alienation -...

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ALIENATION

The universal phenomenon of isolation in nature or man can

create or destroy be all-Powerful or reserved, bringing out the best

works of art in man or his most ambitious projects that come to

nothingness. The sense of isolation occurs in various forms –

personal, religious, social, intellectual, emotional, linguistic and so on

Dickinson, who lived and wrote in the mid-decades of the nineteenth

century, experienced this sense of alienation so totally. In her creative

writings, an all-pervading sense of loneliness is prominent.

The sense of isolation present in the works of Dickinson

differs dramatically in its subjects and in its creed. Dickinson dealt

with the universal themes of Love, Life, Death and Immortality. Her

deep probing of these mysteries can only occur through her self-

inflicted isolation. She gave no creed but only the joy of living life

one day at a time. She had learned this through her many personal

crisis that left her faint and exhausted at the age of fifty-six, in

1886, the year of her passing away.

Dickinson’s alienation from society was internal. Neither form

of isolation can be said to be fixed nor was it melancholy.

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Dickinson rejected society because she could not conform. She was

unwilling to compromise. Sewing Societies and Dimity Conventions

bored her. The usual camaraderie of society like Commencements and

Thanksgivings and social calls did not suit her analytical turn of

mind that probed to see into the life of things. Her letters mentioned

incidents where she exhibits a growing reluctance to attend church

services, being conscious of herself. She once watched the arrival of

the first train to Amherst, hiding behind a bush. I sat in Professor

Tyler's woods and saw the train move off, and then came home

again for fear somebody would see me or ask me how I did

( Dickinson, Letter- 30 ).

Dickinson’s concept of Death was more complex and personal.

It was an obsession all her life. She was curious about her friends'

last moments and was almost in love with Death. She tried to ravel

and unravel its mysteries all through her life.

When Dickinson was born in 1830, Amherst, Massachusetts,

New England, Puritanism had dominated New England society for

more than a century, Liberalism had again blown its way into

Amherst and the material and worldly aspects of living had already

reached its climax. The Amherst College had already been founded

which advocated the stern aspects of Puritanism in its own was


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although liberal enlightenment entered through its other door, a trend

unavoidable in any educational institution.

Speaking of Edward Dickinson, Emily considered him a man

who read lonely and rigorous books on Sundays. He was a staunch

puritan and a stem politician. Her mother was beautiful and a woman

of culture and delicate tastes busy with domestic well being.

Dickinson shared a close bond of affection with Austin her brother

and Lavinia, her sister. The members of the family thus developed a

singular sense of independence within themselves. Mr. Dickinson was

away a great deal, being a busy figure in politics and social work.

Austin had a college education whereas the sisters pursued their

studies between intervals, stretching over a period of six or seven

years.

Emily went to the Amherst Academy for a few years of

schooling and spent a year at Mount Holyoke Seminary at South

Hadley for women. That was the only period she was away from

home for any length of time. As early as her twenties, she exhibited

a growing reluctance to leave home and when she reached her

thirties, her withdrawal was almost complete. She kept up her

correspondence with a number of friends with whom she shared


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much, yet too little. She shied away from visitors and remained

obscure till her death in 1886.

The Letters of Dickinson gives us an insight into her

mysterious personality, who distanced herself in a Sybil manner.

There were many letters which have not been preserved by friends,

which were either too private or lost through carelessness and these

mould surely have thrown more light into her sensibility. Her poems,

one thousand and seven hundred and seventy five of them, her one

prolonged letter to the world and posterity speak to all about the

deepest mysteries of life, death and immortality. She dedicated her

life of extreme individualism to produce a body of work that would

unravel some of the deepest mysteries of life and of the individual

mind.

The life of Dickinson was over-shadowed by a sense of

alienation as seen in her letters and writings. Inspite of her culture

she was isolated socially, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.

Hence the objectives of the study will be to further probe into this

aspect of isolation in her life and thought which found expression in

her poetry. This will provide the student of Dickinson a better

understanding of her personality, life and work. Dickinson whose

thousand and seven hundred poems are a long letter to the world,


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remained obscure during her lifetime. But posthumous fame held up

her poems to the world and the knowledge of this universal

spokeswoman in poetry is steadily on the rise, winning readers

outside America as the decades move on. If this somber factor of

isolation which haunted this poet and produced a vast chaos of

poems dealing with deep-rooted theme of life, death and immortality

is dealt within detail, it is sure to produce one more sympathetic ear

and eye to this mysterious New England poet, who lived her life as

she breathed in silence.

Dickinson shared a deep and intense affection for her father.

Edward Dickinson influenced Emily's poetic career in two different

ways. The love towards her father was at once possessive and

humorous, yet the affection was always felt. Edward Dickinson's

effect upon his daughter and vice versa are portrayed in the

following lines I am sure you must have remembered that father had

become as little children, or you would never have dared send him a

Christmas gift, for you know how he frowned upon Santa claus, and

all such prowling gentlemen ( Dickinson, Letter-39 ). The below given

poem – Did we disobey Him is an example for this from the

– Did we disobey Him / …………... / Oh, wouldn't you? – (1-8).


