Emily Dickinson Essay

Subjected to the patriarchal conditions of her 18th Century American community, Emily Dickinson often implicitly challenged normative conceptions of women through both her poetic brilliance, and the candid voice that she employs within her poems. While describing the effects of friendship in her poem “The Soul selects her own Society,–” Dickinson implicitly confronts the conventional, gendered, perception of women, a sentiment also evident in her poems “I started early–Took my Dog,” and “They shut me up in Prose.” Before tactfully criticizing them, Dickinson alludes to the elements of her culture that had perpetuated the subordination of women.
Indicative of her tacit agenda to challenge the normative conception of women, Dickinson conveys the soul as a powerful, selective, female figure.
To refute the notion that women are subordinate to men, Dickinson depicts a feminine soul who “selects her own Society,” and who consequently “shuts the door–/To her divine Majority” (1, 2-3). By posing the the soul as a powerful female who is capable of selecting her own company and excluding anyone else, Dickinson cleverly rejects the notion that women are subordinate to men, as she feminizes the most important facet of autonomy. Forcing the reader to notice the feminine soul’s power, Dickinson employs alliteration, repeating words beginning with “s,” in order to enhance her message that women are autonomous, as the feminine soul “selects her own Society” (1). That Dickinson portrays the feminine soul as capable of selecting its own company and excluding others also complements the idea that this imperative female construction is not only autonomous, but it is essential to the formation of relationships for anyone, thereby denoting its universal importance.
Augmenting its importance, Dickinson portrays the feminine soul as agentive throughout the poem. By constantly posing it as the subject of present tense, active, verbs, Dickinson conveys the autonomy and power of the feminine soul, while posing the other figures as passive, and often objects of the verb. For example, the poem states, “Unmoved– she notes the Chariots– Pausing at her low gate,” thus placing the female soul as the subject, and the chariots as the object of the clause (5-6). That the female soul is the subject and the chariots are the objects indicates the degree of the former’s power, as the soul not only acts upon the chariots, but it also dismisses them, therefore denoting the overall importance of the soul itself. To complement the soul’s agency, Dickinson also repeats the word “unmoved” when considering the female figure relative to the other objects. By stating that the soul is neither deterred nor shaken by the presence of the other objects, Dickinson elevates the female figure above the hegemonic masculine figures. This is especially evident within Dickinson’s contention that the soul remained unmoved regardless of the presence of an emperor (10).
That the soul is superior to the other entities within the poem is evident through both Dickinson’s imposition of a hierarchy, and the consequent submission of the other objects to the female soul itself.
Denoting the superior status of the feminine soul, Dickinson writes, “Unmoved – an Emperor be kneeling/Upon her Mat –” (10-11). Within this quote, Dickinson conveys the emperor, a conventionally masculine, hegemonic, figure, as subordinate to the feminine soul, who considers the emperor himself dismissively. That the emperor kneels to the apathetic, unmoved, female soul reflects the Dickinson’s implicit intention to challenge the patriarchal hierarchy that she faces, as she poses this paradigm for male dominance as submissive to her empowered female figure. To emphasize the submissiveness of the emperor, Dickinson employs the passive voice, stating that “an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat” (10-11). By altering the syntax of the previous clause, Dickinson enhances the distinction between the empowered female soul and the submissive, typically despotic, emperor, thereby depicting the emperor as passive himself. This distinction between passivity and activity also complements
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