Playing with Sexual Identity: A Study of the Selected Poetry of Emily
Dickinson
Moumita Pal
Bankura University
Bankura, West Bengal,
India
Abstract
“This was a poet - / It is That / Distills
amazing sense / From ordinary Meanings -” – Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was that
poet. The proposition that Dickinson’s explicitly erotic poems may have been
composed for a woman, stunned the academic circle when Rebecca Patterson in
1951 published The Riddle of Emily Dickinson. Patterson contends that
the essential love and poetic inspiration of Dickinson’s life was a lady,
namely Kate Anthon – a contention which gives rise to some withering censorious
reactions. Nowadays, almost after seven decades, academic evolution on
Patterson’s breakthrough divulgence has made the homoeroticism in Dickinson’s
poetry and letters difficult to overlook. However, the centre of attention has
transposed from Kate Anthon to Dickinson’s lifelong friend and sister-in-law
Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. The publication of Smith and Hart’s Open
Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson ought
to take out any doubt concerning the long-lasting intimacy between Emily and
Susan Dickinson and forever bury the myth of an inconclusive rift between them
after Susan’s marriage to Emily’s brother Austin Dickinson in 1856. The
astonishing ingenuity of Dickinson’s approach doomed her poetry to incognizance
during her lifespan yet her bold appraisal in composition, her tragic vision
and the scope of her scholarly and passionate consideration and exploration
have since won her acknowledgement as a writer of magnificent, peerless and of
highest order. This dissertation primarily centres Dickinson as a lesbian poet
illuminating the patriarchal society which restrains women. It displays how the
self-identified lesbian poet Emily Dickinson gives ample evidence to help the
way that she has been keen on women more than men. Her poetry has frequently studied
from a queer perspective due to her reference to specific women throughout her
life.
Key words:
Homoeroticism, Queer, Lesbian, Passion, Sexuality,
Relationship, Marriage, Female-friendship, Love, Desire
Born in America, one of the greatest masters of short lyric verse,
Dickinson has composed nearly 1800 poems in the course of her lifespan.
Different individuals observe the poetry of Emily Dickinson in different ways.
A few people consider Emily Dickinson as one of the most noteworthy writers of
America. And then there are so many other people who criticise her poetry for
being unusual and too complicated to understand. For Dickinson, regardless of
whether a poem is genuine ‘poetry’ doesn’t rely upon its utilization of meter,
rhyme, refrains or length of the line, but rather on the practical physical
sensation made in the reciter by the words of the poem; the chilling feeling in
the marrow of the bones or the stunning blow to the mind that the reciter
encounters in the act of perusing Dickinson’s poetry. Dickinson’s enthusiasm
for creating such a sensation makes her poems unorthodox, radical and beyond
ordinary. Dickinson’s poems primarily consist of four major themes -- death,
agony, nature, and love. A large number of her poetry describes death as a
suitor, yet a despot. Concerning nature, she didn’t for the most part consider
nature as kindhearted mother-figure. Her veneration for nature consistently
overlapped with her love-lyrics. However, while reading her love-lyrics readers
may discover homo-erotic elements in those poems. There is abundant
verification to help the way that she may have been interested in females. Her
lyrics often analysed from a queer perspective in light of her numerous references
to a specific woman for a mind-blowing duration. In poems like, “To own a Susan
of my own” (poem 1401); “Wild Nights - Wild Nights” (poem 269); “Her breast is
fit for pearls” (poem 84); “I cannot live with you” (poem 640), she directly
addresses a woman in a romantic approach.
Unorthodox, intricate, intimidating, confounding, significant, and
provocative: these are some words that describe Emily Dickinson’s work.