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Edward is often the subject of mockery in Emily's poems. She

laughs at his idiosyncrasies with good-natured venom and pathos.

George Whicher argues that the cardinal nature of Edward and Emily

Dickinson is one : To Emily Dickinson her father was a cardinal

fact.................. His Gods were her Gods: his granite integrity was

hers also........................ But defiance of her father was defiance of

what was deepest in herself, an instinct of rightness that could not

be denied. She could not fail him. So sure and unquestioning was

her response that she could dally with playful indirections, teasing

him, or more often teasing herself, by suggesting possibilities of

waywardness that she might carry If out if she chose - only she did

not choose. ................. If her father's life seemed stark and rigorous

in its sacrificial effort to sustain for a little time the precarious

order of humane living, it was her part to contribute grace and wit,

lightness and diversion................. With the passing of years her

allegiance to him deepened to a profound unspoken tenderness. She

came to understand and respect him as her own soul. .................

( Whicher, 48 ). Dickinson saw in her father Edward Dickinson, a

distant-stately lover – (1).

from the poem God is a Distant-Stately lover just as God is seen in

the poem. In many of her poems God and Edward bear likeness to


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each other. The frugality in the supply of bread by God can be seen

in the poem God gave a loaf to every Bird –

God gave a loaf to every Bird – / But just a Come to me – (1-2)

can be compared with Edward's least demonstrative ways of showing

affection to his children. This Poem We knew not that we were to

live can be inferred even of the unforgiving intrusion of Edward

Dickinson in Emily's life, intruding where he is least needed but

evading where his presence is most required

We knew not that we were to live - / …………………………… /

It is the same with Life – (1-8).

The poem was written after the death of Edward contemplating

his deathless effort upon her and the death she experienced in the

working of her imagination, inspite of the immense distance that had

lain between her poetry and the character of Edward.

Edward Dickinson carried on the legacy left by his father

Samuel Fowler Dickinson, in a more realistic manner. Samuel

Dickinson lost his fortunes and died homeless due to his ardent

charity and service. Edward too held many offices of state, but never

let down his family fortunes. The delineation of his character could

be drawn simply through external evidences. He had to balance with


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his manifold duties as a devoted husband, father, businessman,

professional, politician and leader. He failed as a son, which he

regretted later. In his busy professional life, he missed out on the

many beauties of life. He was too sternly preoccupied to watch his

children grow, though his mind dwelt on their interests several times

a day. He did his share, however meager, in taking his family out

for social occasion’s rides. Brought up as Samuel Fowler's son, in

stern duty and obedience, he allowed no laxity of these virtues in his

life.

In the late puritan New England society of Amherst, art and

literature began to get a prominence over stern puritan idealism of

the previous decades. Edward wrote to his fiancee Emily Norcross,

later Emily's mother of his own disposition thus, I am naturally quiet

and ardent in my feelings, easily excited though not so easily

provoked determined in accomplishing whatever I undertake- hard to

be persuaded that I am wrong when I have once formed my opinion

upon reflection particular ... ( Dickinson, Letter-I9 ). He goes on in

this strain and we get a picture of a man who will not compromise

on quality in maturity, which came early to this upright puritan

gentleman, he became lonely. To Higginson Emily wrote, When think

of my father's lonely life and lonelier death, there is this redress,


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Something unyielding and

Obstinate – rather

Take all away;

The only thing worth larceny

Is left - the Immortality – ( Emily, Letter-20 ) and poem ( Take all

away 1-3 ).

Her father was inclined to reading, literature and writing of

verses. But the spirit of the muses died in him early as he was a

man who maintained his balance on all matters of the heart, mind

and soul. The irony is that he is remembered and is a subject of

discussion now is because his daughter was not like him. She

followed her heart's desire and wrote poetry excluding all other

requirements of life. She remained neuter, except in her poetry.

Edward failed her because he was a well-balanced man who believed

in leading a well-balanced life. He had a vision for his life and he

kept to the straight roads. He had no time or thought for any

deviations. It was good that he did not deviate to pry into Emily's

poetry, for then we would not have got the work of her singular

imagination. Edward would have made remarks and Emily would

have been confused. Her remark, ..................... He never played, and

the straightest engine has its leaning hour, ( Dickinson, Letter-21 ), is


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proof enough of the manner in which this New-England chief

affected his daughter. He affected her closely yet distantly.

Edward Dickinson obliquely became the theme for much of

Emily's verses. He is given an omnipresent quality for Emily cannot

write without the effect of Edward's life upon her. She defined

poetry to Higginson, If I read a book and it makes my whole body

so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel

physically as if the top of my head were taken off, that is poetry.

These are the only ways I know. Is there any other way ( Dickinson,

Letter-21). He affected her sensibility - he affected her nerves. He

made her his dutiful daughter during the day and the poet at night.

Unconscious himself of the electric power he exuded upon his

daughter, he roamed the land in blissful ignorance and leadership.

Emily drew from him the inspiration to write after day is done.

