FREE ESSAY ON EMILY DICKINSON

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 hat 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, Who so would be a human, 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 towards formalized schooling. Being a product of
reputable college one would think that she would be in favor of this. But as her beliefs
in transcendentalism grew so did her belief in individuality.
Emily also went against the Church which was an extreme rarity of the time. Similar to
many other that shared her beliefs she too did not think that a set religion was the way
for salvation.
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church;
I keep it staying at home,
With a bobolike for a chorister,
With an orchard for a dome.
According to this poem Emily clearly states that nature is her source of guidance and she
has little need for the Church as an institution. Like Thoreau, Emily believed that
people need to understand nature before they could begin to comprehend humanity because
humanity was just a part of nature. Unlike many other she felt that nature was beautiful
and must be understood.
Has it feet like water-lilies?
Has it feathers like a bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?
(Will there really be a morning?)
Further on in the poem she goes on to ask if the scholar or some wise man from the skies
knows where to find morning. It can be inferred that morning, something so common place
and taken for granted, cannot be grasped by even the greatest so called minds.
Emily also saw the frightful part of nature, death was an extension of the natural order.
Probably the most prominent theme in her writing is death. She took death in a relatively
casual way when compared to the puritan beliefs that surrounded her life. Death to her is
just the next logical step to life and compares it to a carriage ride, or many other
common place happenings.
Because I could not stop for Death-
He kindly stopped for me-
The Carriage held but just Ourselves-
And Immortality.
Life according to Emily is brief and the people living out their lives have little
control.
In this short life
That only lasts an hour,
How much, how little,
Is within our power!
However non-religious she may appear and however insignificant she believes life to be
she does however show some signs in accepting life after death.
This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
But positive as sound.
To Emily the most important things in her life were religion, individuality, nature and
death. She may not have believed in God but He did have a profound impact throughout her
childhood. Emily and Emerson alike felt the most important thing was to maintain ones
individuality as she did. She was fascinated by both nature and death and she attempted
to explain both in her
writings.