Throughout the years at Pleasant Plains High School, and I am sure other high schools as well, students have read and studied the work of Emily Dickinson. She is probably one of the most famous female poets, and it is pretty safe to say she was a very different person. Emily Dickinson decided to live her life in secluysion actually in Amherst, Massachusetts (Leiter). She expressed herself very strongly through poems and letters. She would not show any of these letters or poems to anyone, but her sister Lavinia. Lavinia acutally published her writings after the death of her sister. It is said that to actually understand Emily Dickinson's writing and her writing style you must understand her life (Leiter). She went through some extremely tough school, and had a very stubborn and strict father who had radical beliefs on women and their place in society. Religion was a big thing in the time period of Emily Dickinson, but she was not religious she just joined the church because that was what was expected, and her fmaily was a part including her sister whom she was very close with, and her strict father.
The poems of Emily Dickinson are definitley considered classics and are read nation wide if not world wide. They are however hard to fit into a category because of the subjects she wrote about and how she wrote them. Dickinson often wrote of love, life, death, nature, and would often question immortality (McChesney). These are actually common themes in pretty much all literature read today and previous excluding the Puritan writing period because it was all about god. In Poem 549, Dickinson speaks to the reader and the lines resonate through time as they will always be true: "That till I loved/ I never lived—Enough—" (McChesney). This is a verse that still holds extremely true today because love is such a big part of anyone's life. You can live your life and have money and be happy, but money can not buy happiness. However, a lot of time love will give one happiness.
Emily Dickinson definitley did not fit into a Modernist writer, but she was not a realist either. Modernist thought that society was oh so great and perfect and terrible for no reason. A modernist writer believed that a real person who is both thoughtful and real does not fit into society because it is mindless after the first world war we had. Dickinson did not seem to feel this way at all. She really thought that every single person had a place and a purpose. She wrote trying to figure out what these places and purposes were for people. Many people agree with this today. People were not just put onto this earth for absolutley no reason. Every body has a purpose, it is just up to them whether or not they would actually like to find it. She did not remotley belong to any onhe period, just like Whitman. She was just a writer who wrote about what she believed. Perhaps this is why these two writers were so successful, because they dared to be different.
Leiter, Sharon. "Dickinson, Emily." Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.
McChesney, Sandra. "A View from the Window: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson." In Harold Bloom, ed. Emily Dickinson, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 20 Mar. 2012.
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