Personal Essays

The Nature of Hope

Emily Dickinson was an amazingly gifted poet who dedicated her livelihood to her writing and never got any recognition for it during her life. She wrote her poems about nature, love, hope, and religion for years in the late 1800s, focusing on her works, and died without ever being published, which may have been her choice. 

Dickinson never had the rewards a writer has when seeing people enjoy their works, or being able to have their name all over the world. She never had the pride any artist gets after sharing their piece with society. Although Dickinson's work was not published during her life, it still continues to be relevant in today's world and inspirational to new writers of the 21st century.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10th, 1830 to Edward Dickinson (Emily Dickinson Museum) and Emily Norcross in Amherst, Massachusetts (Editors). Dickinson had two siblings, William Austin and Lavinia Dickinson. 

Emily Dickinson attended Amherst Academy for seven years, which was founded by her grandfather Samuel Dickinson, then moved on to Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for one year (Editors).

One of Emily Dickinson's largest influences was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Dickinson was given a book of poetry by Emerson, a gift from a family friend called Benjamin Franklin Newton (Editors). 

Before Dickinson reached her mid-20s, the only writing she did was mostly in the form of letters that she sent to close friends, as well as her brother James Austin (Habegger). Dickinson had a very large amount of time to write her poetry, as she was secluded and rarely left her home. 

This has been speculated to be caused by a variety of different reasons, common ones being possible depression and/or anxiety, caring for her ill mother Emily Norcross, and a painful ocular ailment (Editors).

When Dickinson started writing poetry around 1855, it was just before the beginning of the American civil war, which may or may not have influenced some of the hundreds of lyrics she had written by age 35 (Emily Dickinson Museum). 

In America in the 1850s, the country was divided in half between North abolitionists and southern slaveholders (Civil War Era NC). The presidential election of 1856 was a true turning point for the direction of the civil war to follow. (Sage).

In the late 1850s, Dickinson began to create small bound booklets containing 800 of her poems, likely intending to dispose of her works amongst her town. However, she never left any instructions for her survivors to share them (Habegger).

One person Dickinson had close to her was her brother's wife, Susan Gilbert. It has been speculated that Dickinson and Gilbert were closer than friends, as Dickinson shared many of her poems with Gilbert. Although there is little proof of a romance between Gilbert and Dickinson, many of Dickinson's poems do reflect some LGBTQ ideas (Editors).

Emily Dickinson died on May 15, 1886, in Amherst, Massachusetts at the age of fifty-five. She died of a kidney disease which caused a stroke (Habegger). Dickinson's poems were discovered by her sister, Lavinia, sometime after her death. 

In 1890 a volume of her poetry was published, after being typed up by Mabel Loomis Todd, James Austin's mistress. (Gordon) A full record of all of Dickinson's poems was not published until 1955 (Editors).

Emily Dickinson's writings often had themes of self, love, death, and nature. Her use of universal themes stemmed from her talent at observing the world around her. The majority of Dickinson's poems are unnamed, with their titles usually being the first line of the poem, or in some cases a number assigned by various poetry editors. 

One of Dickinson's biggest talents in her poetry is the way she can use abstract thoughts and solid worldly objects to explain one another, while still keeping the relationship between the two unsure and complicated (Emily Dickinson Museum).

Emily Dickinson's work was highly dominant in the world of poetry in the late 19th century. She, and Walt Whitman, inspired many other artists and poets that came after their time. A professor at Virginia Tech said in a book about Emily Dickinson's fallen poetics, "the idea that poetry most fully demonstrates who we are as human beings by calling attention to our distance from wholeness or perfection or full insight."

He believes Dickinson's work demonstrates when the language of the world changes, so too does the way the human population responds to movements (Gardener). One professor at Haverford college was interviewed after introducing his first-year class to the work of Dickinson.

At the end of the unit, he told reporter Rebecca Raber "The student poems are strange and strong and show their own limits and quirks, and push both beyond and into [the Dickinson poems they reference] in their own ways." So, Dickinson continues to inspire and encourage young writers even after death (Raber).

Emily Dickinson's writing is now seen as some of the most influential works of the 20th century, with her name being one continuously brought up well into the 21st century when discussing great poets of the past and present (Editors). 

The sad truth is in life Emily Dickinson never knew she would amount to such fame, that her name would be heard in every English classroom among the country one day, and she never got to see the payoff of all of her hard work.

Reason for writing: In my freshman year Honors English class, we were given a project where we were to select a poet, and a poem written by the said poet to read to the class, as well as write an essay about the life of the poet we chose. My poet was Emily Dickinson, and the poem I chose was "Hope is the thing with feathers"