More than Madness and Myth:
Examining the Enigma of Emily Dickinson
“I must tell you about the character of Amherst. It is a lady whom the people call the Myth… No one knows the cause of her isolation, but of course there are dozens of reasons assigned.”
— Mabel Loomis Todd
An enigmatic individual, most of what is known of Emily Dickinson comes from her writing — both her poetry and letters to family and friends. Since her death and the subsequent publication of her poems, academics have questioned the root of Emily’s well-established eccentricities.
To understand how “the Myth” came to be, we must start at the very beginning. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on the 10th of December, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. The middle child of Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth grew up in “The Homestead” — a brick mansion built by her grandfather Samuel. Both Emily’s siblings were close to her in age; her brother Austin being just over a year older than her and sister Vinnie two years younger. Emily was close to Austin, who was fun-loving and intelligent, and though she was less similar in nature to Vinnie, she was protective of her younger sister. When Vinnie was born, Mrs. Dickinson sent Emily to live with her Aunt Lavinia for a brief time. Of this her aunt wrote, “Emily is perfectly well and contented… She does not talk much of home — sometimes speaks of little Austin but does not moan for any of you…There was never a better child” (3). This seems to be the general consensus regarding Emily as a girl: she was well-behaved and made little trouble for those caring for her. However, Emily did not have an entirely amiable relationship with her parents. Emily’s father, Edward Dickinson, worked as a lawyer, politician, and later, treasurer to Amherst College, an institution which her grandfather had co-founded. Edward was an extremely strict and religious man, who lead his family in daily prayer and often censored Emily’s reading choices. Yet, he kept their house full of books — including works by Shakespeare, Thoreau, Browning, the Brontës, and Hawthorne — which Emily voraciously devoured. Emily highlighted this contradiction in her father when she wrote, “He buys me many Books, but begs me not to read them — because he fears they joggle the Mind” (5). She seemed to regard her father in a mixture of awe and fear, best exemplified by her comment, “His Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists” (7).
Conversely, Emily described her mother as a weak and shallow woman. At one point she wrote that her mother “does not care for thought,” and even went as far to say, “I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled” (7). Granted, it’s not fair to base Emily’s opinion of her mother off of a few harsh remarks made in private letters. All the same, Mrs. Dickinson does not seem to have been much of a warm, motherly figure. This was, in part, due to her and her husband’s apparent constant anxiety regarding the family’s health. Mr. Dickinson treated both his wife and Emily especially as fragile creatures, encouraging them to stay home during cold weather, causing Emily to miss school. This consistent exposure to her parents’ anxiety as a child affected Emily and contributed to her fears later in life.
Despite being frequently absent from school, Emily excelled both academically and socially. In her youth, she attended the coed Amherst Academy. There she thrived, and the admiration between her and her teachers was mutual. Emily was known for creating unique, intelligent compositions which incited envy among her classmates. She had a group of close female friends to whom she referred to as “the five,” as well as numerous other acquaintances. During this time, Emily also seemed to have a high opinion of her self-image; she wrote, “I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don’t doubt that I will have crowds of admirers at that age” (2). She found it frustrating when this later did not come to fruition: at seventeen, Emily wrote to her brother that “[His] highly accomplished & gifted elder sister is entirely overlooked” (5).
While Emily’s childhood remained a fairly carefree time, her early teenage years proved otherwise. At fourteen, four people whom she was close with died; the most notable being her cousin, Sophia Holland, who was the same age as Emily. Just after her passing, Emily snuck into Sophia’s room and remained transfixed, staring at the dead girl’s face until she was pulled away. This may have been the moment which begot Emily’s subsequent fascination of death in her poetry.
Also around this time, Emily began increasingly to have health problems which would eventually contribute to her leaving Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Though her time there was short-lived, Emily spent a great deal of it in religious turmoil. While attending a fundamentalist Calvinist revival meeting there, Emily refused to declare herself a Christian. She wrote to her friend, “I am not happy and I regret that last term, when that golden opportunity was mine, that I did not give up and become a Christian. It is not now too late… but it is hard for me to give up the world” (3). Torn between her religious upbringing and her own ideas of spirituality, this ambivalence no doubt caused Emily a great deal of anxiety.
