Gender Roles In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

Literature
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol. B. New
York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Within Emily Dickinson’s poems, she faces a few of the same themes. The themes presented range from religion, women roles, and a dark twist of life after death. Dickinson stayed within the walls of her parents’ home for her life so her poems were based off the ideas of how she perceived the world around her. The poems I want to focus on within the bibliography are women roles and the culture during her writings. Questions I have within Dickinson’s writing include, how might cultural expectations of women be reflected in her poetry? What are the connections between her religious views and the events in the
In the nineteenth century, women had a “choice” of either succumbing to the feminine submission or silently be against it while still performing in the role. Dickinson found a way within her writing to not present herself as a feminine voice. One quote of the article I thoroughly enjoyed was Dickinson writing suggests “the strengths of major women writers lies in the ability of each to create her own, unique, literary type of feminine rhetoric”. Also within the article it is brought up that Dickinson shows her modernity by not accepting what society said she was to be. This writing will help with her reflection of women in her poetry and how she used her own way to basically “stick it to the man”. This also connects with the “Dickinson against the sublime” due to how she will offer an answer to the
It outlines the basic guidelines needed to be a successful wife in the 1800’s. The information is written in a way that comes off as satire but it is indeed factual to the time period. Being a successful wife in the nineteenth-century involves a heavy belief in Christianity, not speaking when spoken to, raising children in the home, and cooking dinner for your husband. The piece also provides a breakdown on how magazines were used to women to provide knowledge on how to become said “true woman”. Using this piece of information, it will help me wrap the idea of how Dickinson is presenting women through her poetry as well as her perception on religion. Dickinson had a huge up and down with religion so for either man or woman in this time period, that was incredibly frowned upon. It even goes into detail within women needed to keep their roots to faith even when men cannot do