Much Madness Is Divinest Sense

When people think of Emily Dickinson, they think of a white dressed, ghostly woman hidden in the corridors of home, writing poem after poem. They do not think of the actual person Emily was. Emily Dickinson grew up in a rich, social, scholarly environment. She could have chosen many paths that would have led her to a completely different life, but because of circumstances, the social, high energy girl with a sense of humor became isolated by her own choice. Though Emily Dickinson’s depression is romanticized, sickness, social life, and death led her to seclusion and deep poems.

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.

Emily Dickinson chose not to conform to the madness of society and shut out many of the people that she felt wanted to change her. She wrote a poem called “The Soul Selects Her Own Society,” in this poem she writes about how the soul shuts certain people out and confides in only one person. Emily Dickinson writes “Then- close the Valves of her attention- Like Stone-,”

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

The start of the poem illustrates how women gave up the pleasure and “playthings of her life” (Dickinson). This hints at how women are intimidated in social gatherings, and how they make themselves into the norms of society and make

Emily was exposed to rhyme schemes since she attended church. She liked rhyme schemes very much that she wanted to incorporate It into her poems. One of her poems called, “Success is Counted Sweetest”, contains a variety of rhyme schemes. In the poem, it says, “Success is counted sweetest By those you ne’er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.” This is a typical rhyme scheme

“Miss Dickinson was a recluse; but her poetry is rich with a profound and varied experience. Where did she get it? The moral image that we have of Miss Dickinson stands out in every poem; it is that of a dominating spinster whose very sweetness

I did not understand the poem at first either. I had to read the poem ten times before fully comprehending and I am sure this poem can still be interpreted many other ways. Like yourself, I am an introverted person and I believe Emily Dickinson was feeling the same way suffocated by the pressures of being somebody in a world filled with arrogant people croaking about how great they are in the world. The video on YouTube read by Yina Liang , she makes a good point that we have outside pressures of family and friends wanting us to be someone spectacular such as a Lawyer or doctor, but sometimes you want to escape and be nobody in the

“The Soul selects her own Society” is one of Emily Dickinson’s poems that best exemplifies her life of seclusion. Through this poem she emphasizes the importance of the individual having absolute authority and freedom over their own life. Dickinson promotes these individualistic values in the poem through the use of several literary devices, including alliteration, dashes, imagery, repetition, and simile, and creates a poem that is able to be interpreted in several different ways by the reader.

This poem by Emily Dickinson is much harder to figure out compared to her usual poems. She writes about a topic that is not normally written about at this time especially by a woman. At first glance, it is thought that this poem is about liquor and all of the bad things that go along with it, when in all reality it is a poem about sheer happiness. Dickinson is speaking not of a high derived from any alcoholic beverage, but rather of one acquired from life itself.

When the poet starts the poem with “My life had stood,” (1) Dickinson clearly transgresses confines no female might lightly afford to break. Than “a Loaded Gun” (1) which is a metaphor for authority; since “guns” represent being in control, in charge, and masculinity. “In Corners--” (2) is the impression that the poet felt useless until his/her soul mate came for her “carried Me away--” (4) The poet embarks on what she fancies as characteristically masculine adventures, “And now We roam in Sovreign Woods--/ And now We hung the Doe,” (5-6) to end in innocence. From lines 7-8 she speaks for him “God/Sex” and the mountains shut her up quickly. She speaks as though she remembers a sexual encounter, “And do I smile, such a cordial light / Upon the Valley glow--” (9-10). From line 11-12 she is referring to a sarcastic face that quickly softens yet her pleasure has shown through not a false smile but genuine pleasure. From the fourth stanza again protective of her “Master’s” head and finds more comfort there with a deep downy feather pillow. From the fifth stanza again protective, seemingly jealous, she states that she will fight anyone who tries to confront her “Master”, “Yellow” eye means jealously or “evil eye” and emphatic Thumb is a gesture that she was unworthy at that

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

Emily Dickinson was one of the many famous American poets whose work was published in the 19th century. Her writing style was seen as unconventional due to her use of “dashes and syntactical fragments”(81), which was later edited out by her original publishers. These fragmented statements and dashes were added to give emphasis to certain lines and subjects to get her point across. Even though Emily Dickinson was thought to be a recluse, she wrote descriptive, moving poems on death, religion, and love. Her poems continue to create gripping discussions among scholars on the meaning behind her poems.

In this poem, on page four hundred and fourteen of the hymnal, Emily Dickinson’s speaker talked about the freedom of the soul and how it chose to shut the door to the world. This belief ultimately led the reader to feel locked inside a room full of sadness and solitude. The soul, obviously feminine was conveyed as an active object. It was ultimately the subject of the poem which caused such feelings in the reader. This particular poem, The Soul Selects her own Society was summarized rather ingeniously edited by Marie Rose Napierkowski and Mary Ruby in their overview of the poem titled Overview: “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” when they said, “While it might seem that the Soul is hiding behind a closed door, there is evidence that the poem’s speaker believes her to be exercising the power of personal choice. Chariots paused at her gate; emperors cane to visit, but she would not let them in. She was indifferent to these symbols of wealth, romance, and power. The poem’s speaker told us that the soul has closed her attention to everything except ‘One.’ The ‘One’ that she has chosen might be interpreted as her own creative vision” (Napierkowski&Ruby) Clearly, those two have spent a lot of time looking over that poem, but even by reading that summary, the emotion of depression and closure to the world was felt. Only someone who was truly set in

Emily Dickinson is one of the most interesting female poets of the nineteenth century. Every author has unique characteristics about him/her that make one poet different from another, but what cause Emily Dickinson to be so unique are not only the words she writes, but how she writes them. Her style of writing is in a category of its own. To understand how and why she writes the way she does, her background has to be brought into perspective. Every poet has inspiration, negative or positive, that contributes not only to the content of the writing itself, but the actual form of writing the author uses to express his/her personal talents. Emily Dickinson is no different. Her childhood and adult experiences and culture form