An Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Subversion of Expectation in Five Poems - Essay Example

25 March “Expectation – is Contentment” An Analysis of Emily Dickinson's Subversion of Expectation in Five Poems In the nineteenth century, the United States was undergoing some serious political changes. During the poet Emily Dickinson's lifetime, from 1830 to 1886, the states clashed in civil war, Native Americans were removed from their homes on the Trail of Tears, and later events include the California Gold Rush and the beginning of industrialization. These, and others, meant that the country Dickinson died in was far removed from the one into which she was born. The atmosphere of the age was frenetic and confused, and although Dickinson herself was a recluse for most of her adult years, she was not unaffected by the times. In a tumultuous time, American writing became introspective and biographical (Casper, 19), and Dickinson's melancholic poetry of the self reflected both her immediate surroundings and her nationality. The mid-nineteenth century was also a time of high expectations for the future, and this was a theme that Dickinson picked up on in her work. The reader's expectations play a huge role in literature, and Dickinson played with them mercilessly, asking why we expect certain things and completely blind-siding us. Although it can be argued that our expectations of literature are merely to be entertained, and occasionally provoked, this essay will look at expectations as a motif of literature, both internal and external. This essay will look at five of Dickinson's poems, of varying lengths, styles and subjects, and show how the poet uses and manipulates the motif of 'expectation' to constantly surprise the reader, in ways both good and bad. It is difficult to date much of Dickinson's work, as her copious output was private, and typically her texts lack titles. The first line of the first poem to be discussed is “I had been hungry all the years”, and is a perfect introduction to the idea of subverted expectations. The extended metaphor of the poem uses lunch to represent a long anticipation for an event which turns out to be extremely disappointing – although it sounds silly, Dickinson's use of rhyme and rhythm creates a pounding tone which reinforces the sense of misfortune, and of high hopes dashed. The speaker describes herself as “trembling” (3) in impatience to eat the food, only to find that it makes her feel “ill and odd” (14), and that “Nature's dining-room” (12) in which she ate before is far more suited to her temperament. This could be an allegory of growing up, as the speaker fails to mention if she was allowed to return. The final stanza concludes the moral of the story, that the mere fact of not being able to eat creates hunger, which “The entering [into the new realm] takes away” (20). The speaker's expectations were always fruitless. The repetition of the word 'hungry' grounds the poem, reminding the reader of the physicality of the subject. Punctuation provides the same function in “Frequently the woods are pink”, a poem which subverts the very notion of expectation itself. The speaker of “Frequently” expresses wonder at the “Wonderful Rotation!” (11) of the earth, turning everything alternately “pink” (1) and “brown” (2). The liberal sprinkling of dashes and exclamation marks – five of the former and three of the latter, in a poem just twelve lives long – induces the reader to pause at certain points in the poem, enhancing the effect of the preceding line. The pauses echo the speaker's surprise, and implicitly encourage the reader to ask themselves: why do we not find the fast rotation of the earth as impressive and amazing as it is? Extending the question, does being accustomed to a phenomenon necessarily mean that we forget its wonder? The interjection of “– they tell me –” (9) increases the sense of wonder, as if the speaker cannot quite believe what “they” say. Sunrise and sunset are so magical as to deserve such a “Wonderful” (11) explanation, but the speed with which the vast earth turns really takes the speaker by surprise. This subversion of our expectations differs from the last piece: whereas “I had been hungry” focuses on disappointment, “Frequently” is about reality being far more astonishing and miraculous than we could have envisioned – and, of course, our somewhat disappointing acceptance of this extraordinary and yet commonplace event. Buckingham remarks on the “pleasing naivete” (227) of the piece, and how it reflects a general theme in Emily's poetry of “joyous revelling amongst the endless beauties of nature” (227). A more sophisticated, less awe-filled poem on nature begins “Nature rarer uses yellow”, echoing the color motif from “Frequently the woods are pink”. Yellow is deemed more precious than “blue” (4) and “scarlet” (5), the latter two of which Nature “spends” (5) wantonly. Yellow occurs in nature “scantly and selectly/Like a lover's words” (7-8); like the “Wonderful Rotation!” (11) of the previously-discussed poem, yellow is a phenomenon to be in awe of, but unlike the rotation of the earth, and like love, it is relatively rare in nature. However, one simile in the poem shows Dickinson conforming to her contemporary societal expectations, and falling far short of the reader's. The twenty-first century audience expects Dickinson to have feminist ideals, and indeed her writing sometimes reflects this, such as the recognition that “Dickinson exercised her own authority over male-constructed language norms” (White, 2). But the fifth line of “Nature”, “Spending scarlet like a woman”, is upsetting because Dickinson reverts to the shorthand of women as greedy spendthrifts in order to get her point across. Although it is a simile based in tradition – Swift's “Verses Written in a Lady's Ivory Table-Book” (1706) springs to mind as an early example – it is nonetheless a lazy comparison, which makes use of an unnecessary stereotype to get its