Emily Dickinson

• There's a certain Slant of light
  • uses the metaphore of winter light at the end of the day to explore finality of life - represents it as being oppresive
  • "opresses like the Heft / Of Cathedral Tunes"
  • "Heavenly Hurt"
  • "We can find no scar / But internal indifference"
• I felt a funeral, in my Brain
  • Dickinson imagines being able to hear her own funeral in order to explore death and the afterlife
  • "Kept treading - treading - till it seemed that Sense was breaking through"
  • "A Service, like a Drum / Keep beating - beating"
  • "then a Plank in Reason broke"
  • "And hit a world"
• After great pain
  • Explores the acceptence of death by relating it to the numbness caused by emotional pain
  • "The nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs"
  • "The Feet mechinical, go round"
  • "This is the Hour of Lead" 

• It was not death, for I stood up
  • Explores how death might feel by describing it using unpleasnant abstract concepts
  • "Not fire - for just my feet could keep a Chancel cool"
  • "It was no frost, for on my Flesh / I felt Sirocos" 
  • "As if my life were shaven, / And fitted to a frame" 
  • "could not breath without a key"
  • "Grisly frosts - first autumn morns Repeal the Beating ground"
• The last night that she lived
  • Dickinson explores the living's obsession with death by reflecting on the experience of sitting at someone's deathbead
  • "It was a Common Night / Except the Dying"
  • "As we went out and in / Between Her final Room/ And Rooms where those to be alive"
  • "A jealousy for Her arose"
  • "She mentioned, and forgot / Then lightly as a Reed / Bent to the water" 
  • "And We - we placed the Hair
  • Critic - "she returns constantly to the preoccupation with death" - Ankley Larabee

• I heard a fly buzz
  • Explores and questions the importance notion of heaven by imagining that a merger fly interupting her acension to heaven
  • "Between the light and me" 
  • "when the King / Be witnessed - in the Room"
  • "what portions of me be / assignable"
  • "then the windows failed"
• Because I could not stop for death 
  • Explores the notion of the afterlife and the finality of life by imagining taking a carriage ride with death and watching life of others pass by 
  • 'The carriage held but Ourselves / - and Immortality'
  • "And I put away my / labour and my leisure"
  • 'where children Strove  / At Recess - in the ring'
  • For only Gossamer, my gown'
  • 'We passed the setting sun'
  • ''The Dews drew quivering and chill'
  • 'were toward eternity'

• It was not death, for I stood up
• Explores how the afterlife would feel, describing it using unpleasnant abstract concepts
• "Not fire - for just my feet could keep a Chancel cool"
• "It was no frost, for on my Flesh / I felt Sirocos" 
• "As if my life were shaven, / And fitted to a frame" 
• "could not breath without a key"
• "Grisly frosts - first autumn morns Repeal the Beating ground"
• Critcs
  • "Emily Dickinson is not a path to heaven" - Wendy Martin

• This World is not Conclusion
  • Explores how religion has been used to explain life an questions how accurate this is
  • "Narcotics cannot still the Tooth / That nibbles at the soul"
  • "It beckons and it baffles"
  • "Plucks at a twig of evidence"
  • "Through a Riddle, at the last Sactity must go"
• There's a certain slant of light
  • Displays religion as being oppresive by describing the dark light of a winter afternoon  
  • 'Oppreses like the Heft / of Cathedral Tunes'
  • 'Heavenly Hurt'
  • T'is the Seal Despair'

• I heard a fly buzz
  • Explores and questions the importance notion of heaven by imagining that a merger fly interupting her acension to heaven
  • "Between the light and me" 
  • "when the King / Be witnessed - in the Room"
  • "what portions of me be / assignable"
  • "then the windows failed"
• 'not the path to heaven' - Wendy Martin

• One need not be a chamber - to be Haunted 
  • Explore the idea that we are afraid to explore our inner selves or unserstand our minds and that our bodies do not let us by personified it as a ghost within a house
  • "The Brain has Corridors"
  • "Far safer, of the Midnight Meeting / External Ghost"
  • "That Cooler Host"
  • "unarmed, one's a'self encounter - in a lonesome"
  • "Ourself behind ourself, concelaed - / Should startle most";
  • "The Body - borrows a revolvers ? He bolts the door"
• My life had stood - A Loaded Gun
  • "And carried Me away"
  • "every time I speak for him"
  • "Tis better than the Eider-Duck's Deep Pillow"
  • "For I have but the power to kill, / without - the power to die"

• Context
  • Began to seclude herself in 1850 - aged twenty - spent a great deal of time exploring her own mind and questioning herself
• Critics
  • Byron - "the dangers of confrontation within the mind"

• It was not death, for I stood up
  • Explores grief by comparing it to the afterlife, describing it using unpleasnant abstract concepts
  • "Not fire - for just my feet could keep a Chancel cool"
  • "It was no frost, for on my Flesh / I felt Sirocos" 
  • "As if my life were shaven, / And fitted to a frame" 
  • "could not breath without a key"
  • "Grisly frosts - first autumn morns Repeal the Beating ground"
• After great pain, a formal feeling comes
  • 'Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs'
  • 'The feet mechanical, go round'
  • 'This is the Hour of Lead'
  • 'First chill, then stupor - then letting go'

I felt a funeral, in my brain

• Dickinson imagines how uncomfortable it would be to be concious at her own funeral
• "Kept treading - treading - till it seemed that Sense was breaking through"
• "A Service, like a Drum / Keep beating - beating"
• "then a Plank in Reason broke"
• "And hit a world"

Go to him! Happy letter!

• Dickinson explores heartbreak by adressing her true feelings to a letter that will not reveal these feelings to the man she is in love with
• 'Tell him the page I didn't write'
• 'And left the verb and pronoun out'
• 'For it would split his heart'
• 'And you - got sleepy - and begged to be ended'
• Critic
  • 'found a melody for mental pain and apprehension' - J. S. Porter

• lost many friends 1880s  - Charles Wadsworth, Judge Otis P. Lord, and Helen Hunt Jackson - 
• lost her nephew Gib, her father and her mother.
• Victorians had facination with death and took mourning seriously
• Typically, one or more grieving relatives would surround the bed waiting to hear the last words, signifying the transition from this world to the next.
• Photographs, death masks and portraits of the recently deceased were also produced, jewelry that utilized a locket of the dead person's hair.
• Women wore a plain, black dress made of a drab, blended fabric, which covered the entire body, including a cap. Black ribbon was tied to their underwear. 
• After two months, two flounces could be added to the skirt. 
• After one year, the women could switch their dress fabric to silk colored in lavender, mauve or violet. 
• They were also forbidden from socializing during this 28-month period.

• Brought up in a Calvinist household - attended religious services  family at Amherst's First Congregational Church 
• Congregationalism predominant denomination of early New England. 
• Amherst College itself was founded in 1821 by Congregationalists to educate more young men for Christian ministry - father was one of the founders 
• Dickinson received her own Bible from her father at age 13.
•  Her familiarity with the Bible and her facile references to it in letters and poems have long impressed scholars.
• Ministers from the church were regular guests at the Dickinsons' house, and several became close friends
• 1800-1830s - Second Great Awakening - family and friends proffessed beliefs
•  Dickinson ultimately did not join the church

• Self/Mind 
  • began to seclude her self  at twenty years old in 1850s - spent most of her time inside the Homestead exploring her mind and writing poetry
• Pain
  • Nursed mother for seven years
  • Austin married her friend Susan Gilbert nd moved the Evergreens - very close to both of them
  • Heart break - possilbe romantic feelings for  Judge Otis Phillips Lord - wrote many letters to him