Father and daughter cannot stand each other's presence because a

tired and strained Edward was aware of his daughter's nerve drawing

power. As Higginson exclaimed to his wife how without giving she

drew from one's nerves I am glad not to live near her

( Higginson, 23 ). In her vision of God, master, Preceptor, Lover,

Husband, Edward's presence is inevitable. In repudiating him, she

also was aware of his dominance over her. In the following lines of


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the poem Nature and God - I neither knew Dickinson identifies

Edward with nature

Nature and God. I neither knew, / …………………………….... /

Or Mercury's affair – (1-8).

The poem was sent to Mrs. Samuel Bowles. She was obliquely

referring to her plight. She was telling the truth ever so slantingly.

Edward and God are co-conspirators to outsmart Emily. The Eclipse

which her father addressed every day was his friend and just as she

found her father incomprehensible, his God was also a stranger to

her. But she knew that they know her because they are

acknowledged persons. In her imagination, if Edward came to know

her unconventional attitude towards writing poetry, he would thwart

all her plans and would not even ask her to improve as Higginson

does. Hence she secures her secret away from them to display it

before strangers like Higginson. In running away thus from her own

native front, she experiences isolation. In her teenage years, when she

wrote to Abiah, she personifies nature's various phases. Jack Frost,

Old Father Time, Old winter, Old King Frost, Father Mortality are

indications of her preference for Edward to Emily Norcross, her

mother. She wanted his laurel to proceed. When denied such

blessings from him and consequent preceptors, she retired to work


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for a future audience when she would be lost in the sod. Her early

insecurities and reservations are expressed - Father wishes to have

me at home a year, and then he will probably send me away again,

where I how not.. .... ( Dickinson, letter-42 ). These lines are one of

supplication, possibly even to Edward in the poem Sang from the

Heart, Sire

Sang from the Heart, Sire, / …………. / Hallowed name – (1-16).

Emily's verse that pours out her heart and senses is

concentrated with life's blood if the verse is not saved Death can

ensue. Edward is requested to pause in his routine Liturgies and

hymns, to listen to his daughter's song of agony and life.

Emily Norcross, the mother of Emily respectively, was quiet,

placid and meek woman. Emily Norcross Dickinson did not directly

affect Emily's poetic career. But it can be said that Emily's rebellious

poetry voicing a woman's indignation must have sprung from

observing the quiet, submissive nature of her mother. Her rejection of

her corporeal self is shown in the poem Me from Myself – To

banish –

Me from Myself – To banish – / I Had I art – (1-2).


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her pitiful in lamenting of deprivation of food is shown in the poem

God gave a Loaf to every Bird

God gave a Loaf to every Bird –

But just a Crumb – to – Me – (1-2).

and also in the poem It would have starved a Gnat

It would have starved a Gnat- / To live so small as I – (1-2).

Which pictures a paradoxically seeing and unseeing mother when for

the last ten years of her life she was an invalid, her daughter-poet

religiously took care of Mrs. Dickinson. The regular attendance upon

her mother mellowed the daughter's heart, for when she did Emily

was past the age of fifty. This poem Her Losses make our Gains

ashamed - was written after the death of Mrs. Dickinson is filled

with Pathos and wisdom that came to Emily in the maturity of her

genius.

Her Losses make our Gains ashamed - / ………………………… /

It only sweeter grows – (1-8).

In death, Emily paid a fitting tribute to her mother in the

poem To the bright east she flies in which she was unwilling to part

with


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To the bright east she flies, / …… / Homeless at home – (1-12).

Without ever directly influencing Emily's poetic career, strictly

adhering to the puritan aspects of child rearing which involved the

inculcation of strong piety and strict obedience in children, Mrs.

Dickinson influenced Emily's poetry in a different way. Emily's whole

body of poetry came into existence because she rejected the persona

of a submissive wife and a self-effacing mother, which she found

ample in her mother's character. Cynthia Chaliff, in her article

Dickinson As the Deprived Child draws on the food imageries found

in a number of poems ( Poems 538, 874, 612, 637, 579 ) adding,

Emily Dickinson's autobiographical poetry reminds us that the

materially comfortable child can be more deprived than the

economically disadvantaged child, and that the most serious

deprivation is not material but emotional. Dickinson’s sense of being

unloved can be traced to her childhood relationship with her parents

the seminal relationship that becomes prototypical for future

relationships. The recurrent equation of food, and occasionally

warmth, with love that we shall see in her poetry links, Dickinson’s

sense of deprivation with the early exclusive relationship that exists

between a mother and child, the ideal relationship to the poet. Emily


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Dickinson shared a close bond of friendship and understanding with

her only sister Lavinia.

Dickinson the younger sister of the poet took the burden of

daily living upon herself which left the elder sister ample time to

listen intently to her inner voice and feel acutely the pangs of nature

and life around her to express beautifully words like Spring is a

happiness so beautiful, so unique, so unexpected that I don’t what to

do with my heart. I dare not take it, I dare not leave it - what do

you advise ( Dickison, 1 ). Vinnie was not a literary companion to

Emily, but was her support and protection from the outside world.

Though Vinnie did not share her sister's poetic leanings, it was her

untiring effort after Emily's death that brought the poems to the

world. Lavinia became aware of the vast conglomeration of poetic

pattern that her sister has woven only after her death. In another

instance Vinnie's truth seems remarkable that the Dickinson family

lived like friendly and absolute monarchs, each in their own domain.