Dickinson resisted all poetic rules and accordingly invented unique poems that
permitted her to express emotions and thoughts in dramatic, though often
baffling, style. The dash – the trademark of Dickinson’s writing, breaks the
lines separated, compelling the reader to pause and reevaluate and giving a
noticeable physical space for contemplation, inviting the reader to fill in the
gaps. Dickinson’s whimsical utilization of punctuation especially ‘the dash’,
serves nearly as a sort of melodic documentation that directs the cadence of
the lines. According to R.P. Blackmur, Emily Dickinson was an extraordinary
poet who has written in her own idiosyncratic style. Some critics and scholars
like R.P.Blackmur, Peter Nesteruk, Roxanne Harde also have given various
thematic studies of Dickinson’s writings. Roxanne Hardeinin
her article “‘Some – Are like My Own – ’: Emily Dickinson’s Christology of
Embodiment” talks about Dickinson’s tangled emotions about her Christianity and
the issues that would engross her religious compositions for the rest of her
life. According to some more moderate claims about Dickinson’s sexuality,
Martha Nell Smith in the book Rowing in
Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson argues that Dickinson’s love for Susan, who
was her sister-in-law, neighbor, and life-long friend, was an enthusiastic
commitment for a lifetime and she loved her very passionately. Susan herself
was conscious about that, in fact, she found some of Dickson's letter to her
“too adulatory to print”. Smith further argues that Dickinson’s connection to
Susan, often expressing her wanting to pair and kiss her darling and
envisioning orgasmic fusion with her, talks a sensual as well as a
heart-warming endearment. Smith has dauntlessly arrested that the expression
“lesbian” is apt. for portraying Dickinson’s affection for Susan. She contends
that confirmation of a sexual relationship is pointless for applying the term
to such a candidly serious and sensually charged bond. In a letter to Sue in
1852, as found in Mabel Loomis Todd’s Letters of
Emily Dickinson, Dickinson writes,
Susie, will you indeed come home next Saturday,
and be my own again, and kiss me as you used to? ... I hope for you so much,
and feel so eager for you, feel that now I must have you – that the expectation
once more to see your face again, makes me feel hot and feverish, and my heart
beats so fast - …
…
Why, Susie, it seems to me as if my absent Lover was coming home so
soon. (215-16, no. 96)
In Open Me Carefully:
Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson, Ellen
Louise Hart, and Martha Nell Smith present ample proof that Susan Dickinson was
indeed the very core of the writer’s enthusiastic and imaginative life. Smith
and Hart presume in this collection that the connection between Emily and Susan
transcends the adolescent crush, which was typical at that time:
As this
correspondence shows... Emily and Susan's relationship surpasses in-depth,
passion, and continuity the stereotype of the “intimate exchange” between women
friends of the period. The ardour of Dickinson’s late teens and early twenties
matured and deepened over the decades, and the romantic and erotic expression
from Emily to Susan continued until Dickinson’s death in May 1886. (xiv)
Another critic
Lillian Faderman in his anthology Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the
Seventeenth Century to the Present, incorporates extracts from the
letters Dickinson wrote to Susan and to Kate Anthon, another lady to whom she
had an enthusiastic connection, and a dozen love-lyrics that could be
deciphered as homoerotic in disposition. Again, Paula Bennett’s treatise shows
even a more significantly provocative proposition. In poems like “I had been
hungry, all the years” (poem 76) and “In winter, in my Room” (1670), Bennett
contends Dickinson’s portrayal of male sexuality reveals her to be terrified,
awed and finally, repulsed by it. Paradoxically, Dickinson’s lyrics identifying
with female sexuality couldn’t be more frank, prolific and energetic. The
examples Bennett uses to represent Dickinson’s responsiveness to female
sexuality incorporates “Wild Nights - Wild Nights” (poem 269); “Come slowly -
Eden!” (Poem 205); “I tend my flowers for thee” (poem 339).
Therefore, by shifting our
understanding of Dickinson by setting her on the uninterrupted succession of
lesbian existence, we can begin to appreciate her resourcefulness in opposing
the compulsory subservience of women under heterosexism and understand the
wellspring of her productive and distinct innovativeness. This paper proposes the
gender perspective and lesbianism in the selected poems of Emily Dickinson.
In the age of nine, Dickinson
entered Amherst Academy, which was established to furnish religion
instructions. Furthermore, it is in this school that Dickinson got open doors
for building new kinships. Dickinson, in a newsy letter about the school, wrote
that there are some most charming young women in school and she ought not to
call them anything but ‘women’, as for her, women they are in every sense of
the word. These words reveal Dickinson's pride in her companions as well as a
proto-feminist emphasis on addressing them as “women”. Some of her most loved
young women were Helin Fiske, Abiah Root, and Helen Hunt.
