On the first day of my Emily Dickinson seminars, I always ask students what they’ve heard about the poet. The answers are often the same: she wore white dresses, her poems are all about death, and she never left her house.
That last point usually leads to speculation about Dickinson’s mental health, followed by nods around the table. This negative perception of Dickinson’s reclusiveness was just as common in her own time.
In 1868, when her friend and literary mentor, T.W. Higginson, invited Dickinson to visit him in Boston, she firmly replied: “I do not cross my father’s ground to any house or town.”
Later, when Higginson visited her in Amherst, he asked the poet whether she missed having a more social life. Dickinson responded, “I never thought of conceiving that I could ever have the slightest approach to such a want in all future time.”
And in case he needed clarification, she added, “I feel that I have not expressed myself strongly enough.”
In her poem 409, as in several of her pieces, she speaks of solitude:
The Soul selects her own Society –
Then – shuts the Door –
To her divine Majority –
Present no more –
Scholars have offered many explanations for the poet’s seclusion, but to me, the most compelling is also the most straightforward: If Dickinson had lived the typical life of a 19th-century upper-class woman, she would have had neither the time nor the energy to produce 1,789 poems.
Poet Adrienne Rich expresses this idea in her essay Vesuvius at Home, writing, “I have a notion that genius knows itself; that Dickinson chose her seclusion, knowing she was exceptional and knowing what she needed.”
Dickinson conveys this sense of freedom in Poem 466:
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –
What, then, might we learn from Dickinson’s decision to live as she did?
Pay attention. Her highly routinized home life helped her see the world and her inner self in extraordinary detail: the slant of light on winter afternoons, the feeling of despair, the wild nights of her dreams, the way bees circle a flower before entering, the ambivalence of hope, her Newfoundland dog Carlo’s lumbering gait, a robin biting a worm in half, a snake dividing the grass.
While we may not all be poets, Dickinson teaches us how our lives can be enriched by slowing down and paying attention to details in the present moment, noticing what we might otherwise overlook.
Live with intention. Dickinson’s decision to self-isolate allowed her to free herself to be a poet. While most of us would not choose this lifestyle, her choice may inspire us to reflect on what is necessary and important to us and what is not.
Her niece Mattie once described how, during a visit, Dickinson mimed locking her bedroom door with an invisible key and then said, “It’s just a turn – and freedom, Matty!”
Rather than viewing solitude as limitation, Dickinson embraced it as liberation. Her choice to dwell in possibility, rather than to accommodate the expectations of her culture, allowed her to fulfill her vocation.
And while she certainly secluded herself, she was never truly alone. In #303, “Alone, I cannot be,” Dickinson reveals how she lives an extraordinarily rich life of the mind, one which was fed by her reading, her writing, her relationships (yes, she had many!), and her thoughts.
Reflecting on Dickinson’s choices invites us to ask: What do we most need to do with the time we are given? And what are we willing to let go of in order to do it?
Emily Dickinson found her answer, and with it, the freedom to create one of the most original and enduring bodies of work in American literature.
Dickinson marathon reading on April 29
For National Poetry Month, the University of St. Thomas will host its fourth Emily Dickinson Reading Marathon on April 29, 8 a.m.-9:30 p.m. in Room 108 at the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library. Readers from across St. Thomas and the community will drop in to take turns reading Dickinson’s poems aloud, in order, from No. 1 to No. 1,789. Visitors are encouraged to come and go throughout the day, enjoying refreshments and student displays, as well as the reading. The event is co-sponsored by the Luann Dummer Center for Women, the Department of English, and St. Thomas Libraries.
About Professor Erika Scheurer
Dr. Erika Scheurer, associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, is a devoted Emily Dickinson scholar with a passion for poetry. Scheurer, who was a first-generation college student, even completed her dissertation on the poet. She also serves as the Director of the Writing Across the Curriculum program and was named the university’s Professor of the Year in 2021. Scheurer authored a version of this commentary that was published in the Star Tribune in April 2020.
