Emily Dickinson’s Poems: Theme of Love

Introduction

Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest American poets, became famous for her poetry,
but only after her death. One of the main reasons for this was her conspicuous individuality
and according to some of her contemporaries she was even considered to be an eccentric. She
was different not only for her behavior and lifestyle, but also for her poetry and the style of
writing. Unlike women from that time, she was well-educated and simply could not adjust to
the perception of how she, as a woman, was supposed to behave.
Her intimacy had a major influence both on her lifestyle and on her poetry. At the age
of thirty, she changed her life and became a recluse, leaving her room only to visit the garden.
There were many speculations about her becoming this way, but there is no certain reason.
Although she was isolated, she still continued writing. Furthermore, she was aware of the fact
that her contemporaries would not find her writing understandable, but that did not stop her.
What was considered to be very strange was the motivation and the inspiration she had to
write all of her poems and letters, even though she was excluded from everyday life and was
left with no one else but herself.
Poems often conveyed her deepest feelings. The question of why she wrote is perhaps
answered by asking why she lived and experienced all areas of life so intensely. In a sense
her poetry preserved her individuality and provided the needed release for yearnings that
threatened her balance. With a daring skill she transformed personal losses into imperishable
lyrics of self – exploration.
Her poetry was generally unconventional and was not accepted in her time. She
always used her own style which was quite different from any style of writing that people of
her time have had the opportunity to encounter. This style was characterized as simple, but
passionate, giving us a sharp, but intense image.
Emily Dickinson was not consciously trying to be metrically daring of shocking in her
rhyming devices, as were Whitman in his bold experiments with verse and Lanier in his
scientific study of sound patterns; rather, she explored older established forms to find a
suitable medium for her thoughts, she loosened traditional set meters to capture the easy
cadence of conversation and prose, but never attempted vers libre nor abandoned rhyming
devices. The basic forms used in most of her verses were familiar to her from childhood. Its
standard hymnal or ballad meter, four iambic lines, alternating three and four stresses a line
with the second and fourth lines rhymed, was her favorite pattern.

The primary source of information about Dickinson’s knowledge of hymns comes from the
hymnals she used during the years she attended Amherst Academy and the Congregational
Church. She favored the Common Hymn Meter as her basic pattern. However her nineteenth-
century hymns were special, mainly because through this form she actually created her own
style. According to Thomas Johnson, Dickinson’ greatest contribution to English prosody
was that she perceived how to gain new effects by exploring the possibilities within
traditional metric patterns and by eventually merging in one poem the various meters
themselves. The metrical index for these hymns included 3 most commonly used meters:
Common meter with a pattern8.6.8.6 syllables per line; Short Meter-6.6.8.6 syllables and
Long Meter-8.8.8.8 syllables in each line. This classification and register of hymn tune
meters served as a convenient pattern for Dickinson to adopt for the structure of her poetry.

To avoid monotony she worked endless variations on the basic form, using eight – line
stanzas, employing trochaic and other meters to vary the iambic, and letting the metric bet
contrast with the meaning stress. Another great prosodic achievement of Emily Dickinson
was to enliven the droning monotony of the conventional hymn meter to a degree that its
wooden practitioners would have thought impossible. She abandoned the stiff limitations of
exact rhyme, where the final sound and accent were precisely repeated, returning to the much
older poetic practice of approximate rhyme: identical and vowel rhyme (as in “move –
remove”, “see – buy”), imperfect rhyme (same vowel sounds followed by different
consonants, as in “thing-in”, “us-dust”), and suspended rhyme (different vowel sounds
followed by the same consonant sounds, for example “star-door”, “reach – touch”). These
rhymes were selected at will, and she freely varied the pattern within a single poem or stanza.
Besides adding a great suppleness to her poetry, these approximate rhymes often capture the
jarring discords and painful doubts expressed by the thought. However, this balance of
content and form is not always so harmonious. Often the unusual rhymes seem unnecessary;
the meter frequently becomes monotonous, while the subject matter remains too intense.

