onform and never joined the church. Her faith was often shaken and her doubts of the Puritan conception of God tormented her. She could not convince her soul of their ideals, believing that "only direct experience leads to spiritual experience" (Miller 35). Dickinson was often more fervid in her expressions of love and nature than those of religion, for she saw the "austerities of the public God" (Zabel 253). She began to write poetry regarding the God of her own solitude, understanding that her real reverence was for Nature. According to Conrad Aiken, Nature "seemed to her a more manifest and more beautiful evidence of Divine Will than creeds and churches" (NCLC 21:35). Her views and feelings toward faith and God placed her further away from society and created even more distance in her personal relationships with her family and close friends (Ravert 1).
             The factors that drove Emily Dickinson to live as she did, to withdraw from the world, are numerous, but most believe one of the most prominent reasons was that she simp
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