Emily Dickinson Religion

Dickinson's bout with religious turmoil is quite evident in poem 1545; The Bible is an antique Volume-, in which she seems to be attacking the Puritan radicals such as Jonathan Edward. This poem gives almost a complete overview of the Bible, speaking of Eden, Satan, Judas, David, and also Sin. This poem lets us see why and also how this strict religious upbringing may have pushed her to become the `old spinster' as some may call her, or the woman with the disease of agoraphobia.

Emily Dickinson was an exceptional writer through the mid-late 1800’s. She never published any of her writings and it wasn’t until after her death that they were even discovered. The complexity of understanding her poems is made prevalent because of the fact that she, the author, cannot expound on what her writing meant. This causes others to have to speculate and decide for themselves the meaning of any of her poems. There are several ways that people can interpret Emily Dickinson’s poems; readers often give their opinion on which of her poems present human understanding as something boundless and unlimited or something small and limited, and people always speculate Dickinson’s view of the individual self.

She viewed conformity as a chain around the neck or enslavement to society. On line 8 of her poem “Much Madness is divinest sense”it says “Demur- You’re straightway dangerous- and handled with a chain” (line 8). This line is saying that people who stand out or cause doubt in a situation are dangerous and are eventually chained or tied up so that they will no longer cause doubt in other people’s minds. People are scared of things that are different and would rather chain them up in the corner than allow them to be different. Richard Wilbur wrote that “Emily Dickinson found that she must refuse to become a professing Christian. (pg. 1131)” This was yet another way that she stood out and did not conform to society. While many people were professing Christians during that time, she chose to worship in a different way. She was not concerned with what others thought, she was more concerned with how she was going to do things and this changed the way she wrote poetry.

She, growing up in a religious family, determined that religion was not the pathway for her and she would instead be the only influence on her life (Emily, no pag.). To the rest of New England, God was loving, caring, and a Father; however, her poetry reveals that to her, He was a mystical figure in the sky who oscillated back and forth from loving to harsh. Dickinson’s poetry often mocks the Bible, God, prayer, and church attendance. Her poetry’s is commonly irreverent, calling the Bible “an antique Volume – Written by faded Men At the suggestion of Holy Spectres - ” (F1577). Dickinson repeatedly mocks God calling Him “Burglar! Banker!” and sarcastically “Father!” (F39). In a short, three-lined poem, Dickinson jeers at the traditional, Christian phrase “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost—Amen.” Dickinson instead worships nature “In the name of the Bee – And of the Butterfly – And of the Breeze – Amen!” (F23). Although subtle, it reveals that she knows enough about religious ways to parody it in a satirical fashion. Dickinson again belittles the effectiveness and importance of prayer. “Of Course – I prayed – And did God Care? He cared as much as on the Air A Bird – had stamped her foot – And cried ‘Give Me’ - ” (F581). To “remain true to herself,” Dickinson belittled the importance of faithful church attendance ( Emily, no pag.). “Some keep the Sabbath going to

Emily Dickinson is one of the most important American poets of the 1800s. Dickinson, who was known to be quite the recluse, lived and died in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, spending the majority of her days alone in her room writing poetry. What few friends she did have would testify that Dickinson was a rather introverted and melancholy person, which shows in a number of her poems where regular themes include death and mortality. One such poem that exemplifies her “dark side” is, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”. In this piece, Dickinson tells the story of a soul’s transition into the afterlife showing that time and death have outright power over our lives and can make what was once significant become meaningless.

She appears to be irritated with the fact that she was labeled as something without having a choice; also, she was “[b]aptized, before, without the choice. . . [u]nto supremest name” (8,10). In poem 1732, she states that her life had already closed twice before it was close, but she is waiting to see if there is a third event ready to happen; however, “[p]arting is all we know of heaven,/ [a]nd all we need of hell (1,4,7-8). Dickinson mentions in Poem 324 how [s]ome keep the Sabbath going to church”, but she “keep[s] it, staying at [h]ome”; she talks about “[s]ome keep[ing] the Sabbath in Surplice. . . [but she] just wear[s her w]ings”, as well (1-2,5-6). She believes “instead of getting to Heaven, at last -/ [she’s] going, all along”, even without keeping the sabbath at church and without wearing surplice (11-12). Dickinson mentions in Poem 49 about how “[t]wice. . . [she] stood a beggar/ [b]efore the door of God” (3-4). Dickinson doesn’t necessarily put down religion, however, she doesn’t quite agree with parents who enforce religion upon their children due to the fact that she was once a child raised similar to that kind of lifestyle.