Thus Vinnie prevailed for Emily in life and in death. In Emily's

latter day life, Vinnie made Emily's supernatural appear natural and

the unfamiliar seem familiar.

To Emily's flights of fancy, she was there to provide a

resting-place on firm the solid ground, when the bird of imagination


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returns. There was little place for Vinnie in Emily's poetry. When

she ( Vinnie ) sighs in earnest, Emily’s throne will tremble, and she

will need, both L …… and F ……, but Vinnie still prevails.

Perhaps, in the few hours spent daily in her poetic workshop, Emily

would have preferred to keep Vinnie out of her inner world. She

might have feared that the thought of her practical and protective

sister-guardian might bring her thoughts to dwell on her most hated

subject - households. Perhaps the only poem where Lavinia is

mentioned, she is given only a passing reference beside her sister-in-

law Susan Dickinson, about whose virtues the poet extols in the lines

from the poem One sister have I in our house,

One sister have I in our house, / ………………………………… /

And wore my last year’s gown - / …………………… / – (1-14).

This early poem goes on to explain the importance of Susan

in the life of Emily. She ( Vinnie ) kept track of them, ( family ),

surely but she was more than the family watchdog or drudge, as

Emily’s closest associate for more than 50 years, she became

indispensable to her in many ways, if not in the same way as Austin

was. As a personality she was indispensable to the family's solidarity.

And in one final way she was indispensable to posterity. Her

complete belief in Emily during her life was transferred to the poem


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after Emily died without that belief which approached fanaticism, we

might never have had them .

Born a Puritan, Emily rejected the asceticism in Puritanism

early in life. She wrote to Abiah on a Sunday evening in 1852, As I

told you, it is Sunday today, so I find myself quite curtailed in the

selection of subjects, being myself quite vain, and naturally adverting

to many worldly things, which would doubtless grieve and distress

you: much more will I be restrained by the fact that such stormy

Sundays I always remain at home, and have not those opportunities

for hoarding up great truths which I would have otherwise.

( Dickinson, Letter-28 ). She remained at home by choice and none

can intervene into her fiercely independent streak of willfulness to do

something. As early as 1860, it is with this same anguish in the

poem I shall know why - when Time is over that she wrote,

I shall know why - when Time is over / ………………………… /

That scalds me now - that scalds me now! – (1-8).

There were many forms of Anguish in her life and it is

uncertain to show how many were explained to her while below.

Certainly she was a pupil who had a load of unexplained anguish to

take home to the far schoolroom of the sky at the time of death,


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when she wrote to her Norcross cousins Little Cousins, – Called

back. She would not have recorded these words, if she had a very

oscillating conception of Salvation. It was a religion of doctrine that

she abhorred and not the religion of faith which was her own. It

was also not a lonesome faith. It is as pleasant as the feeling

expressed in the following lines of the poem Elysium

Elysium is as far as to / ……………… / Felicity or Doom – (1-4).

Emily's withdrawal was from the world of doctrinal religion

and not from the world of friendship which she treasured, as seen in

the letters written to her friends.

A sense of alienation or isolation is visible in the works of

Dickinson. In Emily this sense goes deeper just as her works are

more extent and varied than others. Isolation is inevitable due to

external factors more than internal ones which the reverse in her

works. Personal and religious factors contributed to a large extent,

the feeling of estrangement in the poet from the mainstream of

society. Political, Social and Linguistic factors also scattered its way

into the lives and works of Dickinson. Dickinson's family members

lived like friendly and absolute monarchs as a confederation of

independent states. Living in the Homestead, without social life, she


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still had to conform and be the dutiful daughter of Edward

Dickinson. The complexity and number of her poems were a secret

till her death. To write poetry such as Emily wrote, she had to

withdraw. Her womanly garb hid a mystic's heart. Alienation to

Emily was self-inflicted and a necessary appendage to write her kind

of poetry. Her resentment was established in poem like It's easy to

invent a Life where Edward's false mode of authority is transported

to the creator of the Universe.

It's easy to invent a Life - / …………………………… ………… /

There - leaving out a Man – (1-12).

Here in this poem, Edward's fatherhood is likened to God's

creation of the universe. Both are symbols of authority According to

Emily, creation is spontaneous, being so imperfect, just like Edward

sailing through his college life, marriage, fatherhood and political

leadership in his set pathway. He does not need the murmurs of

those whom he hurts on the way, ( like unheeding Emily's poetry )

just like the perpetuity of Creation itself moves according to God's

Perturbless. Dickinson, though separated by the vast chasm of age,

country, culture, language and faith, she shares many similarities in

her life and works. Dickinson was obsessed with the themes of

Death and Immortality that found ample expression in her poetry.


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Emily toyed continually with the idea of eternity, that her poems are

fall of immortality in various aspects.

It may be defined as a form of Christian worship where the

emphasis is on Biblical readings and based on it, to evoke a pure

form of prayer and adoration. Reading other than the Bible was

strictly prohibited on Sundays. Moreover, it also scrutinizes the

minute details of everyday affairs, prohibiting even the normal and

ordinary pleasures of life. A stoical asceticism was emphasized.