By a careful reading of Dickinson's
poems, one can understand her perspective on women suppression through marriage
in this patriarchal society and the reason for keeping herself aloof from
committing to marriage. Simone de Beauvoir’s famous saying that ‘one is not
born but rather becomes a woman’ is actually appropriate for Dickinson’s poetry
and mirrors her approach in dealing with issues like sex and marriage. And such
an approach helps in understanding how nineteenth-century American male-centred
ideology and culture oppressed women, and also the socio-sexual discrimination
endured by women through marriage. Women at that time, valued as an instrument
of childbirth and her duty in marriage is to provide men with sexual pleasure
and to take care of his household. However, Dickinson's perspective on sex and
marriage is greatly affected by her mother Emily Norcross, who according to
Dickinson was a battered lady and whose will had been subjugated by her
husband’s constant authority and admonishment, giving her to “perpetual
invalidism”. The relation between her father and mother was one of Victorian
male dictatorship and female subjugation, which was typical at that time.
Marriage according to Dickinson is the death of a woman’s individualism and her
desires, as she forfeits her life and longings to her husband, home and to the
patriarchy at large. She was very much delicate to the subordinate status of a
woman after marriage and investigated her social defencelessness and
deficiency. Dickinson observed the social structure very minutely which is
based on sexual hierarchy where a woman has a compliant existence under her
husband’s domination. In her writing, she also expresses
gender-discrimination and the oppression of women in this male-centric society.
Therefore, Dickinson's keen analysis of the compromised freedom of a woman as a
wife shows why she herself decided to be “The wife - without the sign!” (2) and
“without the swoon” (6) as she declares in her poem “Title Devine - is mine!” (Poem
1072).
Like many other poems of Dickinson,
the poem “Title Devine - is mine” is a kind of protest against the social
gender-discriminatory treatment of a woman where she is treated as a type
rather than an individual. Dickinson condemns the contemporary existing
male-centric culture and system in which women are oppressed under male
domination in marriage. Dickinson invalidates such male-driven thought of
marriage as inappropriate and anti-progressive and demonstrates the ignoble
position that women hold in the male-dominated society. In this poem, “Title Devine
- is mine” Dickinson expresses her personal choice of being spiritually married
to poetry rather than to any male which will destroy her autonomy. By
spiritually marrying poetry she could be able to maintain her sovereignty and
safeguard her integrity, instead of being subjugated in a conventional marriage
to a domineering man. In the poem, the narrator is apparently a newly married
who shows up very much exhilarated for all the accolades and titles the
marriage has showered upon her: “Title Devine - is mine! / The wife - without
the sign!” (1-2). However, the initial segment of the poem ends with a gloomy
account of ‘cavalry’ which reminds us of the place where Jesus Christ was
crucified: “Empress of Cavalry” (4) -- indicating that a woman who has chosen
to become spiritually wedded to poetry faces extreme hardship and struggle like
Christ in Cavalry in a symbolic level.
In the early nineteenth century, for
a woman it was allowable to work as a nurse, teacher or governess but not as a
scholarly woman, specially, whose composition was so elliptical and intricate.
But “Belle of Amherst” set out to carry on with her life as per her own rules
and not by any typical norms and standards. Perpetually questioning and lastly
deserting any hope of a conceivably eternal association with a personal God, it
is not astounding that Emily Dickinson endowed her attention in mundane, human
connections. She had numerous crushes, but never married and exhibited
exceptionally abnormal conduct of her time. Dickinson's view about marriage in
the male-centric society and her own struggle for individualism and autonomy
often conflicted with her profound want for real, consequential communion with
others, and these clashed desires particularly affected her associations with
the male. Wanting to be regarded an equivalent, but additionally aching to be
acknowledged, Dickinson always stood up for herself above the opinions and
judgments of her male companions. The profound and significant intimacy that
Dickinson got from her female friends was an extraordinary and essential part
of her enthusiastic life. From the works of certain commentators like Lillian
Faderman, it has turned out to be quite extensively recognized that Emily
Dickinson had a strong and significant connection to women in her life. Yet
there still exist inconceivably the individuals who read Emily Dickinson
regarding the spinster-in-white identity, built by early critics. Secondly, the
individuals who do recognize her as a lesbian. Lesbianism, as described by Adrienne
Rich, is “a sense of desiring oneself; above all, of choosing oneself... a
primary intensity between women, an intensity which in the world at large was
trivialized, caricatured or invested with evil.” (69)
Some feminist critics scrutinise
Dickinson’s writings through her relationship with females, while likewise
thinking about the verse’s homo-erotic components. The thought and elucidation
of Dickinson as lesbian have continued to develop since Patterson first
hypothesized this interpretation in 1951. Presumably, Dickinson wrote more than
1800 poetry that we have and of which more than half were addressed to a lady.
