Emily Dickinson and the

Subject of Seclusion

American Literature

Presented By
Gul-e-Ayesha, Wajeeha Hadi
Sidra Dar, Rehana Asghar
Bad-e-Sehr, Kainat Gul
 Introduction:
• Artists feel an irresistible inward pull, away from external objects, toward
seclusion.
• It is felt as an internal cry to return to that focused state, where the inner world
may be allowed to come alive and flood forth on canvas or paper.
• The craving for this state can be intense, and when deprived of it, the artist can
feel blocked and suffocated.
• When we look at the life of Emily Dickinson, we can see a withdrawal that goes
far beyond that of the average artist. She created a total captivity in her own
seclusion.
 Withdrawal:
• By the time Emily Dickinson was thirty years old she had withdrawn from all
social engagement with the world. She no longer went to church.
• According to John Cody's psychobiography of Dickinson, After Great Pain
(1971), the poet responded to a strong undercurrent of distress from her
father when she decided she was too ill to return to school.
• Dickinson withdrew from the world, but she also withdrew into her father's
home and into an internal world in which her father seemed to inhabit every
room in her mind.
 Withdrawal (cont’d):
• In the following poems, Emily Dickinson's father is seen first as a revered
hero and then as a demonic god. In the first poem she addresses her
deceased father.
Turning from my comrades' eyes, / Kneeling where a woman lies, /I strew
lilies on the grave of the bravest of the brave
• In the second, she presents us with a god who assaults her, a reflection of
an internal and seemingly more unconscious father:
He fumbles at your Soul / As Players at the keys
The Creative mystique (Creative genius):
• Many literary critics and biographical commentators have spoken of
Emily Dickinson's motivation toward seclusion as a conscious and
free choice.
• They have refused to note any pathological dynamics (unwanted
behaviors) and have contributed to an attitude of protective
reverence toward the poet by claiming that she chose seclusion for
artistic purposes.
 The Creative mystique (cont’d):
• The feminist literary critics have been most vocal in this regard:
a. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (A Madwoman in the Attic, 1979), speak of
the necessity for a woman poet to seclude herself from a world dominated
by Victorian men so that she might write.
b. They also believed that Dickinson had found the salvation of privacy within
her father's home that she never could find if she were to marry.
c. They said that Dickinson's creativity benefited from a seclusion from society
that forbade close interactions with people, particularly with males, but they
also believe that Dickinson's poems gave her enough emotional satisfaction
to last a lifetime.
The Creative mystique (cont’d):
• Cynthia Griffin Wolff believes that Dickinson's withdrawal from the
world was an artistic choice rather than a psychodynamically motivated
conclusion.
• She speaks of a “metaphysical imperative” propelling Dickinson into
seclusion so that she might respond to her intense creative motivation.
• Sewall believes that Dickinson first discovered that she was a poet and
then accepted her seclusion as her necessary fate.
The philosophy of renunciation:
• Emily Dickinson’s poem about renunciation expresses her compulsion to
express herself via the frustration of desires.
Renunciation—is a piercing Virtue— The letting go /A Presence—for an
Expectation Not now—
• The poet suggests that all forms of renunciation are essential for the
creation of art.
• She believes that only when we eliminate the fulfillment of desire do we
become the living vessels for the transformation of desire into a mode of
creativity that symbolically produces our objects of desire.
Seclusion as a Defense against Aggression:
• Emily Dickinson used her poetry to express her rage against those she could
not address directly in her life.
• Dickinson withdrew from life and from men into her father's home. Within
her home, she remained her father's dutiful daughter. She had some
awareness of another part of her that wished to rebel, but she always kept
this part of her in check.
• She remarked that she would recite prayers with her father at his ritual
bidding, but inwardly she would be thinking that her father “addressed an
eclipse”. An “eclipse” was her name for a bankrupt and voidlike absent god.
Seclusion as a Defense against Aggression (cont’d):
• Dickinson's internal rebellion broke forth only in her poetry, where she most
frequently painted her masculine father god as demonic.
• Her poetry was her avenue to express her split-off aggression, most
particularly her aggression toward her father, and toward other father
figures.
• Her anger, whether expressed through sarcastic wit or through active
tantrum like rage, found an outlet for catharsis:
Of Course—I prayed— And did God Care? /He cared as much as on the Air /A
Bird—had stamped her foot— / And cried “Give me”— /My Reason—Life—
/I had not had—but for Yourself
Conclusion:
• Dickinson's belief that the fulfillment of her creative potential required
renunciation of interpersonal sustenance drove her into psychosis and
then into a type of obsessive creation, which as her isolation from others
grew worse dried up her creative vigor.
• Her method of solitude appears to have supported her obsessive kind of
creativity, in which she purged herself of demons daily but was unable to
mourn and integrate her demons into a healthy sense of self.
Thank You!