Education was found on a strong religious basis and it was reserved

the first preference in schools and colleges. Emily's nature was alien

to the somber aspects of Puritanism. It was in Mount Holyoke

Seminary she came face to face with the hard teachings of the faith.

In Amherst Academy the teachings of liberal minded leaders like

Professor Edward Hitchcock was easier to concede. Hitchcock,

scientifically combined the beauties of nature and religion to produce

a wholly beautified view of life. Emily was influenced by this master

craftsman as many of her poems reveal the eternal divinity entwined

in nature to produce an immortal verse like this poem Some keep

the sabbath going to Church -

Some keep the sabbath going to Church - / ……………………… /

I'm going all along – (1-12).


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To listen to the local choir's singing is tedious for Emily. She,

like her father is addressing an Eclipse in closed rooms. She is

staying at home and hearing a bobolink's melody. She does not have

to hear the long monotonous sermons of clergymen. Here, God

Himself is the renowned preacher who gives a short, pithy speech

and drives home a point. In such company, with God and Nature as

Emily's companions, it is least surprising that Emily's Life is one

long journey home to her Heaven which she had never stopped

contemplating others by their good works and hardships well-borne

can hope to reach Heaven.

For Emily, she creates her own little Heaven below to make

her journey to the higher home, a pleasanter experience. As early as

eighteen sixty Emily experiences the difference. In the seminary she

had felt the knowledge of the unchanging truth about herself - that

the world holds her affection and love; however in retirement can

she hold forth. The following lines from the poem The Bible is an

antique volume show a turning away from the concrete aspects of

Christianity.

The Bible is an antique volume - / ………………………………… /

it did not condemn – (1-16).


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The poet's condemnation of a sectarian form of worship is

relevant in the poem. It denotes the Bible as an ancient tragi-comedy

with its dramatic-personae. The plight of the lonesome boys are

touching. The comparison with the sermon of Orpheus is a fitting

inference. The poem is supposedly written in 1882 when Emily had

turned fifty-two. In the earlier poems God is an earthly companion

who gently preaches. As old age dawned upon Emily, her spirit is

one of dejection. As the drama of her life is being played out, the

faith of her father’s become a stage-play to her mind. And they are

all boys who are lonesome, a tribute to her dead father whose lonely

life and lonelier death affected her.

Dickinson's relationship with friends can be understood from

the differences that exist in two singular odd statements made, one

by the poet herself and the other by her well-known literary mentor

Thomas Wentworth Higginson. She wrote to Samuel Bowles. My

friends are my estate. Forgive me then the advance to hoard them! (

Dickinson, 34 ) T.W. Higginson wrote home to his wife after his first

encounter with Emily in 1870 that he had never been with anyone

who drained my nerve power so much.... I am glad to live near her

( Higginson, 18 ).


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He mentions further how without ever giving she drew from

him the power of genius or the power of the soul. Both Emily had

in plenty. Higginson's superior ego must have prompted him to say

so. He perfectly voiced the feelings of most of Emily's friends. The

difference that lies between these two statements is the difference

that caused Emily's physical withdrawal from her friends. It is

impossible to assume that Emily's keen mind did not become aware

of Higginson's attitude. Since Emily's relationships with men and

women went deep below the surface level of attending meetings or

exchanging words, it can appear too many that they could not cope

with being near her presence. Emily was unwilling to compromise.

The religious revival in Amherst during her latter teens also caused

estrangement in her friendships. She found herself standing outside

the ring as her close friends began to proclaim themselves for Christ

and change which made her exclaim later, I believe the love of God

may be taught not to seem like bears ( Dickinson, letters-35 ).

Ultimately she lived her life as expressed in the following lines from

I reckon - when I count at all -

I reckon - when I count at all - / ………………………………… /

So I write - Poets – All – (1-8).


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The poet's upholding of the mysteries of Life and its

enjoyment supersedes its doctrines and forms which the puritans

esteemed, at the peril of enjoying the good aspects of life. This is

Emily's world of imagination that found expression in her poetry as

she saw God and the fixed laws of nature so essential to the well

being of the universe enacted in her mind.

The death of Sophia Holland, Leonard Humphrey and

Benjamin Newton in the early years of Emily's life left indelible

marks on her sensibility. She was fourteen when Sophia passed away

and two years later, she still spoke to Abiah of a fixed melancholy

that haunted her after Sophia's passing away.

Higginson said in Emily's funeral speech that she often read

Emily Bronte's poem Last Lines that begin with No Coward Soul Is

Mine to Lavinia and that this poem on Immortality was a favorite of

[her] who has put it on - if she could ever have been said to have

put it off. ( Dickinson, Letter-25 ). Death and Immortality were

Emily's twin identities. She was obsessed with the concept of death

and the truth about Immortality. At first doubts were few as children

do concerning solid matters which were always there when eyes

begin to see and ears hear. During the cat years of her adolescence,

Emily’s array of questions took shape - I have perfect confidence in


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God and His promises, and yet I know not why I feel that the world

holds a predominant place in my affections. ( Dickinson,

Letter-26 ). While working in her father's office for two years, he

helped her with a wide reading and encouraged her writing My dying

Tutor told me that he would like to live till I had been a poet, but

death was much of Mob as I could master-then ( Dickinson,

Letter- 27 ). It is evident that Ben was the only source of

encouragement Emily met with briefly and lost. She had written to

Higginson twenty years later, with warm nostalgia, of Ben Newton.