The most important friend in Dickinson's life was a woman, namely Susan
Huntington Gilbert, who, according to some critics like John Cody, Ellen Louise
Hart, Martha Nell Smith, Paula Benett, Judith Farr and Lillian Faderman, was
one of the most significant and focal, if not only, sexual relationship in the
poet’s life. She was the beneficiary of more of Dickinson’s poems and letters
than any other correspondent. Some poems are so evident as to utilize her name,
such as, “To own a Susan of my own” (poem 1401); the ‘Dollie’ lyrics are
nevertheless a pseudonymous step influence. Other love lyrics like “One Sister
have I in our house” (poem 14) depends on topographical and anecdotal data for
their association with a specific lady.
In the poem “To own a Susan of my
own” she bluntly declares that she desires to have Susan as ‘her own’, not
belonging to any male. In the third line the poet infers the idea that people
believed that a male and female were bound to be together: “as the Lord
intended” (3) -- what she basically saying here is that she couldn’t care if
she relinquishes her entitlement to the domain of morality or might be even to
the domain of Paradise, God’s acceptance or adoration. The relationship with
Susan gives Dickinson the ecstatic ‘Bliss’ for which she is willing to
‘forfeit’ other ‘Realm’, maybe even a place in the almighty's kingdom. This
lyric shows how, for Dickinson, it is justified and worthy of betraying the
Almighty only if she is allowed to have the ecstatic joy of being with her Sue.
In another poem “One Sister have I in
our house”, Dickinson recognises that as indicated by biological or natural
standards, she has one sister, Lavinia -- the “only one recorded” (3). However,
this poetry demonstrates that the moves one makes and not the qualities in
one’s blood, define genuine sisterhood. Regardless of Sue’s disparities, she
turned out to be immovably appended to the poet's heart. Sue’s solicitude,
companionship, understanding, and love, rise above mere biology, causing her to
have a place with Dickinson as a sister as Lavinia or even more than that. But
at the same time, the analogy of Susan with a star in the sky is romantic and
sentimental: “I chose this single star - / From out the wide night's numbers -
/ Sue - forevermore!” (25-27) -- while Dickinson by all accounts playing the
role of Astrophel to her Stella, which, as per the feminist critics, is a
conspicuous reference to an erotic relationship between these two women.
By a close scrutiny of Dickinson’s
love-lyrics and letters, many critics, feminists in particular, convincingly
argued that Dickinson was in love with Susan from the time when both women were
in their early twenties, in 1950s. Dickinson’s verse is broadly elusive and
unique, her meaning is seldom so strict as to include an immediate encounter
with the sensual world. Nevertheless, various poetry has seen to pass on a
solid component of same-sex longing. Like in the poem “Her breast is fit
pearls”, the poet takes us to three parts of her darling: breast, brows, and
heart – giving us the hint of her enthusiastic but disturbed relation with her
once best friend and afterwards sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson. According to
the poet, her darling deserves pearls yet the writer is not able to acquire
them. A diver must dive into the ocean; a hidden sexual picture that alludes to
the issue of same-sex love. Divers should likewise be fearless, expert and
physically fit. But the poet would presumably be ineffective regardless of
whether she attempted or not. Plunging for pearls isn’t her quality. Secondly,
the image of brows which signifies the character, will, and knowledge. The
cherished is worthy of being a ruler, to have squires, to be managed the
tribute due to a ruler. But, in any case the poet is unassuming and modest,a
typical individual, not part of the respectability, and in this manner without
a peak or ensign. Thus, accepting her own deficiencies, that she is unfit to
add to her beloved’s magnificence or her majestic nature, so at that point the
poet swings to what she can grant. And to do so she turns to the heart, the
seat of adoration and warmth. Here the writer is only an unassuming “Sparrow”
who can make a “sweet” and lasting nest: “Sweet of twigs and twine / My
perennial nest” (7-8). Though it is an extremely female endeavour, yet a lot
hearty, eminent and more profound than offering pearls or a courtier’s devotion.
The poet has no peak not just on the grounds that she isn’t a ruler or woman
but since she is a basic sparrow as opposed to a fancier winged flying
creature.