Reared within a heritage of economy and frugality , she ruthlessly cut through syntax and
grammar to achieve conciseness. She was fascinated by words and her best poems
demonstrate a special awareness of root meanings and employ subtle connotations to deepen
implication and association. Her real perplexities in selecting the exact word are attested by
the endless variants her worksheets offered for words and phrases

She omitted verbs, skipped conjunctions and prepositions to capture the “Attar” of her
thoughts. She constantly capitalized nouns, adjectives, verbs and even adverbs as if trying to
emphasize these words or to give them new dignity. Far more perplexing is her use of dashes,
for this device is intimately connected with meaning, musical effects, and over-all tone. This
eccentricity often defeats the meaning, for it is difficult to determine when the dashes indicate
a metrical pause or when they are to be treated as commas, semicolons or periods. Certainly
in some poems the dashes effectively highlight key phrases and provide a musical notation
for reading the verse.

Furthermore, she frequently used assonance, dissonance(A disruption of harmonic

sounds or rhythms. Like cacophony, it refers to a harsh collection of sounds; dissonance is
usually intentional).
If at times her economy caused the poems to read like shorthand notations, it also gives them
an exciting vibrancy. Undoubtedly these stylistic devices were meaningful to her and were
perhaps a definite experiment to loosen the stiff formality and conventional forms.

Unlike her contemporaries, she was writing about real feelings, emotional doubts and
the changes of man’s deepest emotions and moods. There are 1775 poems she wrote, all of
which were published posthumously. These poems are quite commonly classified into
categories like “Religion”, “Nature”, “Death”, “Love” and so on. Poems written on the theme
of love were magnificent and as such have always been a true intrigue to many literary
critics.
Critics have traced endless influences and analogues for her poems in the Bible, Shakespeare,
Blake, Emerson and others, but she rarely imitated and was seldom derivative. Her vivid
imagery and pity expression drew on personal experiences rather than on classical or literary
traditions.

Emily Dickinson and love

According to many critics, Dickinson’s private life and her poetry were closely
related. She was writing in such a way that all of her poems showed true feelings, internal
struggles and moral dilemmas. In one of the letters which she sent to Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, who was one of the first editors of her poems, she wrote: “ When I state myself,
as the representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person.” From
this quotation we can see that she in fact wanted people to make a distinction between her
private life and her poetry. In spite of her wishes, literary critics always found her inspiration
for such passionate poems and emotions those poems carried in her private life and always
connected her poetry with her most intimate emotions.
When it comes to her love life, it has remained a great mystery even nowadays. No
one could ever state anything certain about her relationships. There are speculations about
many passionate relationships, but unfortunately all of which had no happy end, since she
was never married. Who inspired her so much, and from which experience did she find such a
motivation to write many heart-breaking passionate love poems were the major questions
which occupied the critics. It was thought that she had a number of relationships with older
and married men, but it was also believed that she had strong affections for her sister-in-law
Susan Huntington Gilbert.
Biographers have singled out several persons who at different times became the center
of her emotional and intellectual life and stirred her creative sensibility. The first of these
“preceptors”, as Emily Dickinson herself called them, was Benjamin Newton, a lawyer and
his father’s friend, who has awakened her interest for literature and expanded her knowledge
of the world. He died quite early and soon after his death Emily visited Philadelphia and there
she heard the Reverend Charles Wadsworth preach and he became her next preceptor. He
was sixteen years older than her, married, devoted to his wife and children, and though he
and Emily exchanged letters, he seems to have been unaware of her spiritual, as well as
physical passion for him. 8 years later, when he left Philadelphia, Emily experienced a
devastating sense of loss.
Dickinson was an extremely emotional person, and all of the people, no matter if they
were male or female, who were a part of her life or whom she loved could feel that. She was
not ashamed of her emotions and the love she felt, and she always gave both her heart and her
soul to a person she loved. She was looking for a true commitment for she was completely
devoted to her love. Whether the emotions she felt were of happiness or pain, she expressed
them in her poems. She was quite filled with all sorts of emotions, so as much as she felt joy
and love, she also felt pain, ignorance and rejection.
Despite the truthfulness of these relationships and their endings, these experiences
were significant for Dickinson as a poet and are the reason why her poems are so intense and
deep. Though she wanted to deny the connection between her private life and her poetry, it is
inevitable. Intensity of her emotions is reflected in her poems and as such these poems
showed her poetic creativity and the ability of making great things based on our own life
experiences.