This friend who taught her Immortality in the morning of her life

lingered with her till the end as all the years after his death,

Immortality occupied the forefront of Emily's thoughts and writings.

Perhaps, Emily's occupation with these two aspects was a faithful

memoir to her hidden poetic career. She never met anyone who

remotely resembled Ben; his death objectively forms the matter in

several poems. For a year after his death, she was struggling to seek

the answer - whether her friend has passed from death to life. She

enquired of it to a certain Reverend Mr. Edward Everett Hale, Ben's

minister at Worcester.

In the spring of 1876, twenty-three years later, Newton was

still fresh in her memory, as she wrote - My earliest fiend wrote me


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the week before he died. If I live, I will go to Amherst - if I die, I

certainly will ( Dickinson, Letter-28 ). Ben kept his promise and

Emily's isolation could be conjectured as a tribute to the earliest

friend who taught her Immortality and wished to see her, a poet. He

remained the solid reality to Emily's world. Poem 5 I have a Bird in

spring is full of initial optimism, written probably after Ben Newton's

death

I have a Bird in spring / …………… / Removed ….. / – (1-24).

Richard Benson Sewall says His death, coming at a time when

the distance between Emily and all her young friends was growing,

cut off her most promising hope for literary guidance and

encouragement. Looking back, she may have seen how serious his

loss was, and our wonder lessens at her hyperbole when she told

Higginson in 1862 that for several years, my Lexicon - was my only

companion ( Dickinson, Letter-29 )

Dickinson’s Civil War is also variously termed as the war

between the houses. Austin Dickinson's personal unhappiness affected

his devoted sister, Emily. Her long-term affection for her old friend

and sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert, waned, as the whole town

of Amherst watched curiously the differences of opinion that loomed


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large in the Dickinson homes. Susan, popularly known as Sue, was

thoroughly disliked by many in Amherst and Austin turned a lonely

and unhappy man except for his daily visit to his two sisters.

Through a very objective and detached view of the works of

the poet, alienation traces a grim line throughout their works will be

faithfully recorded. This sense of loneliness is a result of their

personal and social conditions. The biological aspects loom lay and

overshadow her work. In Dickinson, the poems are the only form of

contact to a larger world. Her immediate and smaller world failed to

hear her except for a few friends. Hiding behind the crass reality of

harsh social and puritan values, she produced her poems in complete

isolation from the world which rejected her creative genius, to speak

to a future audience in her deep, rich and majestic tones amplifying

the meaning of Life, Death and Immortality. To a shocked or

confused audience, the study of the sense of alienation, which was

the poet's life-long companion, will give a better understanding of her

poems. The works of the poets will be looked at from the isolation

point of view, the reason for this feeling of loneliness, its

manifestation in their lives and works, and thereby their

interpretations as will give a better comprehension of the poets in

future.


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The phases in Dickinson’s literary career are less demarcated

than that of the Indian poet. Yet three poetic periods can be roughly

traced in the period before the eighteen sixties, the Great Sixties

period and the Last Decades. The great poetic output of the sixties

can be termed as the Great Harvest. This decade saw Emily's agonies

and ecstasies of love that gave rise to a number of love poems. Her

almost one thousand poems of the decade speak on the themes of

Life, Love, God, Heaven, Fame, Death and Immortality with depth

and feeling the sense of isolation that is present in Dickinson, the

expression of this sense her poetry, the different angles from which

thus is seen, thus this sense of isolation in one is heightened by the

same in the other, is proved in Dickinson’s part in this chapter. Thus

it makes clear that the sense of alienation dominated her life and

works and hence the points of similarity thus make her share in a

common view of life and interpretation of the same.

Moore, as an American poet, has written very wise words on

what constitutes the most powerful and effective way out of the

loneliness by stating: The best cure for loneliness is solitude. Solitude

is the willingness to risk going into the seeming vacuum or abyss

that we unconsciously believe lies beneath the insane merry-go-round

of our ways of living. It is the gentle, deliberate seeking or renewal


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of a relationship with one’s natural self. It is the willingness to

create space and time for the discovery or renewal of a relationship

with a transcendent force or presence in our world. One might say

that we must have the courage, to risk immersing ourselves in

stillness and silence in order to overcome our fear of loneliness.

Without this courage we will perpetually live in the disorienting and

vacuous condition of self-alienation and disconnection, the most

prevalent disease of our modern world.

Concentrating on the works Moore produced during the first

two decades of her long career ( 1915-36 ), John Slatin's closely

documented account of Moore's poetic development affords a radically

new sense of Moore's concerns and of her stature as a poet,

countering the usual image of Moore as a charming eccentric whose

work is unrelated to that of any other poet. Virtually everything

Moore wrote responds in some way to the profound sense of

isolation at the core of her sense of self, sometimes embracing

isolation, more often seeking desperately to overcome it. The young

Moore was fiercely ambitious, stubbornly determined to make a place

for herself within the literary community of her day.

