Love and Emily Dickinson Essay example -- Biography Biographies Essays

Love and Emily Dickinson I am going out on the doorstep, to get you some new—green grass—I 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 while—and perhaps they heard what we said, but they can't tell! – Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert Dickinson (L 85, 1852) Seventy-five years after the 1890s publication of the premier volumes of Emily Dickinson's poetry, critics still squabble about the poet's possibly lesbian relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Indeed, the specifics of Dickinson's relationship to Susan are ambiguous at best. All of the critical attention that her mysterious sexuality receives reflects our culture's urge to sectionalize great literary icons into our own personal niches, thereby absorbing them as our â€Å"group's† own voice. The poet, not the poetry, assumes the center of the discussion. The critics, whether arguing for or against a lesbian interpretation of the famed couple, are like two disgruntled neighbors arguing over a tree known for its particularly incendiary wood. They no longer focus on this evergreen's 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 tr uth about the pair's physical relationship; the evidence is too ethereal to assume a definable substance. And, in part, this predictable public response motivated Susan Gilbert's reluctance to release Dickinson's poems and letters after the poet's death. Emily Dickinson's 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 Dickinson's eloquent, overwhelming, consuming desire for a true companion is expressed as intensely in her words as it is felt in our souls. Works Cited Hart, Ellen Louise. â€Å"The Encoding of Homoerotic Desire: Emily Dickinson's Letters and Poems to Susan Dickinson, 1850-1886.† Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 9 (1990): 251-72. Koski, Lena. â€Å"Sexual Metaphors in Emily Dickinson's 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. â€Å"The Belle of the Belle of Amherst.† Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review 3.1 (1996): 25-27. â€Å"Susan and Emily Dickinson: Their Lives, in Letters.† The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 51-73.