Poems
One of her love poems in which we can see how devoted she was to a person she
loves is certainly “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!”. The general image of this poem is
characterized by lust and passion. Also, the feelings of longing, desire of the presence of the
loved one and need for nothing else are present in this poem. “The theme is mere sexual
passion which is lawless, outside the rule of chart or compass.” In the first stanza we can see
that nothing she mentions is happening, that it is not reality, but only a wish. “Were I with
thee” (Dickinson, 1440), the second line, implies this. How much she wants her lover is
obvious when she says that it would be their luxury. Luxury represents something very
valuable, something of great material and psychological importance. This implies how highly
she thinks of their time spent together and how much she cherishes it, given the fact that she
compares it to something of worth.
In the second stanza she also writes about how much she loves him and how nothing
can rock her heart, which is so sure in that love, not even the winds. She does not need
anything, anything which can keep her on track with reason and rationality. Chart is a symbol
for something that is fixed, and compass, like chart, also represents something that is of major
importance for knowing specific destination, and being aware of the fact that some things in
this life have their place. Furthermore, compass and chart represent reason and sanity and she
rejects them, wants to get rid of them, because if she has her lover she needs nothing else.
The third stanza shows us that though she would like to be with her loved one forever, that is
not a possibility here. It is not possible for them to be together for eternity and now that she
knows that, she even says:
“Rowing in Eden-
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor – Tonight –
In Thee!”(Dickinson, 1440)
Despite her knowledge of reality, she still wants to be with him, though it would be
just for one night. Here she again shows us how deep her emotions are, how she would do
anything just to be with her lover and how much she appreciates even the little time she has
to spend with him.
Another way of reading this poem is as the portrayal of a religious experience; in this
interpretation, the lover is God. Christian mystics (people who communicate directly with
God) often describe the joy they feel while communicating with God in language which
modern psychoanalysts see as sexual. On the other hand, the number of feelings human
beings can experience and the vocabulary with which they can express their experiences is
limited; using the same language to describe a spiritual experience and a sexual experience
does not necessarily mean that both experiences are sexual.
Another very important love poem by Emily Dickinson is “If you were coming in the
Fall”. This poem is again about love, longing for the loved one, separation and about time
which is standing in their way. “The usual assumption is that the speaker is a woman, because
of the domestic metaphors (the housewife and the fly, the balls of yarn), because the writer
was a woman, and, I think, because it is traditionally women who wait.”
(academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu) First four stanzas begin with “if” expressing something
hypothetical, and since there is a certain speaker of the poem this “if” is giving us the
information that it is about someone’s wishes and desires. Through the whole poem we can
see that she is longing for her lover and that she is waiting for time to pass them by so that
finally they can be together. However, the last stanza shows us that she is brought back to
reality, and that she knows that it is uncertain how much time will have to pass until their
reunion and that she is probably going to have to wait. (academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu)
Throughout the whole poem, she is carefully counting months, years, even centuries.
Here we have gradation, which shows us how patient she is and how nothing can take her
mind of him and of her waiting for him. Though the moment when they will finally meet is
not certain, one thing is – her love and dedication. So passionately does she talk about their
reunion and from her words we get the impression that she would do anything just to be with
him. Not even death is a limit for her. That is how deep her love for him is. Even if they were
to meet in the afterlife, she would simply give up on this life and join the eternity.
“If certain, when this life was out –
That yours and mine, should be
I’d toss it yonder, like a Rind,
And take Eternity.”(Dickinson, 611)
The final stanza which, as mentioned, does not start with “if”, has a rather different
connotation than previous ones. She is dealing with the reality, which is terrifying for her.
Being apart from her lover did not feel so real and she had a feeling that time would pass by
quickly. Now she is aware that reality is rough and that she is going to have to face it. The
ignorance of time keeping them separated is driving her mad and she even compares it to “the
Goblin Bee”(Dickinson, 611). The metaphor used here emphasizes the uncertainty of time
keeping them apart and the effect it has on her. It is like a torment for her, threatening with its
painful and poisonous sting, but still leaving her to suffer and await for the real pain.
In this poem there are two types of love, one toward human and the other toward “divine
being”. WE can notice that due to the capitalization of pronouns. She also mentions
“heaven” and “Gabriel” which represent the allusion to God. Throughout the lyric you can
easily sense longing. Her loved one is always in motion- “he rides” then she mentions “his
journey”- which makes him unattainable. No fortune or “earning or Pizzaro” can give her the
love she desires. Moreover, she is rather jealous of everything- “fly”, “leaves” and much
more. The “longing” is a frequent element that follows her theme of love in her poems, as in
for example “Longing is like a seed” where she states how long she has to wait and suffer in
order to see the sun or in other words to achieve the fulfillment of her love.

