Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in the quiet community of Amherst,
Massachusetts, the second daughter of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson. Emily, Austin
(her older brother), and her younger sister Lavinia were nurtured in a quiet, reserved family
headed by their authoritative father Edward. Throughout Emily’s life, her mother was not
"emotionally accessible," the absence of which might have caused some of Emily’s eccentricity.
Being rooted in the puritanical Massachusetts of the 1800’s, the Dickinson children were raised
in the Christian tradition, and they were expected to take up their father’s religious beliefs and
values without argument. Later in life, Emily would come to challenge these conventional religious
viewpoints of her father and the church, and the challenges she met with would later contribute to
the strength of her poetry.
The Dickinson family was prominent in Amherst. In fact, Emily’s grandfather, Samuel Fowler
Dickinson, was one of the founders of Amherst College, and her father served as lawyer and
treasurer for the institution. Emily’s father also served in powerful positions on the General Court
of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts State Senate, and the United States House of
Representatives. Unlike her father, Emily did not enjoy the popularity and excitement of public
life in Amherst, and she began to withdraw. Emily did not fit in with her father’s religion in
Amherst, and her father began to censor the books she read because of their potential to draw her
away from the faith.
Being the daughter of a prominent politician, Emily had the benefit of a good education and
attended the Amherst Academy. After her time at the academy, Emily left for the South Hadley
Female Seminary (currently Mount Holyoke College) where she started to blossom into a delicate
young woman—"her eyes lovely auburn, soft and warm, her hair lay in rings of the same color all
over her head with her delicate teeth and skin." She had a demure manner that was almost fun
with her close friends, but Emily could be shy, silent, or even depreciating in the presence of
strangers. Although she was successful at college, Emily returned after only one year at the
seminary in 1848 to Amherst where she began her life of seclusion.
Although Emily never married, she had several significant relationships with a select few. It was
during this period following her return from school that Emily began to dress all in white and
choose those precious few that would be her own private society. Refusing to see almost everyone
that came to visit, Emily seldom left her father’s house. In Emily’s entire life, she took one trip to
Philadelphia (due to eye problems), Washington, and a few trips to Boston. Other than those
occasional ventures, Emily had no extended exposure to the world outside her home town. During
this time, her early twenties, Emily began to write poetry seriously. Fortunately, during those rare
journeys Emily met two very influential men that would be sources of inspiration and guidance
:
Charles Wadsworth and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. There were other less influential
individuals that affected Emily, such as Samuel Bowles and J.G. Holland, but the impact that
Wadsworth and Higginson had on Dickinson were monumental.
The Reverend Charles Wadsworth, age 41, had a powerful effect on Emily’s life and her poetry.
On her trip to Philadelphia, Emily met Wadsworth, a clergyman, who was to become her "dearest
earthly friend." A romantic figure, Wadsworth was an outlet for Emily, because his orthodox
Calvinism acted as a beneficial catalyst to her theoretical inferences. Wadsworth, like Dickinson,
was a solitary, romantic person that Emily could confide in when writing her poetry. He had the
same poise in the pulpit that Emily had in her poetry. Wadsworth’s religious beliefs and
presumptions also gave Emily a sharp, and often welcome, contrast to the transcendentalist
writings and easy assumptions of Emerson. Most importantly, it is widely believed that Emily had
a great love for this Reverend from Philadelphia even though he was married. Many of
Dickinson’s critics believe that Wadsworth was the focal point of Emily’s love poems.
Emily continued to write poetry, but when the United States Civil War broke out a lot of
emotional turmoil came through in Dickinson’s work. Some changes in her poetry came directly
as a result of the war, but there were other events that distracted Emily and these things came
through in the most productive period of her lifetime—about 800 poems.
Although she looked inward and not to the war for the substance of her poetry,
the tense atmosphere of the war years may have contributed to the urgency of
her writing. The year of greatest stress was 1862, when distance and danger
threatened Emily's friends—Samuel Bowles, in Europe for his health; Charles
Wadsworth, who had moved to a new pastorate at the Calvary Church in San
Francisco; and T.W. Higginson, serving as an officer in the Union Army. Emily
also had persistent eye trouble, which led her, in 1864 and 1865, to spend several
months in Cambridge, Mass., for treatment. Once back in Amherst she never
traveled again and after the late 1860s never left the boundaries of the family's
property.
The later years of Dickinson’s life were primarily spent in mourning because of several deaths
within the time frame of a few years. Emily’s father died in 1874, Samuel Bowles died in 1878,
J.G. Holland died in 1881, her nephew Gilbert died in 1883, and both Charles Wadsworth and
Emily’s mother died in 1882. Over those five years, many of the most influential and precious
friendships of Emily’s passed away, and that gave way to the more concentrated obsession with
death in her poetry. On June 14, 1884 Emily’s obsessions and poetic speculations started to
come to a stop when she suffered the first attack of her terminal illness. Throughout 1865, Emily
was confined to bed in her family’s house where she had lived her entire life, and, on May 15,
1886, Emily took her last breath at the age of 56. At that moment the world lost one of its most
talented and insightful poets. Emily left behind over 2,000 poems.
As a result of Emily Dickinson’s life of solitude, she was able to focus on her world more
sharply than other authors of her time—contemporary authors who had no effect on her writing.
Emily was original and innovative in her poetry, most often drawing on the Bible, classical
mythology, and Shakespeare for allusions and references. Many of her poems were not
completed and written on scraps of paper, such as old grocery lists. Eventually when her poetry
was published, editors took it upon themselves to group them into classes—Friends, Nature, Love,
and Death. These same editors arranged her works with titles, rearranged the syntax, and
standardized Dickinson’s grammar. Fortunately in 1955, Thomas Johnson published
Dickinson’s poems in their original formats, thus displaying the creative genius and peculiarity of
her poetry.
Emily Dickinson's Poems
Hope is the Thing with Feathers
There's a Certain Slant of Light
Her Sweet Weight on my Heart A Night
My Life Closed Twice Before It's Close
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