Dickinson
Emily Dickinson wrote many amazing works explaining the depth of her heart. Her Christian education affected her writings profoundly. Her desire to have and understand faith enlivens her poetry. She lived at home, with her family until she died, only leaving for a few years of schooling. When she died, only seven of her poems had been published, and the rest, were later published by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Did Dickinson continue to see God in a loving way throughout her life? We know that she sometimes saw heaven as a chance to escape the suffering of this world, however, did she have one constant opinion of heaven? Did Emily ever find true love in her life, and how would it affect her poems? We will discuss and attempt to answer all of these questions.Emily Dickinson's view of God changes drastically throughout her life. James McIntosh tells us that as a young woman, she showed gratitude to a God who relieves suffering rather than inflicting it. In 1854 she sent a letter to Abiah Root to say "Sue Gilbert is recovering from 'Nervous Fever' not only with the help of 'an excellent Nurse' and 'a faithful physician', but also because 'God has been loving and kind'"(McIntosh 41). Because of her family's relationship to the church
Some of her anger does stem from her Calvinist raising. Gelpi tells us that she came to a point where death seemed to be a benefit: "The specter of extinction, which was the primal fear, could seem at times the only grace and final deliverance:" (Gelpi 36). To Emily Dickinson, love is "the force which drives the cycle of life, death and resurrection" (Gelpi 114). 4Dickinson is telling us that pleasure looks the sweetest through pain, therefore, to truly experience good, one must experience suffering. I understand her passion, and her pain of wondering if or when or why she cannot be with her true love. She has now experienced two extremely different feelings. She did not want gain knowledge that led to misery, and that is what she felt she was finding. Apparently, Dickinson was in love with someone she could not have. She started wondering why God, who plans and determines all things, would cause pain and death. Final Stanza: So WE must meet apart- You there-I-here With just the door ajar That oceans are-and Prayer- And that White Sustenance- Despair-In the last lines of her last stanza, one would almost feel like she had come to accept the fact that they cannot be together. Sarah Lawall tells us "Dickinson's fanciful images and allegories, her poems insist on their own kind of uncompromising realism" (824). She was fixed in her positions of Calvinism because they were inscribed on her mind and heart. If angels have the heart beneath their silver jackets, I think such things could make them weep, but heaven is so cold! It will never look kind to me that God who causes all denies such little wishes" (McIntosh 42). Why should she put her faith in something she did not know? Dickinson repeatedly expresses sorrow at death and rage at God for causing it in her poems and letters. Dickinson's experience of love actually relates to her view of heaven.
Common topics in this essay:
Sue Gilbert,
Total Depravity,
Apparently Dickinson,
God Tyger,
Sarah Lawall,
Funeral Brain,
Emily Dickinson,
God Nor,
Oh God,
Albert Gelpi,
true love,
experience suffering,
emily dickinson,
love higginson,
throughout life,
god innocent,
pain suffering,
raised hearing,
god author,
love actually,
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Acceptance Essays
