Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was raised in a traditional New England

home in the mid 1800's. Her father along with the rest of the

family had become Christians and she alone decided to rebel

against that and reject the Church. She like many of her

contemporaries had rejected the traditional views in life and

adopted the new transcendental outlook. Massachusetts, the

state where Emily was born and raised in, before the

transcendental period was the epicenter of religious practice.

Founded by the puritans, the feeling of the avenging had

never left the people. After all of the "Great Awakenings"

and religious revivals the people of New England began to

question the old ways. What used to be the focal point of all

lives was now under speculation and often doubted. People

began to search for new meanings in life. People like

Emerson and Thoreau believed that answers lie in the

individual. Emerson set the tone for the era when he said,

"Whoso would be a [hu]man, must be a non-conformist."

Emily Dickinson believed and practiced this philosophy.

When she was young she was brought up by a stern and

austere father. In her childhood she was shy and already

different from the others. Like all the Dickinson children,

male or female, Emily was sent for formal education in

Amherst Academy. After attending Amherst Academy with

conscientious thinkers such as Helen Hunt Jackson, and

after reading many of Emerson's essays, she began to

develop into a free willed person. Many of her friends had

converted to Christianity, her family was also putting

enormous amount of pressure for her to convert. No longer

the submissive youngster she would not bend her will on

such issues as religion, literature and personal associations.

She maintained a correspondence with Rev. Charles

Wadsworth over a substantial period of time. Even though

she rejected the Church as a entity she never did reject or

accept God. Wadsworth appealed to her because he had an

incredibly powerful mind and deep emotions. When he left

the East in 1861 Emily was scarred and expressed her deep

sorrow in three successive poems in the following years.

They were never romantically involved but their relationship

was apparently so profound that Emily's feelings for him she

sealed herself from the outside world. Her life became filled

with gloom and despair until she met Judge Otis P. Lord late

in her life. Realizing that they were well into their lives they

never were married. When Lord passed away Emily's health

condition which has been hindered since childhood

worsened. In Emily's life the most important things to her

were love, religion, individuality and nature. When discussing

these themes she followed her lifestyle and broke away from

traditional forms of writing and wrote with an intense energy

and complexity never seen before and rarely seen today.

She was a rarity not only because of her poetry but because

she was one of the first female pioneers into the field of

poetry. Emily often speaks of love in her poems, but she did

it in such a way that would make people not want to fall in

love. She writes of parting, separation and loss. This is

supported by the experiences she felt with Wadsworth and

Otis P. Lord. Not with a club the heart is broken, nor with a

stone; A whip so small you could not see it, I've known This

seems to be an actual account of the emotions she

experienced during her relationship with Otis Lord.

Individuality played a pervasive role in her life as a result of

her bout with separation. Emily did not conform to society.

She did not believe it was society's place to dictate to her

how she should lead her life. Her poems reflect this sense of

rebellion and revolution against tradition. From all the jails

the boys and girls Ecstatically leap,- Beloved, only afternoon

That prison doesn't keep. In this poem Emily shows her

feelings