Her own experience of passion occasioned most of her love poetry, but she also considered
the subject from a philosophical viewpoint. The extravagance of her feelings about love’s
importance caused her to remark that “Love is all there is” and to equate it with God himself.
Because love was meaningless unless reciprocated, she felt that god was dependent upon
man’s love for complete happiness. The concept was hardly Christian, for it assumed that god
was not perfect, but continually evolving. Love triumphs over both life and death to achieve
an almost divine status. Concerning friendship she was equally ecstatic, writing that” My
friends are my “estate”. Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them! They tell me those were
poor early have different views of gold. I don’t know how that is. God is not so wary as we,
else he would give us no friends, lest we forget him!” However, few of her poems on the
subject have literary merit. “The Soul selects her own society” is the one main exception.
The keynote of the poem is the exclusiveness of friendship, the highly selective quality of
affection. Religious and regal associations are combined with images of an closure to
emphasize the soul’s individuality,. The opening lines portray the soul’s careful survey of
the” the ample nation” for suitable society. In much the same manner as God” elects” or
saves his chosen saints, the privilege of friendship is conferred on few, and ultimately only
one person receives it. The image of the closed door conveys the utter finality of her choice
and is later reflected by the archaic meaning of” valves”, the two leaves of a double door.
Condensation renders the next two lines somewhat obscure, but reading is that, after selecting
the chosen friend, the soul dramatically denies all others as a symbol of her now matured life
(“Divine majority”). She has come of spiritual world. The second stanza contrasts the inner
security with the attempts of emperors to win her affection. The metric shift in “ chose one”
and the image of valves closing like stone intensify her exclusiveness. The valves not only
expand the door image but, as a mechanical connection that stops or allows the flow of
emotions, they also indicate the soul’s impervious control. The poem ends harshly as the
image of the impenetrable, unfeeling stone reflects the soul’s attitude toward other claimants
for her affections.
Since she was isolated from the society and even her friends, in this poem she is writing
about how we all get isolated at some point and we do not need anything, but a special person
who becomes the center of our world.
In the first stanza she states that “The Soul selects her own Society”(Dickinson,
1134). This could be interpreted in a way that a person has his reasons whether to choose
someone or not, and that special someone has such an important role in his life that it
revolves around him or her. Further on, she tells us that after choosing that special someone,
our heart closes and remains closed for anyone else who tries to get in.
In the second stanza she is again just confirming how final her decision is. With
carefully chosen words she wants to emphasize that her choice is firm and unshakable. She
even ignores the Emperor who is on his knees outside her door, which could maybe be seen
as the call of society for her presence again. However interpreted this may be, she is still firm
and would not remise nor would she change her decision. Her soul is simply not touched by
this action and she would not give up on her chosen one.
Moreover, in the last stanza she sums up the whole point of the poem:
“I’ve known her – from an ample nation –
Choose One –
Then – close the Valves of her attention –
Like Stone – “(Dickinson, 1134)
From these final lines we again see that there is an enormous number of people out
there among whom a person chooses his loved one. Metaphor used here with the word
“nation” just emphasizes that range from which it is possible to choose, but she also uses the
word “one” to contrast, showing that there is a certain someone for everyone and that
choosing the one a person chooses his life. Furthermore, this poem has very persuasive
closing lines. She chooses strong words with strong meaning. After being closed, nothing can
ever pass between valves, especially if they are closed “like stone”(Dickinson, 1134), which
is again just another way of intensifying her point.
Another very passionate poem, in which we can see how much she adores and
idealizes her lover is “Forever at His side to walk”. The general image of this poem is such
intense love, a wish for coalescence, complete devotion and maybe even an obsession. The
speaker is a loving subordinate wife who would give her own life, would risk anything and
would carry any burden and all of that just for her loved one.
The opening line begins with a strong word “forever”. This word denotes something
long lasting, something eternal, with which she wants to mark at the very beginning of the
poem how sure is she about her feelings and how deeply she feels for him. Further on, she
talks about being “The smaller of the two!” . This may denote that she would bear anything
for him, she would not mind even if her own individuality was diminished. The next lines
show a biblical allusion, but also an allusion to Milton’s “Paradise Lost”:
“Brain of His Brain –
Blood of His Blood!”(Dickinson, 317))
The finishing line of the first stanza “Two lives – One Being – now”(Dickinson, 317)
is again a way of intensifying her devotion and loyalty, and the wish for being completely
united, becoming one being. That way they can be together always and forever, which is her
desire. It is very interesting how her words have such a strong and powerful meaning. They
are very touching and seem truthful.
The opening line of the second stanza is again “forever”. She wants to share his fate
regardless of its nature. Pain or joy – it doesn’t matter to her. However, she does say that if it
is grief that is coming to him, she wants to take the biggest part suggesting that she does not
want him to suffer. Not only does she not want him to feel grief, but also wants him to be
happy, saying that if it is joy that they are supposed to meet with, she would even give her
part of it to him.
The final stanza does not begin with the identically same word like the previous two,
but it does begin with a phrase bearing the same meaning – “all life”. She wishes that this
relationship would last even in the afterlife, when they go to heaven, because according to her
not the whole amount of time on this earth they have is enough to get to know each other
perfectly. Moreover, it would be a true bliss if they could share the experience of finally
finding out what heaven and the afterlife really are, since it has intrigued them in this life.
“My life had stood..” is perhaps her best poetic statement about the explosive changes that
passion wrought on her emotions. The central conceit of a loaded gun connotes a potential,
inert force, one with explosive power, which can only be released by another. The concept of
the active male hunter possessing the passive woman guides the whole poem. According to
Adrienne Rich this is a poem about possession by the daemon, about the dangers and risks of
such possession if you are a woman, about the knowledge that power in woman can seem
destructive, and that you cannot live without the daemon once it has possessed you.
 Once he leaves she reverts to her inactive gun state. Her life is described as a loaded gun,
filled with emotional force and sensitivity but standing forsaken in a pawnshop waiting for
redemption. The owner merely has to show his ticket in order to carry her away. So their
fated love casts her in the role of a passive force that only he can release from a stagnant life.
Now a balladlike mood depicts her romantic fulfillment as the “we” , united in love and
purpose, hunt a regal domain searching for game and things of beauty( “ doe”). Their
relationship is not entirely one-sided, for he needs her destructive power. Without her the
hunter is incomplete but now his slightest touch causes her to explode and command
mountains for him. Stressing her emotional response and unleashed destructive power the
next 3 stanzas emphasize the pleasure she gives him, the protection she renders him at night,
and the revenge she wreaks upon his enemies. Yet significantly the line” our good day done”
hints that their hunting union is at an end. She further comments on her desire to guard his
bed rather than share its physical pleasure. These changes prepare for perplexing and
somewhat obscure final stanza. This appears to mean that at death he has a chance for
spiritual salvation and immortality. But his domination has so exhausted her spirit that she is
lifeless and inert without his love. His complete possession and her submission to his least
command leave her, upon his departure, without the right or desire to” die” in a religious
sense. She must remain passive and unfulfilled, abandoned in a pawnshop, with only the
unused power to kill but without the right to die into immortal life. These final lines introduce
a spiritual perspective to catch the pathos of her doom life.
. “The life of the person as a loaded gun probably stands for all of her potential as a
person, perhaps creatively as well as sexually. Her being claimed by the owner suggests
subservience to a lover as the only way to achieve selfhood—a stereotype of woman’s
position in society.”
In the second stanza they are united in love and there is no “I” or “you” anymore, but “we”,
which is quite romantic. She states that they are gone hunting the “Doe together. They
depend on each other. As much as she needs him, he is also incomplete without her because a
hunter always needs his gun. Hunting in the woods re-establishes a relationship with nature, a
frequent topic in Dickinson's poetry

