Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickenson, an amazing poet in the history of American Literature, exhibits both transcendentalist and anti transcendentalist qualities. Dickinson believes in the goodness within humans. She believes in the connection between Nature and people. She believes in the search of within yet, the frustration of the world outside her window and the disgust of human interaction and conformity have utterly shut Dickinson within her cabin. In the literary text book, Dickinson’s bio asserts,

She became more and more reluctant to be drawn away from home, even for an hour at a time.

The key to this sentence is growing old. This growth and maturity lead to awareness towards many unknowns during the the naïve yet wise stage as an infant. Many things are kept away from children but shine explicitly within adults. Why is it wrong to behave like an innocent child? Why is it wrong to be mature yet pure at the same time? Emily Dickinson tried to love someone, but he wouldn’t acknowledge the love between them. The encapsulation of Dickinson in her house shows her encapsulation of hope in her heart, her sealing of trust among humans, and her despair to communicate truth via the form of speech and interaction. This is the transition from young to old, immature to mature, unaware to aware, and transcendentalist to anti transcendentalist. MOST importantly and many times neglected, the old have young encapsulated in them, the mature have immature sealed within them, the anti transcendentalist have transcendentalist thinking cemented on the walls of their corpus. She is not giving up on humans; she is giving up on society. Thus, her influence is not only within her poems, it is shining out of her life. The rejection to live the life of others, the nonconformity towards a dark society, and the hope within her that things will change impress the people reading her work and understanding her life. She is against the world yet part of it. More specifically, she is against the corruption of society and tries to stay away from it. Hence the poem, “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church” Yet, being part of the big body (a transcendentalist mindset), being part of the world, she has hope has not lost hope. Her gentle transcendental side of her rubs off the rough edges of the anti transcendentalist hemisphere. Hence the poem,” This is my letter to the World”

In this is my letter to the world, she does soften it up. But i believe that although she does mention Eternity in a few of her poems, and some poems do display a deep understanding of the world, she is not qualified to be positive, a true trans. Because refering to one of Emersons essays, I think experience, he tells us that it isnt to go all in for intellectual development ftw. Muscular activity is also another important factor that cannot be overlooked.

In Thoreau, he experiences everything, Warden presents us with various experiences that he has gone through to deduce some theoretical statements. Emily Dickinson does experience love, and does feel the torn feeling after not getting the same affection back from that dude, but she has never really experienced the other things in the world. Ego mind is a lethal lurker that will jump out and start filling in the holes, or discontinuing time laspes and forms it into a makeshift memory. Tht's just a wild guess.

I think she wrote Sabbath not to reject th dirty society,but to show the difference between a real praying or the ego taking place and mumbling out the words. Probably your grandma, or a random grandma on the street JT, sometimes you might hear them just muttering "o mi tofu", compare it to a monk saying it. They are saying the same words, they are both trying to talk to Buddha, but ones heart is empty, the other, all those grandmas that mutter o mi tofu 100 times aday are clogged with materialistic needs.
Dont know how i got there, but in Sabbath she is probably proving Emersons" Consistency is a foolish hobgblin of ..." (dont rememb) Going to the Sabbath, doing the rituals there, in a holy place, doesnt make one reach calmness. Instead it disengrates the balance scale in soul. Once one doesnt go through the routine, one starts blaming self on not going ot the Sabbath, hence the lack of self trust, reliance.

She is against the world yet part of it. More specifically, she is against the corruption of society and tries to stay away from it. Hence the poem, “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church” Yet, being part of the big body (a transcendentalist mindset), being part of the world, she has hope has not lost hope. Her gentle transcendental side of her rubs off the rough edges of the anti transcendentalist hemisphere. Hence the poem,” This is my letter to the World”

I think the above ^ passage was one of the best parts of your responses - you capture what I wanted to say in so few and concise words! I agree to what you said about the connection between Dickinson and both the Transcendentalist and the Non-Transcendentalist sides of herself. But that really leads me to think: where did her hope come from? She could have given up on the world when she lost her love, but yet she maintained her hopeful demeanor and continued on her positive outlook of life, despite the fact that some of her poems are definitely attached to non-transcendentalist ideas. She feared society and its values - perhaps she loathed it, even - but she still tried to connect to the world, and this brings out her hope that perhaps one day, she would be understood.

Great job on the response! - your writing definitely cleared up a lot of those blurry ideas for me.

I agree with you but we can only assume how she might have felt when her feelings were rejected and not know for sure how it affected her writing. On the contrary, I felt that all her poems were relatively optimistic and light-hearted except for " I Took My Power in My Hand." So, I failed to see the progression of her isolation and disappointment or frustration with the world. Her tone just didn't seem that hopeless and pessimistic.