The Savage's Romance describes how she went about doing

that and shoes the consequences of her success. Placing her beside


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Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Wallace

Stevens as one of the major poetic figures of her generation, Slatin

demonstrates that Moore's work is neither as opaque nor as

impervious to the work of other writers as she likes to pretend, and

shoes how her poetic identity emerges from her increasingly complex

efforts to come to terms with the creative power of her

contemporaries. Miller demonstrates that Moore uses isolated

examples and abstract generalization to specify, celebrate, and at the

same time deny the importance of race – as Miller puts it, It is

small wonder, given the tens ion inherent in such a goal, that

Moore's poems about race are often problematic ( Miller, 133 ).

John Slatin in The Savage's Romance discusses Sojourn in the

Whale as an example of Moore's struggle to maintain an

imperviousness that in the end is overwhelmed by common

experience and acknowledgment of her indebtedness to the larger

literary tradition. At this time in her life, Moore is dependent on her

isolation as a form of self-protective identity and so willfully guards

it. Like Ireland, Moore is obtusely still trying to open locked doors

with a sword. However, in not taking into account the alienating

languages in which Moore as a woman must write – her

representational as well as other material shortages – Slatin fails to


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appreciate both the dimensions of Moore's struggle and the extent of

her achievement in this poem. Moore's felt isolation is her shared

feminine experience, and thus her relation to the literary tradition is

necessarily oblique.

There are also some appreciative references to the Christian

character of her work in the Anglo-Catholic Hoxie Fairchild’s

comprehensive Religious Trends in English Poetry. This neglect is the

more extraordinary because her attitude to her background was

positive and affirmative. Unlike many artists in her time, she appears

not to have had a period in the wilderness, and she enjoyed the

world about her and her fellow human beings too much to be

conscious of alienation.

Moore’s eyes flashed as she said, Professional theologians

know nothing about a silent God! Her faith was complex and cannot

be defined in few words. She had been a lonely adolescent and all

her life remained a lonely woman. Her father had died insane when

she was fourteen. Two years later, she wrote an essay called I Was

Sixteen Today, in which she asserted, The cure for loneliness is

solitude. She had not yet read SBren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, or

Paul Tillich, but, like them, she knew that loneliness is loneliness

sterile unless it is transformed into solitude, which is the sine qua


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non of spiritual growth. In a poem entitled A Smooth Gnarled Crape

Myrtle, she depicted much later a Rosalindless red bird that says,

Without / loneliness I should be more

lonely, so I keep it – (43-45)

Yet, her most recurrent theme was not solitude, but fortitude.

The Paper Nautilus, precisely on account of its fragility and of its

struggle against confinement, is actually hindered to succeed shown

in the poem Nevertheles Or again,

Victory won’t come / ……… / to it; a grape tendril. . . – (21-23).

The title of the poem What Are Years? is a question, but the

poem itself is an affirmation. It summarizes the major themes of her

thoughts of isolation as they are spread throughout her whole poetic

work. There are, three intertwining themes within each of the three

strophes: (1) the courage that overcomes guilt; (2) the freedom of

inner deliverance; and (3) the song that rises from time to

immortality.

What is our innocence, / ………………… / this is eternity – (1-27)

Conceived with such poems, Moore ranks with Dickinson as one of

the two greatest American poets who unobtrusively celebrated


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Christian faith in isolation.

Moore uses isolated examples and abstract generalization to

specify, celebrate, and at the same time deny the importance of race.

It is small wonder, given the tension inherent in such a goal, that

Moore's poems about race are often problematic. Pointing out Moore's

liberal politics and celebrations of individualism goes some ways

toward showing us that Moore had some interest in racial issues.

To ensure self-success, Moore viewed self-protection to be

equally, if not more, important. In Moore’s own life, she faced the

struggle to create success built on her own values and beliefs and

not succumbs to the public and critics, her biggest one being her

mother. Although Moore and her mother were extremely close, it

would be almost impossible to avoid some tension, especially since

the two lived together until Moore’s mother passed. Moore was faced

with the obstacle to grow as an individual while still living under

the roof of her mother. It is often extremely easy for children to

accept and hold the same values and beliefs as their parents and end

up not establishing their own, just as was seen in Bird-Witted, where

it was easier for the fledglings to remain taken care of them fend

for themselves. It is not surprising then that Moore and her mother

shared the same basic beliefs in terms of values and religion. Both


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were highly involved in the Presbyterian Church, attending regularly,

and even suggesting sermon ideas to the pastor. Although religion

was greatly valued and share between the two women, Moore’s

mother was much more traditional and strict in her thinking,

compared to Moore, who was considered more modern. This is

where discrepancies likely arose, especially in the creation of some of

Moore’s writing.

Moore’s mother played an enormous part in Moore’s poetry,

being one of her biggest critics and put her approval on everything

that went to be printed. Because Moore was more modern than her

mother, her mother did not always agree or approve of some of

Moore’s ideas or art that she valued and respected. The letter that

Moore wrote to her brother clearly showed the involvement Moore’s

mother had in her poetry. Because the two had some conflicting

views, Moore struggled to maintain her own views, some of which

her mother did not agree with, and created isolated themes through

animal world in her poetry that reflected them. Assumedly, this is

where Moore developed her strong belief in isolation. It is said that

as Moore become older she revolted less interms of her mother’s

strict views of religiosity that is not to say that Moore did not

practice self-protection.