In the third and fourth stanza she is emphasizing her love and devotion to him,
expressing how she feels about him and about the time when they are together. Using various
landscapes she points out her love, saying:
“And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow –
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through – “(Dickinson, 768)
“The Vesuvian face suggests the speaker’s sexual release being read into the
landscape, and perhaps also the joy on the face of the lover, who remains curiously
uncharacterized throughout the poem.” Furthermore, when the night falls she would rather
stay awake and protect him instead of sleeping.
In the next stanza she is concerned about him and is warning his enemies that she will
protect him if they try to hurt him. She is afraid of losing him, so she would do anything to
prevent this from happening. Here she again shows her deepest feelings and how
overprotective she is when it comes to her love.
In the final stanza she is again worried about losing her lover and is afraid that death might be
the cause of their separation. These lines are quite paradoxical, since they raise the question
of life and death. On one hand we have the speaker, the “gun”, and on the other hand we have
the hunter, “her master. Though the gun has the power to kill, it does not have the power to
die. However, her master has more life than she does, making him able to both live and die.
Since death is seen as the only way to reach immortality, it would allow them to stay together
eternally, and not being able to die, she is in grief that she will not be united with her master
for good. If we pay a closer attention to the last stanza we could say that the poet’s living and
dying permit her to be an artist; impelled by the animus, she’s empowered to kill experience
and slave herself into art. Each survives the other: she mortal in her person but timeless in her
poems, he transpersonal as an archetype but dependent on her transitory experience of him to
manifest himself. Nevertheless, the poem leaves no doubt that a woman in patriarchal society
achieves that triumph through a blood sacrifice. . If there is a female consciousness in this
poem, it is buried deeper than the images: it exists in the ambivalence toward power, which is
extreme. Active willing and creation in women are forms of aggression and aggression is
both ‘the power to kill’ and punishable by death. The union of gun with hunter embodies the
danger of identifying and taking hold of her forces, not least that in so doing she risks
defining herself- and being- as aggressive is unwomanly(“and now we hunt the Doe”)and as
potentially lethal. This energy she possesses could be actually destructive.