Approaching Emily Dickinson’s poetry as one large body of work can be an intimidating and overwhelming task. There are obvious themes and images that recur throughout, but with such variation that seeking out any sense of intention or order can feel impossible. When the poems are viewed in the groupings Dickinson gave many of them, however, possible structures are easier to find. In Fascicle 17, for instance, Dickinson embarks upon a journey toward confidence in her own little world. She begins the fascicle writing about her fear of the natural universe, but invokes the unknowable and religious as a means of overcoming that fear throughout her life and ends with a contextualization of herself within

In “Much Madness is the divinest Sense,” Dickinson emphatically establishes a theme of madness within the context of the poem. This poem is rather difficult to read and not feel that it is inspirited by Dickinson’s own life of reclusion, which many have presented as a symptom of her insanity. “Much Madness is the divinest Sense” discombobulates the notion of what’s crazy and what’s not, it’s a piece for every person who has ever pondered “Am I insane…or is the world completely mad?” Dickinson poignantly reveals how what is accepted

Emily Dickinson concentrates many of her poems on the theme of death, predominantly her own. These “poems about death confront its grim reality with honesty, humor, curiosity, and above all a refusal to be comforted (“Emily Dickinson 1830-1886” 1659). While this was not an out of the ordinary topic during the American Romantic era, Dickinson seemed near obsessive in her focus. Additionally, Dickinson seems questionable in her thoughts on religion, another theme popular during the American Romantic era. Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for death” and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” both explicitly examine the concept of death, the afterlife, and the author’s obsession with the melancholy.

Ms. Dickinson seemed very at ease with death as if it were but another point of our existence. In her later works she concentrated more on death because her own personal life was marked by a succession of deaths, loosing those that she was close to and these events in her life caused her to write about death as if it

Everybody has a different view on religion and its existence. Emily Dickinson, an objective poet acting as a detached observer, describes what she has seen or heard and brings her own reflections on the things she has experienced. Objective poetry is impersonal, which allows readers to be open to different interpretations; it allows the facts to represent themselves and not be impacted by the individual values and predispositions of the poet. Dickinson’s poem, “Prayer is the Little Implement”, exemplifies a true objective piece. Emily asks how someone could reach the heavens when God has “denied” his presence. Because God hides himself from human presence, men “fling” their prayers. They fling their despairs and request into God's ear, on the

And Dickinson herself knew the answer was to be found in the Bible, as she answered, "For Prose--Mr Ruskin--Sir Thomas Browne--and the Revelations" (L-261)2 when asked by Thomas W. Higginson what her favorite books were. Of course, there were many other prose writings which she could have mentioned, but she dared to select these three as the sources of her inspiration. Needless to say, the three were exclusively special for her. Therefore, by referring to the picture of heaven in the Book of Revelation, I will consider how Dickinson's poetry delineates one of the most important and sometimes enigmatic Christian doctrines, the idea of heaven.

A major factor of Emily Dickinson’s style of poetry is the time period in which she lived. Emily Dickinson was alive from 1830 to 1886 (Mackowiak and Batten, 1159), during which the Second Great Awakening, Romanticism, and the United States Civil War took place. When Dickinson was a teenager, the Second Great Awakening took hold, encouraging people to take hold of their religion and practice once more. Thomas Ford discusses this in his book Heaven Beguiles the Tired: Death in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson, reviewed by Jack Capps. Capps points out that Ford “repeatedly asserts that poetry, for Emily Dickinson, was but a substitute for the religious conversion that would have allayed her fears of death and obviated her poetic utterance” (227). Dickinson did not blindly accept what religion told her to believe about death. Christianity depicts the idea of dying in a peaceful way, then spending the rest of eternity in a mystical place. Instead, Emily Dickinson wanted

Emily Dickinson a modern romantic writer, whose poems considered imaginative and natural, but also dark as she uses death as the main theme many times in her writings. She made the death look natural and painless since she wanted the reader to look for what after death and not be stuck in that single moment. In her poems imagination play a big role as it sets the ground for everything to unfold in a magical way. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. She turned increasingly to this style that came to define her writing. The poems are rich in aphorism and dense