
• Capitalizing words gives additional emphasis.
• Some believe that her use is at times
  idiosyncratic and more random than meaningful,
  since in some instances a word is capitalized in
  one of Dickinson's handwritten copies of a poem
  but not in another of her copies.

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Dickinson and Higginson

• Dickinson was influenced quite deeply by her
  close friendships with Samuel Bowles and J.G.
  Holland, and by her deep attachment to Charles
  Wadsworth and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
• Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a prominent
  literary man to whom Dickinson turned for advice
  on publishing her poetry. He was a Unitarian
  minister, an abolitionist, and a well-known
  literary critic.
• Higginsons Comments on Dickinson

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Higginsons Comments on Dickinson

• "A recluse by temperament and habit, literally
  spending years without setting her foot beyond
  the doorstep, and many more years during which
  her walks were strictly limited to her father's
  grounds, she habitually concealed her mind, like
  her person, from all but a very few friends and
  it was with great difficulty that she was
  persuaded to print, during her lifetime, three or
  four poems. Yet she wrote verses in great
  abundance and though curiously indifferent to
  all conventional rules, had yet a rigorous
  literary standard of her own, and often altered a
  word many times to suit an ear which had its own
  tenacious fastidiousness." 

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Death in Victorian Era
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Death in Victorian Age

• Death was shown in every day life during the 19th
  century.
• Death infiltrated in many objects in the 19th
  century, and bereavement touched in every aspect
  of Victorian life.
• Diseases such as rickets, which could have been
  cured with sunlight, led to bone deformities and
  left children vulnerable to other diseases.
• One of the greatest killers of young children was
  diarrhea, which could kill an infant within 48
  hours.
• Among the deadly hazards older children faced
  were scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria, and
  smallpox.

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• Fading Away, Harpers Weekly (1858)

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Funeral Custom in Victorian Agethe Rich and the
Poor

• an elegant hearse
• 1. adorned with black ostrich plumes
• 2. black horse(s) without riders
• professional mourners (mutes)
• lavish refreshments
• paid weekly into a burial club in order to
  afford a horse-drawn hearse
• not held the funeral until the next Sunday
• without food during the time

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General Funeral Custom in Victorian Age

• influenced by Queen Victoria
• deep mourning ? half-mourning
• funerals for children
• The closer relationship to the deceased, the
  more black that was worn, and the longer amount
  of time that it was worn.

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• Woman
  in
• 
  Mourning Dress

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• Mourning for Children ?
• Man in Mourning Dress

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Mourning Jewelry

• a trend of incorporating a lock of the deceaseds
  hair into mourning jewelry

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References

• Armand, Barton Levi St. Emily Dickinson and Her
  Culture The Souls Society. New York Cambridge
  UP, 1984. 39-77.
• Frisch, Karen. Childhood Diseases in the
  Victorian Age. http//www.ancestry.com/learn/libr
  ary/article.aspx?article5552
• American Transcendentalism An On-line Guide
  http//www.shepherd.edu/transweb/amherst.htm
• Emily Dickinson. http//womenshistory.about.com/gi
  /dynamic/offsite.htm?sitehttp3A2F2Fwww.findagr
  ave.com2Fpictures2F282.html
• Beltran, Michele. Death in America Ritual and
  Memorial. http//www.msu.edu/user/beltranm/mourni
  ng/DEATH_EX.HTM

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References

• Douglas, Anne. Victorian Mourning Customs.
  http//ky.essortment.com/victorianmourni_rlse.htm
• The Mounring After. http//www.geocities.com/vic
  torianlace11/mourning.html
• Campbell, D. Common Questions on Emily
  Dickinson. http//guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/camp
  bell/enl311/common.html
• Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson
  http//www.iath.virginia.edu/fdw/volume1/belasco/d
  ickinson-higginson
• http//www.geocities.com/sir_john_eh/nosurprise.ht
  ml