According to Paula Bennete Dickinson presents herself in this poem as everything “woman”
is not: Cruel not pleasant, hard nor soft, emphatic not weak, one who kills not one who
nurtures, just as significant, she is proud of it. Dickinson rejects the conventional sexual and
domestic role expected of woman. She doesn’t want to be female masochist.

Many critics tried to identify “he” in this poem but unsuccessfully. In the end they concluded
that this he is not a real human being whom Dickinson knew and loved, but a psychological
presence or factor in her inner life. Actually Gelpi, saw “him” as an image symbolic of
certain aspects of her own personality, qualities and needs and potentials which have been
identified culturally and psychologically with the masculine.

Carl Jung called this” masculine” aspect of woman’s psyche her animus corresponding to
the postulation of an anima as the feminine aspect of the man’s psyche. The anima or animus
first felt as the disturbing presence of the “other” in one’ self, thus holds the key to fulfillment
and can enable the man or the woman to suffer through the initial crisis of alienation and
conflict to assimilate the “other” into an integrated identity. In the struggle toward
wholeness the animus and the anima come to mediate the whole range of experience for the
woman and the man: her and his connection with nature and sexuality on the one hand and
with the sprit on the other. No wonder that the animus and the anima appear in dreams,
myths, fantasies and works of art as figures at once human and divine, as lover and God.
Such presence is Dickinson’s Master and Owner in the poem. As in many poems, Dickinson
sees the chance for fulfillment in her relationship to the animus figure, indeed in her
identification with him.

Gelpi also mentions the connection between Dickinson imagination and the major myth of
American experience. The pioneer on the frontier is the version of the universal hero myth
indigenous to our specific historical circumstances, and it remains even nowadays mainstay
of American individualism. This pioneer experiences his “otherness” sometimes as a
inhuman, or feminine or as the divine, or as all thee at once. He has a strong link with
landscape. For man the anima is the essential point of connection with woman and deity.
However, this union can result in competition, which can lead to conflict. The man who
reaches out to Nature to engage his basic physical and spiritual needs finds himself reaching
out with the hands of the predator to possess and subdue, to make Nature serve his own
needs. The hunter goes out alone to face the Nature and if he succeeds in vanquishing her
then he can enjoy in the spoils of Nature and as well as the service of those beneath him,
including women and black people. This pioneer actually came to establish his ego-identity
but this is sustained by feminine principle, whose dark mysteries are essential to the
realization of personal and social identity. The man who wanted to discover himself ends up
fighting against feminine powers, weapon in hand and becoming an aggressor

