Emily Dickinson’s preoccupation with death: Is it an obsession or piety?

Emily Dickinson is a very popular figure in the history of American literature. The study of American literature will remain incomplete without reading any poem written by her. This poet has a great contribution and large influence on poetry. She is considered one of America’s most famous poets. There is confusion about the number of poems she has written, but according to various sources, we come to know that she has written almost two thousand poems on various issues. Out of these poems, almost five hundred poems have been published. She was a very mysterious person throughout her life. If we read her poems then we can see her personal agony, frustration and obsession for death as the main themes of her poems. It seems that she was obsessed with death. 

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It is difficult to mention if Emily Dickinson’s preoccupation with death was her obsession or piety. It should be better to think that she seemed to be obsessed with death. For this reason, the concept of death has got the most importance in her poems. It should not be wrong if we say that theme of death has become a significant subject in her poems. She also talked about what might happen after death. It will be almost impossible to find a single poem where she did not talk about death. It does not mean that she was afraid of death. Rather, she accepted it for what it is. Everything has its end.

To get a clear idea about her obsession for death, readers will have to know the way she had led her life. Her way of leading life was different than other poets of her time. She led a very monotonous, unusual and isolated life. In her whole life, she remained completely alone, and she did not have many friends. She was very close to her sister-in-law. She used to communicate with other friends through letters. She had written one thousand letters. Because of her isolated life, she became detached from society. She also had a negative idea towards society and God because of her alienation. In her whole life, she did not go out of her village more than once.

She chose a very simple life and used to wear white clothes, and she had a great reluctance to greet guests. Later in her life, she even did not come out of her room. She had a complaint against the society that society did not give her recognition as a poet. As she was isolated and alienated from everything, the thought of death came to her mind as an obsession. Her separation and engrossment with death led to the development of her romantic attitude towards it.

Emily Dickinson became famous for her preoccupation with death. For this reason, most of her poems contain stanzas focusing on death, specifically her own death and her own afterlife. Her attitude towards death was astonishing. It is clear that there was no fear or horror in her mind about death as one can see in the poem titled ‘Because I could not stop for death’. She wavers between reality and illusion while commenting on her ideas about the afterlife. The first stanza states,

“Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.”

In this stanza, the poet tells the readers that she and Death are passengers in a carriage. The reason for making this personification is to show the continuous use of the idea of death in Dickinson’s life.

The death of her parents as well as her friend, Charles Wadsworth, with whom she was supposed to get married, came as a great shock to her. It gave her the pain of losing loved ones. She writes,

“My life closed twice before its close;

It yet remains to see

If immortality unveil

A third event to me”

In these lines, we can see the poet’s experience of facing death. She says that she has encountered death twice before it finally comes to her. She then hints that those who die will go to heaven while those who are alive will continue to live in Hell. In this poem, her attitude of awareness toward death is revealed.

Her poem, ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’, is the best example that shows her obsession for death. She says,

“I felt a funeral in my brain,

And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.”

Here, in this poem, we can see her thought about death. The poet said that she could feel the death psychologically. This poem shows that there is no hope of immortality. It only shows a miserable thrust into an eternal abyss. Its gloomy tone is found in describing the terrible struggle because of the separation of the body from the soul. But the physical death also seems to offer a momentary insight into the nature of infinity.

Due to her loneliness, Emily Dickinson became obsessed with death. Death came as an obsession to Emily Dickinson. Here, ‘funeral’ is used as a metaphor.

Another poem that shows her obsession for death and afterlife is ‘Safe in their Alabaster Chambers’. Some lines have been quoted below from this poem,

“Safe in their alabaster chambers –

Untouched by morning -

and untouched by noon –

Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,

Rafter of satin and roof of stone.”

In these lines, the poet is talking about the lives of dead people who are sleeping in their coffins. They are untouched by morning and noon. They will remain asleep until resurrection. Here, ‘alabaster’ is meant as coffin and ‘chamber’ as grave.

Many scholars and philosophers have given their own opinions about Emily Dickinson’s preoccupation with death. Thomas H. Johnson was Emily Dickinson’s editor and biographer. According to him, for the poet, death is a mystery to be explored, but he says that Dickinson remained undecided as to a solution throughout her work. Virginia H. Oliver’s Apocalypse of Green is the frame within which Dickinson tests her religion, faith and belief through the medium of her poetry. What Katharina Ernst said was that death was perhaps the most thorough-going discussion in the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Not only Emily Dickinson but also many poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton have an obsession for death. Their attitude towards death is revealed in their writings. At the beginning of this essay, a short biography of Emily Dickinson was given. She died after suffering for a long time. Sylvia Plath is another feminist writer. She got married to Ted Hughes and had a miserable married life. Because of her unhappy married life, she had a mental breakdown, which led her to an obsession for the theme of death in her poetry. When she was just thirty-one years old lady, she committed suicide. The same thing happened to Anne Sexton whose eighteen-year long career was abruptly ended because of her suicide. If readers read poems written by these poets, they will find one thing in common and that is the obsession for death. They dealt in their poems with seclusion, depression and obsession for death, and even suicide.

Each poet or writer has his or her own preoccupation or obsession for something. For example, William Wordsworth is well known for writing about nature and this created a new era in English literature. So, we can easily say that he was highly obsessed with nature. Ted Hughes wrote a lot about animals. He used animals as metaphors, and with the use of animals, he has shown the behavior of human beings. Similarly, Emily Dickinson was preoccupied with death.

So far, I have tried to prove that Emily Dickinson’s preoccupation with death was her obsession not piety. To prove her obsession for death, I have mentioned some of her poems and did a little bit of discussion. She has expressed her thoughts about death with the use of nature, religion and love. In the end, it can be said that her preoccupation with death was an obsession, and it can be found in her poems.