Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson example essay topic

Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson became a will known poet that writes of things that affect her perspective on life. Her poems are so truthful and so insightful because most of her poems are about what she encounters. She wrote some poems based on her point of view of things that influenced her life. Her poetry writings seems like journals because the poem "A Solemn Thing- -it was- -I said" is a bit like a story of what was happening at the time when she wrote that poem. The poem also focuses on her role in life, a woman less than a man, a statue that she is condemned to live as a woman in society. In the poem "A Solemn Thing- -it was- -I said" there would be a feeling a disappointment and sexist issues to a feminist, due to the fact that the poem reflects the status of a woman being "small" (4.16).

Look, reading and understanding the poem from a feminist perspective, the result of seeing that Emily Dickinson's life was a strategy and a creation that allowed her to become the person she was, a great woman poet. Emily Dickinson's use of symbols, imagery and metaphors is a help to a feminist explanation, which illustrates the experiences of her life in the poem "A Solemn Thing- -it was- -I said" as read from a Feminist perspective. In Emily Dickinson's poem she uses symbols to represent things maybe personal to her at the time when she wrote the poem. In a feminist perspective, the symbols may show how women acted in the 1800's.

Emily Dickinson shows a woman's role through the symbol of a white garment when she says, "A solemn thing - it was - I said - A woman - white - to be - And wear - if God should count me fit - Her blameless mystery-" (1: 1 - 4). The symbol of the white garment represents her purity, innocents, and truthfulness, but then she questions whether she thinks God thinks she is good enough. In the catholic religion, God loves and accepts everyone but it seems that she thinks of herself not even worthy enough for her Creator. In Sandra M. Gilbert's feminist perspective essay, she elaborates on the symbol of the white garment.

No doubt the most striking and ubiquitous of Dickinson's domestic symbols is her white dress. As I have argued elsewhere, that extraordinary costume is in one sense a kind of ghostly blank, an empty page on which invisible ink this theatrical poet quit consciously wrote a letter to the world that never wrote to her. But to begin with, of course, Dickinson's radiantly symbolic garment was "just" a dress, an "ordinary"everyday" item of clothing not unlike the morning dresses many Victorian young ladies wore... Enshrouded in a very prosaic and very modern plastic bag, its carefully protected tucks and ruffles remind the viewer that such a costume would have had to be maintained - laundered, ironed, mended- with intense dedication.

(Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson 31) Emily Dickinson shows how her "small" and controlled life when she says, "And then - the size of this 'small' life - The Sages - call it small" (4: 13-14). She also uses the symbol of horizons to show her boundaries in life when she ways, "Swelled - like Horizons - in my vest" (4: 15). The white garment, her small life, and horizons are all symbols that represent her personal feeling toward her status in the life she lead. Imagery is a factor when reading Emily Dickinson's Poem "A Solemn Thing- -it was- -I said". The definition of imagery in the book Reference Points by Robert Dawe and Prentice Hall says, "Both the pattern of images in a work and all language used to represent objects, actions, feelings, thoughts, and so on" (391). Emily Dickinson uses imagery perfectly when she says things like solemn, white, purple well, eternity, hovering, fog, swelled like horizons, and softly.

In Sandra M. Gilbert's feminist perspective essay on Emily Dickinson's work she elaborates on the purple well and the white dress again when it reads, Dickinson's white dress is the emblem of a "blameless mystery", a kind of miraculous transformation that rejoices and empowers her. Dropping her life into that puzzling purple well, she renounces triviality and ordinariness in order to "wear" - that is, to enact - solemnity, dedication, vocation. In return, she will receive a indefinable bliss associated with the transformative power of "Eternity". (32) Words like these, if thought in a feminist way, would show traits of gentle and sensitive woman, showing how women, in the 1800's, were expected to act like. When words like softly are put together to create a story of Emily Dickinson's life, a reader has an easy time to imagine what the message is from the poem. Emily Dickinson's poem "A Solemn Thing- -it was- -I said" includes metaphors to help see her life through a feminist perspective.

The whole poem is metaphorically based on women's lives during the 1800's. Emily Dickinson is compared to other poets in Sandra M. Gilbert's feminist perspective essay. Even most poets, however, don't make the passage from the mental pretense implied in the metaphorical to the physical pretense of a theatrical enactment... Therefore, suggest not only that she transformed her life into art more readily than most other writers but also that, more than most, she used her "small" life itself as an instrument of her great are: even the most ordinary materials of her life, that is, became a set of encoded gestures meant both to supply imagery for, and to supplement, the encoded statements of her verse. (32) In the poem it reads, "A hallowed thing- -to drop a life" (2: 5), which is a metaphor for if something sacred or a precious thing is left, abandoned or dropped, it is like ending life. Any life of a woman should not be left, abandoned or dropped because woman just as important as anything or anybody.

Emily Dickinson's metaphors in her poem "A Solemn Thing- -it was- -I said" shows her life as important and meaningful when seen through a feminist perspective. The symbol, imagery and metaphors in Emily Dickinson's poem, "A Solemn Thing- -it was- -I said" when seen from a Feminist perspective, illustrates her experiences of a woman living in the 1800's. The poem is a story of the deep thoughts she was thinking when she wrote this poem. The poem reflects the real Emily Dickinson because the symbols, imagery and metaphors are based from her life.

Sandra M. Gilbert says, "For after all, the point of her white dress most definitively makes is that she herself, the 'real' Emily Dickinson, was as much a 'supposed person' as the so-called 'Representative of the Verse' (33). Emily Dickinson's poem teaches readers about the female roles in the 1800's and how woman were mistreated. A female reader, who reads "A Solemn Thing- -it was- -I said", will have a little bit of a feminist perspective on the women of pass and the future. Dawe, Robert, and Prentice Hall. Reference Points: A Guide to Language, Literature, and Media. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson Education Canada Inc, 2001.

Dickinson, Emily. "A Solemn Thing- -it was- -I said". American Poems. USA, 2000-2002. Gunnar Bengtsson... Juha sz, Suzanne, et al.

Feminist Critics Read Emily Dickinson. USA: Indiana University Press, 1983.