Not all of her poems are about happiness and joy of loving someone. “Over the
fence” is a poem which is one of the best examples illustrating the other type of her love
poems, which are filled with different emotions, not only felicity. The impression we get
when we first read this poem is that there is some kind of a temptation. With the right choice
of words, the speaker suggests that the whole situation is very sinful.
The first stanza begins with “Over the fence”(Dickinson, 867). Fence can be related to
some sort of an obstruction, something which stands on the way to prevent a person from
reaching his goal. So, from the very first line we can see that this is not something meant to
be. In the second stanza she mentions strawberries that grow on the other side of the fence.
Strawberries can be related to the forbidden fruit from the Eden, representing sweetness, but
on the other hand they are unreachable and not supposed to be touched. This Biblical allusion
goes on in the third line when she says “I could climb – if I tried, I know”(Dickinson, 867).
As we can see she says that if she wanted them, she could easily climb over the fence and get
them. Berries represent a temptation, something which lures her to get them. These berries
can maybe be a metaphor for a sexual experience.
“But – if I stained my Apron –
God would certainly scold!
Oh, dear, - I guess if He were a Boy –
He’d – climb – if He could!”(Dickinson, 867)
From these lines we can see that she worries, because if she does reach the berries
God would criticize her. “Associated with cultural voices that told young women not to
gather their own fruits, not to hike up their skirts to climb over an obstacle to reach what they
desired, God is also associated with those who would see – and criticize – what she has been
up to.” (Martin, 80) Since the speaker says that the apron would be “stained”, we assume that
the speaker is a girl, and her apron being stained means that everybody will know that she has
been sinful. Just by being a female she will be judged, unlike men who can do whatever they
want without being marked.
“Heart! We will forget him!” is a very profound and touching poem which shows the
pain and the attempt to forget the loved person. The speaker is a woman and she is trying to
make a deal with her heart to forget a certain man. They both seem to have certain tasks to
accomplish, so that as a result they can together finally forget him.
“Heart! We will forget him!
You and I – tonight!”(Dickinson, 382)
In the first stanza she seems to be very sure and confident about the decision of
forgetting him. Namely, she demands from her heart to forget the warmth that the lover gave,
and she will forget about the light. She vows to her heart, personified as a dear friend that
they will forget “him”. Heart carries the emotions and she represents the mind. The two are
often not in accordance, which is shown here. She tries to make both of her mind and heart
forget about a certain someone and free themselves from the pain.
However, in the second stanza we see that though she previously seemed confident
about her decision, she is not that sure anymore. The goal is to stop thinking about “him”, and
in order to reach this goal, heart has to do what needs to be done, but it has to hurry, or else
she will again start thinking about him. When we have some very deep emotions for someone
it is very hard to forget him, no matter how hard we try.
With a private poet like Emily Dickinson, biography often provides the key to the complete
understanding of a poem. Note, for example, how much biography adds to the haunting
lyric:”My life closed twice before its close” The poem clearly states that she has suffered the
equivalent of physical death by the two previous losses. Now she wonders if Immortality
(God or fate) has still another treasure to offer. Biographically these two losses could be
Newton and Wadsworth – her separation from Newton by physical death and the deprivation
of Wadsworth by geographical distance and moral barriers. Prophetically she wonders about
a possible third figure (and one actually came in 1870s with her Indian summer love for
Judge Otis Lord). The second stanza concisely summarizes the overwhelming sense of
desolation that these losses occasioned. Parting reveals heaven, since its ecstasy rivals
paradise, besides emphasizing the soul’s dependency upon heaven for future happiness. At
the same time the experience of hell comes in the anguish of separation.
Another very important poem whose major theme is parting is “My life closed twice
before its close”. “This poem exists only in a transcript, so we have no idea when it was
actually written. Although heaven and hell are mentioned, and although some critics see the
parting as deaths, the parting is probably not the result of death. Probably the subject is the
departure of dear friends who are expected to be long lost or forever absent.”
The poem begins with an intense statement. The power of the opening line derives
from the use of words “closed” and “close”(Dickinson, 766). The first word refers to the
impact of the deaths or losses of two people very dear to her heart, whereas the other one
refers to her own death. These two losses have had such an influence on her and were so
painful that they are like death themselves. However, the word “death” does not appear in the
poem. It is as if the idea and the experience of it is so great, the poet must carefully step
around it. “The immortality that may reveal another experience as inexpressible as these two
emotions lies beyond death.” (Mordecai, 49) In these lines, the speaker expresses concern
about what the future might hold. After having already suffered two life “closes”, she is left
to deal with whatever will happen next.
In the second stanza Dickinson expresses how deep and inconceivable her pain is
about the two “deaths”, which we can see from the next lines:
“So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.”(Dickinson, 766)
The last two lines of this poem present a powerful paradox, demonstrating that parting is both
“heaven” and “hell”(Dickinson, 766). People who are dear to a person’s heart help him gain
the experience which is almost more rewarding than he can hope to find in “heaven”.
However, he who is left behind when they leave, suffers the pain of their absence, pointed as
“hell”
The poem which more inherently blends spiritual love and human passion is “Tittle..” Here
the ritual of an actual marriage without the human bridegroom is so fully developed that one
can almost feel the human passion being transformed into divine love. The rich cluster of
images dealing with precious stones, Royalty and status intensify the poem’s marriage theme.
The opening lines defiantly vaunt her triumph with an exultation that the internal rhyme
makes almost childishly boastful. In this poem the achievement is clarified and expressed as a
“ Title divine.” , a wife without the external symbols, rings, dresses, and ceremony, common
to most brides. Her marriage is different; one so keenly felt that it brings both pleasure and
pain. Her rejection of an earthly marriage has made her an “empress” of suffering, worthy to
be the bride of Christ. The term “calvary” also has biographical significance, since this was
the name of the church in California where Charles Wadsworth became pastor in the year the
poem was written. The middle section expands this imagery. She is royal though lacking a
crown and betrothed without the usual swoon romantically associated with utmost happiness.
The lines “garnet to garnet-/gold to gold” symbolize wedding pledges and rings that officially
seal the marriage and suggest the physical union. (“Born-….the way”). The heavily
accentuated first syllables intensify the thought. A bride is born to new life in marriage,
“bridalled” , since she is subordinated to her husband(the pun is typical Dickinson touch), and
“ shrouded”, since her virgin life is now dead. On a spiritual level this indicates that her
complete submission to Christ transcends all of physical life in an instant (“in a day” ). The
final line wistfully dream of an actual marriage as she imagines new brides rapturously
caressing the sound of” my husband”. An ironic note creeps into “is this- the way” , as if her
possession of Christ’s love renders earthly marriage insignificant. Yet the lines are
ambiguous, implying envy as well as disdain. Appropriately the poem ends with this delicate
suggestion of the pain and pleasure that accompanies both states.

