Love and Emily Dickinson Essay example -- Biography Biographies Essays

Love and Emily DickinsonI am going out on the doorstep, to get you some new kB grassI shall pick it down in the corner, where you and I used to sit, and have long fancies. And perhaps the dear little grasses were growing all the plotand perhaps they heard what we said, but they cant tell Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert Dickinson (L 85, 1852) Seventy-five years after the 1890s publication of the premier volumes of Emily Dickinsons poetry, critics still squabble more or less the poets perhaps lesbian relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Indeed, the specifics of Dickinsons relationship to Susan are ambiguous at best. All of the critical attention that her mysterious sexuality receives reflects our cultures urge to sectionalize nifty literary icons into our own personal niches, thereby absorbing them as our groups own voice. The poet, not the poetry, assumes the center of the discussion. The critics, whether arguing for or against a lesb ian interpretation of the notable couple, are like two disgruntled neighbors arguing over a tree known for its particularly incendiary wood. They no longer focus on this evergreens innate beauty but, rather, on whose property it resides and who has the right to cut it down to ignite their cause. In all actuality, we will never know the truth about the pairs physical relationship the evidence is too ethereal to assume a definable substance. And, in part, this predictable public response motivated Susan Gilberts reluctance to exit Dickinsons poems and letters after the poets death. Emily Dickinsons life has been thoroughly explored by scholars and critics. Her extensive correspondence with all of her family and frien... ... longing for another, which transcend physical intimacy. Emily Dickinsons eloquent, overwhelming, consuming desire for a accredited companion is expressed as intensely in her words as it is felt in our souls.Works Cited Hart, Ellen Louise. The Encoding of Homoerotic Desire Emily Dickinsons Letters and Poems to Susan Dickinson, 1850-1886. Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature 9 (1990) 251-72.Koski, Lena. Sexual Metaphors in Emily Dickinsons Letters to Susan Gilbert.The Emily Dickinson Journal 5.2 (1996) 26-31. Sewall, Richard. The Life of Emily Dickinson. 2 vols. New York Farrar, 1974. Smith, Martha Nell. The Belle of the Belle of Amherst. Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review 3.1 (1996) 25-27.Susan and Emily Dickinson Their Lives, in Letters. The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 2002. 51-73.