A Feminist Literary Criticism of Emily Dickinson's Poem "I'm wife; I've finished that"

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the poem of Emily Dickinson, “I ’m wife; I’ve finished that '' with feminist literary criticism. This poem was written in the 19th

century when there was a vast gulf between two kinds of lives: a single woman’s life and a wife. In Dickinson's poem, “I ’m wife; I’ve finished that”, it showed how freedom

is different when a woman is married and when not. It also shows the difference between a "woman " and a "wife ". The poem is about an uneasy-contradictory feeling

of a young woman who is turning into a woman, especially a wife that seems “safer and more comfortable”, but stopping her from becoming a full human being with no

self empowerment and self identity. This poem explores personal themes of independence, society and womanhood.

In “I’m “wife”- I’ve finished that” Dickinson makes use of the line that later came to be used as the title. She describes in these first lines taking a different look at a

way of living her life. The speaker decides to set aside her reality, that of an unmarried woman, and look at another way of being. She is “wife” now, “Czar” and wholly, as

society thinks, “‘Woman’ now”. It means that now since I am married, I have become a complete woman. She wanted to convey that every girl ought to get married in

order for her to become a ‘complete’ woman. Dickinson understands her own world very well. She is fully aware of the fact that in the mid nineteenth century, it was a

norm/expected for a girl to get married, have a family, have children and have a typical lifestyle. And it is “safer so” to be married than to live a spinster’s life.

Dickinson takes a different look at the world. She imagines looking back at the life of a “girl” from “Behind this soft Eclipse”. This is an interesting line. The speaker is

imagining looking at the world from the sunny side of an eclipse. The girl, who is on the other side, sees only darkness. This is another very poetic and figurative way of
describing what the safety of marriage would be like. One is able to look at the world from a safe, warm, and bright position. The image of the eclipse is then compared

to the difference between heaven and earth. Those in heaven look down on the earth from the light while everyone on earth sees only darkness. The “folks in Heaven”

are metaphorically compared to the life of a wife. The state of being married, as she has so far described, is more comfortable and warm. The “other kind,” the life of a

spinster, “was pain”. This very clearly lays out one particular way of thinking about two ways of living one’s life.

The poem concludes abruptly with the speaker calling a stop to call comparisons between the two lives. She’s decided that she’s finished with being a spinster and

is now “Wife,” that’s all there is to it. The line “But why compare?” could also be taken another way. It might be Dickinson interjecting, frustratedly insisting that there is no

reason to compare the life of a wife to that of a single woman. One should not, in theory, be better or more important than the other.

As explained in the above section, we know that in this poem Emily Dickinson wants to present a very intricate approach towards marriage. At the first, she shows

her pro-marriage opinion, but in the last part she writes the ironic messages that mocks the society norm in mid nineteenth. She wants to show that marriage for girls is

like a “soft eclipse”. Marriage will give a safer life for the girls that are demanded of them and finally painless, or the complete opposite of it. I think this poem is

presented to mock the sexist society of the middle nineteenth century for pressuring girls to get married, have a family, have children and have a typical lifestyle.