In another Dickinson’s immensely
erotic poetry “Wild Nights - Wild Nights” (poem 269), the woman’s oppressed
female sexuality enthusiastically pines to encounter the rapture of sexual
satisfaction with her beloved. The poem talks about the strong enthusiasm,
hidden desires and innermost feelings of the speaker. She states that the nights
she fancies to spend with her beloved are going to be her actual opulence. The
poet here compares wild nights of love and passion for being on an ocean during
a wild tempest. Here Dickinson explicitly expresses her sensual longings for a
woman or rather for her Sue. In the opening stanza of the poem, a tempest seems
to be raging, the oceans in a ferment from the breezes. If the speaker were
with her darling, there would be stormy nights of their own creation, conceived
of enthusiastic indulgence: “were I with thee / Wild Nights should be / our
luxury!” (2-4) -- the word ‘luxury’ in Emily Dickinson’s time meant sensual
delight. In the next stanza, the poet states that the breezes can’t avail
against “a Heart in port” (6), means a beloved can transcend life’s beatings,
provided the steadiness given by love and affection. In the last stanza, the
poet gave the reference of Eden, the biblical garden, where Adam and Eve lived.
Here the speaker is in a boat, rowing over an envisioned ocean. Rowing is no
doubt a sensual activity, a rhythmical development that may have understood as
sexual. Furthermore, the ocean can be understood to mean the emotion or
enthusiasm. In the last two lines of this stanza, the speaker uses words like
‘tonight’ which refers to the immediacy and ‘might I’ which indicates the
wishful thinking. The speaker is energetically anticipating this time when love
and satisfaction will be accomplished when the body and the soul will be one --
attained through mundane intimacy and bonding.
Dickinson delighted in a
long relationship with Susan both before and after they became sisters-in-law.
However, the relationship cooled altogether after Susan's marriage to her
brother Austin as some critics like Cody, Pollak and Faderman contended. But in
contrast, critics like Far, Bennett, Smith and Hart argued that the intimacy
between these two women was cherished until Emily’s death in 1886, although
occasionally they can’t help contradicting with the idea of defining the
relationship as ‘lesbian’, as at that time the idea of ‘romantic friendship’
between women was socially accepted and sanctioned which caused even
contemporary critics to excuse the possibility of conscious physical intimacy
or eroticism between two women of Dickinson’s epoch. Susan never lost her place
of focal significance in Dickinson’s life and graceful manifestations. Almost
as well recorded as her affection and desire for Sue, is Emily Dickinson’s
feeling of betrayal and loss at Susan’s wedding to her brother Austin. Many of
her poems hint at this feeling of loss and heart-breaking. In the poem “Had I
known that the first was the last” Dickinson expresses sexual rapture
expressively. The cup and the lip comprise an analogy for the connection
between the sexual subject and the object of want: “Cup, it was your fault/lip
was not the liar” (5-6). It is difficult to dissect the experience or assign
blame when the relation shatters. This lyric depicts not only lament, yet in
addition, recommends frailty in light of the fact that the object of her
aspiration or desire has been carried away by someone else.
The loss of her most
dear one was so intense for her and she felt so deprived that Dickinson began
to transform her deprivation into innovation. Perhaps, poem 640, “I cannot live
with you” is the most firmly tied to Susan. It expresses a deliberate
determination to relinquish something desired. Often considered as Dickinson's
one of the best love lyric, this poem expresses the despair of Dickinson after
her beloved Susan united with Austin, Emily Dickinson’s brother. All through
the poem, the speaker breaks the literary tradition of love. The nullification
of the first line undermines the conventional love entirely. As per the
traditional notion of love, one would live with her beloved, die with him and
would pursue him to heaven or to hell. But the writer is declaring the opposite
here that she can’t live with her darling. Besides, the speaker additionally
expresses that she cannot die with her beloved as well because death is a
private act and for the gaze of “the other” intrudes: “To shut the Other’s Gaze
down – /You – could not –” (15-16). Hereby the “other” Emily is referring to
the apparent rival who must be her own brother Austin, with whom her beloved
Susan got united.
Dickinson in this poem
unequivocally utilizes and puts emphasis on the word “life” since it is
brimming with rules and complexities that shield us from communicating our
inventiveness and freedom. She loved Susan so beyond a reasonable doubt and
passionately that it even surpasses her love for Jesus, which might make the
Almighty angry and they got separated. Dickinson manifests that if they wanted
to be together in life, they would need to give up their passion of love which
would invalidate the purpose of life. However, two young people of similar sex
living together would have been nearly unheard of and would have brought
disgrace upon the family. In Dickinson’s time, the term ‘lesbian’ didn’t exist.