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When analyzing her poetry, her core beliefs and values still

shine through; it is still Moore that is talking, not her mother. It is

no question that Moore uses and presents her reader with ideas of

protection, both maternal protection and self-protection, in her poetry

through alienated subjects; but it seems of utmost importance to

realize that although she emphasizes these ideas of protection, all of

her protected animals and plants are seen using protection to go out

into the world, not to hide from it or draw back. One might often

associate strong protection with being sheltered and avoiding dangers

in life, but ultimately Moore seems to be stressing the importance of

protection to go into the world and face the dangers one might

encounter.

Unlike many artists in her time, she appears not to have had a

period in the wilderness, and she enjoyed the world about her and

her fellow human beings too much to be conscious of alienation. The

very first poem in her Complete Poems, The Steeple-Jack, sets the

tone. It is a loving evocation of a small seaside town-

Durer would have seen a reason ……………. – (1) and it ends:

It could not be dangerous to be living / …………………………… /

stands for hope – (73-78).


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Moore's artistry reaches a peak with The Pangolin, in large

part because it shows her ability to merge inner values and outer

surfaces with playful ingenuity and yet serious intent. From the

poem's opening phrase – Another armored animal – we hear that

tone of surety that results when an artist have come to know fully

her material and to have seen that it fully serves her thematic aims.

In some ways The Pangolin is the most positive, self-possessed poem

of the book which shares its title. And so, Moore might understand

it. The pangolin is a nocturnal, isolated animal, stealthy and seldom

seen, but its solitariness is in the service of genuine virtues: patience,

skill, the wise use of strength. These virtues have social

consequences in the human realm, and so what the pangolin

emblematizes through its poetic representation is a didactically

important awareness for existing in the human world. The witty

equation between pangolin and artist gets a playful introduction in

the poem's opening stanza of the poem The Pangolin :

This near artichoke / …………………………… /

Impressive animal and toiler – (1-6)

of whom we seldom hear. The pedigree, as it were, is a conditioned

one, for the pause after is indicates not only hesitation but an


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awareness of the implausible nature of the identification with

Leonardo even if it's only through paternal lineage.

Having begun the identification of animal and artist with her

usual tentative touch, Moore is freed to explore the pangolin's habits

in a way that can easily be read as an allegory of the moon-struck

romantic artist, even down to his propensity to have his activity and

character imaged forth as yet another art form while he explores the

world on his own aesthetic terms. We enjoy several levels of

identification when he :

endures / …………… / to defy all effort to unroll it .... – (15-28).

The way Moore suspends the main verb says at some distance

from the subject he allows the intervening four appositive clauses to

wall in, as it were, the speaking subject. Moore's isolation as an

artist might be due to her over-ingenuity, her ability to indulge in a

play with and among various aesthetic sensibilities. While she has a

carefully worked out aesthetic of her own, her ability to appreciate

other modes and styles in art is truly catholic, in the strict sense.

She is capable of responding to the refinements of Oriental art and

the American vernacular. However concerned she was with the

problem of an indigenous American cultural style, she was, in the


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best modernist way, an internationalist. The yet approved mullions are

aesthetically pleasing beyond their origin in scholasticism or religious

piety, and we sense that Moore delighted.

Moore was a voracious reader, and an equally voracious

watcher of natural history films. Throughout all her reading she

struggled with the conflicts between her modernist aesthetic and her

traditional morality, a morality grounded in a religious faith with

which she was never simply at ease. In The Pangolin, and perhaps

most impressively in the title poem, she achieved that rare sort of

balance between inner conflicts and outer symmetries. In part the

achievement came from a mastery of will, self-discipline in working

out the thematic consequences of her visions without abandoning

didactic goals or stinting on artistic delights. In this she has made a

masterpiece out of her struggles. Her animal language has the final

word :

Pangolins are not aggressive animals; / …………………………… /

made graceful by adversities, conversities – (56-59)

Drawing back from this near-tragic sense, Moore resorts to

some grammatical complexity and mingles it with some Cummings-


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like typographical wit in order to leave the theme's piecemeal

presentation before the finale:

Bedizened or stark / …………………………………………………… /

Among animals, one has a sense of humor.... – (85-89).

Moore concludes the poem with a description that continues

the semantic balancing act of referring equally to man and animal

and again heightens the irony by having the affirmative salutation in

the alienation uttered from a very bleak context.

Alienation forms the main theme in the poems of Dickinson

and Moore. They are uncomfortable, uneasy and feel out of place. In

fact, they are placed in a totally different world of their own. They

lack the feeling of belongingness to their ownselves and sometimes

to their country. They sometimes seem weird. They feel that

something is wrong with them, and in some cases they don’t seem

to notice if or they don’t identify their abnormality as alienation.

Thus, this alienating feature occur both literally and metaphorically.

Sometimes this alienation is symbolized through object that is placed

or forms the situation or surrounding in their poems.


alienation -...

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