After Emily returned from Mount Holyoke, she slowly transformed into the woman we know today, the “Myth” to whom Mabel Loomis Todd refers in her letter. This change may have been prompted by Mrs. Dickinson’s unnamed illness, during which time Emily became her primary caretaker. This role reversal gave Emily a bond with her mother that she lacked as a child. She notes the irony, “We were never intimate Mother and Child while she was our mother — but Mines in the same Ground meet by tunneling and when she became our Child, the Affection came” (3). While it is ambiguous as to what the ailment Mrs. Dickinson suffered, it seems likely to have been psychological in nature. Emily says, “Mother has become an invalid since we came home…lies upon the lounge, or sits in her easy chair” (3). From this description of her mother, it seems possible she may have suffered from depression. Emily goes on to elaborate on her own fear: “I don’t know what her sickness is for I am but a simple child, frightened at myself… should my own machinery get slightly out of gear, please, kind ladies and gentlemen, some one stop the wheel” (1). As evidenced by this statement, Emily saw something in her mother’s illness that she recognized within herself.
Perhaps it was this fear that prompted Emily’s reclusiveness and strange habits that became noticeable around twenty-eight. She dressed wholly in white, and she refused to leave the family home, and sometimes even her room. When visitors would call on Emily, often she would speak to them from behind a curtain or the top of the stairs. Emily informed her friend of this in a letter: “…I don’t go from home, unless emergency leads me by the hand, and then I do it obstinately, and draw back if I can” (1). Such behavior and state of mind has the mark of agoraphobia.
Furthermore, agoraphobia is often accompanied by panic disorder, of which Emily almost certainly suffered. Evidence of this condition dates back even further, to her twenty-third year. At one point, she wrote her dear friend Sue about an experience she had while attending church, “…I sorely feared, my “life” was made a “victim.”… How big and broad the aisle seemed… as I quaked slowly up — and reached my usual seat!… [T]here I sat, and sighed, and wondered I was scared so, for surely in the whole world was nothing I need to fear” (1). Emily’s description of being suddenly overwhelmed fits in line with that of a panic attack — including “quaking,” a common symptom. Emily once again detailed her all-consuming feelings of fear when she wrote to her friend and mentor Thomas Higgenson: “I made no verse — but one or two — until this winter — Sir — I had a terror — since September — I could tell to no one — and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground — because I am afraid” (1). Another time, she went as far as to equate fear with herself, writing to her cousins about to graduate from Amherst College: “ I am still hopeless and scared, and regard Commencement as some vast anthropic bear, ordained to eat me up… I remember a tree in McLean Street, when you and we were a little girl, whose leaves went topsy-turvy as often as a wind, and showed an ashen side — that’s fright, that’s Emily” (1). Emily thought there was something inherently wrong with her, which would prove to be a debilitating sentiment.
Because she lived in a time when there was little known about mental illness, Emily went untreated for her panic attacks and agoraphobia. The closest she came to a diagnosis was when a doctor told her that she had “Nervous Prostration”. Two years after this labeling of her condition, Emily died of Bright’s Disease, a severe kidney disease. The extent to which her panic attacks contributed to her death at fifty-five can not be concretely proven, but it’s almost certain that they negatively impacted her health.
Overall, Emily’s psychological disorder caused her great pain and heartache. Yet, at the same time, her writing flourished in a way that may not have been possible without her ongoing inner turmoil. She wrote an average of three hundred poems a year from 1860 to 1865, the years her “terror” was most pronounced. Within her writing, Emily was able to beautifully describe a whole range of emotions with the poignant truth that only comes from acute observation and intense introspection. Was this ability worth all that she suffered? Maybe not, but nonetheless, her gift to the world was immense.
Sources
- Archer, Seth. “I Had A Terror”: Emily Dickinson’s Demon.” Southwest Review 94.2 (2009): 255. MasterFILE Premier.
- Emily Dickinson’s Biography. Trustees of Amherst College, 2009. Web. 28 Nov 2013. <http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emilys_biography>.
- Leiter, Sharon. Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2007.
- Mackowiak, Philip A., and Sonja V. Batten. “Post-Traumatic Stress Reactions Before The Advent Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Potential Effects On The Lives And Legacies Of Alexander The Great, Captain James Cook, Emily Dickinson, And Florence Nightingale.” Military Medicine 173.12 (2008): 1158–1163. Academic Search Complete.
- Pollak, Vivian. A Historical Guide to Emily Dickinson. New York: 2004.
- Thomas, Heather Kirk. “Emily Dickinson’s “Renunciation” And Anorexia Nervosa.” American Literature 60.2 (1988): 205. Academic Search Complete.
- Wetzsteon, Rachel. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. New York: 2003.