Furthermore, society thinks of the heterosexuality as the only normative
sexuality while marginalizing and dismissing various other choices of sexual
longings and practices, which are thrown outside the frontier of normality or
sanity. Homosexual individuals were treated as aliens around then. However, it
is not evident that whether the poet is disallowed from loving and continuing
the intimate relationship by external conditions (for instance, Susan’s wedding
to Austin) or whether she herself chooses the detachment which the restrictive
state of mind “It would be life” (2) indicates. Whatever be the case, despite
the fact that the writer gives up something desired, she left with misery that
is very much significant.
In
transfiguring the deprivation of her beloved into poetry, Dickinson skillfully
destabilizes the social norms that depreciate and strives to hinder her
longings. The poet defiantly indicates that in spite of the fact that her
amorous pursuits might be halted, yet, the vitality that offered ascend to them
persists. Even if she fails to have sexual pleasure with a woman, she can
engrave her erotic desires in her verse. The poem “I would not paint - a
picture –” projects the delight of encountering art in sensual terms. She
encodes in the indisputably exotic language (‘delicious’, ‘sweet’ and
‘sumptuous’) and figures, the phases of delight: “Enamored - impotent –
content” (19). Dickinson’s emphasis on being both the maker and the
beneficiary of enjoyment has a striking erotic indication of self-produced
euphoria - masturbation, that is concerned with play and not with ejaculation.
It is not necessary to mention that the sensuality is not orgasmic, as the poem
closes with a splendid image that conflates the sensual with the literary. One
of Dickinson’s extraordinary blessings as an artist is her potential to depict
abstract ideas with concrete images. In many of Dickinson’s poems, conceptual
thoughts and material things are combined together to elucidate one another.
This poem is no exception. The use of the word “Bolts” supplicates lightning
bolts and constructional bolts, an image that aptly depicts the robustness of
her poetry. The sensual perusing of this poem can be grounded in Dickinson’s
utilization of the concrete image of fingers. A huge number of Dickinson’s
codes are derived from customary signs - characteristic symbolism, specifically
flowers, water and honey bees; images of wealth, gold and jewels. Of course,
these symbols allude to female sexuality, even in heterosexual poetry.
Dickinson’s creativity lies in her unique use of figures, like fingers, which
is at once so quotidian as to be conventional and ideal for connecting poetry
and sexuality. Fingers, apparatus of the artist and implements of the lover,
particularly lesbian, are responsible for the “rare - celestial – stir” (6)
that “Evokes so sweet a Torment” (7) - literary as well as sexual.
But
this doesn’t necessarily mean that Dickinson didn’t love men; her love lyrics
to men are very much discussed and even controversial. After all, she composed
those enthusiastic “Master letters” to an obscure male recipient, so she
probably been bisexual as some critic claims. She had many male mentors
throughout her life: Benjamin Franklin Newton, Samuel Bowels, Reverend Charles
Wadsworth, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Among them, Higginson had the
greatest influence on Dickinson. Although there is much proof that she was
enamored with men on certain occasions, there is an equivalent amount of, if
not more, evidence that she indeed was a bisexual person. In fact, her lesbian
poems are more complex and passionate and have obvious references to
homo-erotic elements. This paper tries to explore this complex lesbianism in
the selected poems of Dickinson, though there are many other poems in which the
same issues can be evident, for example, “Within my reach” (poem 90) , “My
nosegays are for Captives” (poem 95) , “They put us apart” (poem 474) , “Her
sweet Weight on my Heart a Night” (poem 518) , “Now I knew I lost her” (poem
1219) , “Frigid and sweet Her parting face –” (poem 1318) , “To see her
picture” (poem 1568). But there are some critics who reject the term “lesbian”
as they believe that female friendship in Dickinson’s era was somehow
passionate but absolutely free from any sexual connection. But from the obvious
erotic references in Dickinson's poems and her explicit declaration of her
desire to indulge in sexual pleasure with a woman, such ideas can easily be
defended. Therefore, in spite of being a reserved person, the personal life of
Dickinson has a quite clear reflection in her poetry; her calm, yet furious
lifestyle brought to life some of the most splendid poems in existence, that
makes her position as a poet unique and laudable.
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