Conclusion
By the time Emily Dickinson was published in 1890 the public was better able to appreciate
her quality and work achieved a surprising success. However, despite her popularity in the
1890s, her Bohemian appeal in the 1920s, and recent critical acclaim, she was a private poet,
and her poetry remains difficult for many readers. Her particular casts of mind and her
predominant themes have to be understood before one fully appreciates her poetic
achievement.
Emily Dickinson’s poetry made a great contribution and an enormous impact on poetry in
general and inspires many poets even nowadays. She was a woman who was like a volcano
filled with emotions which were just hankering to burst out. Being very creative, she could
always find a way to covert her deepest feelings into a poetic form. Whether she was feeling
happy, in love and loyal to her lover or in pain and hurt from losing the one she loves, she
always knew exactly how to write a touching poem, which would show what love can bring
and what it can deprive from us.
Unfortunately most of her love poems are so tortured and so intimately related to her deepest
feelings that they lack the artistic control necessary to raise them beyond the biographical and
the personal. Unfortunately most of her love poems are so tortured and so intimately related
to her deepest feelings that they lack the artistic control necessary to raise them beyond the
biographical and the personal. Three principal motifs can be discerned in these poems: the
anticipation of the lover’s future visit and possible marriage; the climatic meeting of the
lovers and their resulting separation; and finally the sublimation of the human passion in the
celestial marriage as she becomes the Bride of Christ.