point across. Dickinson's poems are usually so tightly-crafted (and indeed the rest of the poem is beautiful and spare) that the remiss, trite nature of the simile really stands out, making the poem far inferior to its peers. The “lover's words” (8) of the Nature poem bring us on to the final two poems to be discussed, which are not about nature but human nature. Lover's words are “scantly and selectly” (7) used; the short, four-line poem beginning “We outgrow love like other things” suggests that love itself is not as common as we might expect. It compares old love to “antique fashion” (3), subverting the more common idea that fashion is transient and ephemeral whereas love is solid and eternal. It is important because, as Mamunes argues, it represents the end of Dickinson's romantic life, and expresses her resolution to spurn love after the death of one of her greatest influences, Ben Newton (Mamunes, 151). Oddly, the poem is featured in a collection called Great Love Poems, even though it treats love as a relic irrelevant to Dickinson's modern day; more appropriately, it provides the blurb for a chapter called “The Limits of Love” in Love, an Unromantic Discussion (Evans, 104). This poem is therefore one of Dickinson's most well-known and oft-quoted. Why? Its briefness makes it memorable, in more ways than one – it is, first of all, easier to remember. The shortness of the poem also shocks, in that it contains such a ponderous message in so few lines: there is no opportunity to argue with, or misinterpret, the speaker. It is impossible to form a case against the bald statement that “we outgrow love” (1), so the audience is forced to agree, in spite of their own expectations. Like the “Nature” poem, “We outgrow love” has one line which lets it down somewhat. The odd rhythm of “Like costumes grandsires wore” (4) stresses the grand, which fails to scan and honestly makes little sense. Emily's grief at Newton's death breaks through here, both intensifying her poetic message and weakening her poetic strengths. It subverts the audience's expectations of the poet as infallible, and reminds us that the words were penned by a human hand, hence one which is just as susceptible to grief and pain and error as we are ourselves. Spoken aloud, this line sounds like someone choking past tears to make their point, and adds a regretful tone to an otherwise anti-romantic poem. This essay's final poem, “I felt a cleaving in my mind”, becomes more introspective, using an “I” speaker rather than the “We” of the previous poem. The setting is the speaker's mind, and Dickinson returns to feminist themes: she reclaims the irrationality that women, then and now, are so often accused of, and turns it into a stunning poem, combining the intangible with the physical, the serious with the light-hearted, creating image and rhythm and even sound. The rhythm and rhyme of the piece gives it a bouncy tone, echoing the sound of “balls upon a floor” (8), introducing a very clear image of an empty room in which thoughts like balls are scattered and “unspooled” (Vendler, 71). The subject-matter of the poem is “a cleaving in [the speaker's] mind”, which ironically is not borne out by the actual writing. The dramatic irony of stating something without showing it contributes to the bleak nature of the piece; the unquestioning, unemotional statement that one's mind not longer “fits” (4) itself. The trauma of the content juxtaposed against the rational writing and abrupt ending leaves the reader floundering, overwhelmed by the vast quantity of information packed into these eight lines. Our expectation is that “my brain had split” and “sequence ravelled out of reach” are acceptable definitions of insanity; being asked to comprehend this message in a very sequential, balanced, and wonderfully written poem is a challenging task. We expect to see insanity, or irrationality, or depression – whatever Dickinson was referring to – on its own terms. Vendler calls this “recounting [the] rupture of all serene and predictable forms of plot” (71), in a comparison to music: “as sound ceases to display a meaningful sequence of tones, so thought unspools itself out of reach”. And yet the poem is still meaningful. Whether falling short of the speaker's or reader's expectations, or going unimaginably beyond them, Dickinson was undoubtedly skilled at her craft. This is an important aspect of her work to examine because it is widely applicable to our reading of literature in general: every reader should ask, what do we expect of this text? Why? How does the author fulfil or disappoint or subvert our expectations? It is obvious that our expectations of literature are more than to be merely entertained – instead there is a network of expectations in literature that is inextricably entangled with our expectations of life, and sometimes we even expect perfection from literature when we cannot conceive of the same in reality. Dickinson shows us that expectations are perhaps not as serious as they are usually taken to be, by playing with many different versions of them in her poetry. Works Cited Buckingham, Willis J. Emily Dickinson's Reception in the 1890s: A Documentary History. Pennsylvania: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989. Print. Casper, Scott E. Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Print. Evans, Mary. Love, an Unromantic Discussion. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003. Print. Mamunes, George. “So has a daisy vanished”: Emily Dickinson and Tuberculosis. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008. Print. Swift, Jonathan. “Verses Written in a Lady's Ivory Table-Book.” The Literature Network, n.d. Web. 25 March 2011. “The Poetry of Emily Dickinson.” Bartleby, n.d. Web. 24 March 2011. Vendler, Helen. Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats. Harvard: The University of Harvard Press, 2004. Print. Willer, Shane, Ed. Great Love Poems. Toronto: Dover Publications, 1992. Print. Read More