how-vintage: Dickinson's biography

Monday, April 18, 2005

Dickinson's biography

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father and mother were both what we would today call "distant." Her brother, Austin, was bossy but ineffective; her sister, Lavinia, never married, and lived with Emily and was protective of the much shyer Emily.

While signs of her introspective and introverted nature were apparent early, she traveled from home to attend Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, an institution of higher education founded by Mary Lyons. Lyons was a pioneer in women's education, and envisioned Mount Holyoke as training young women for active roles in life. She saw that many women could be trained as missionary teachers, especially to bring the Christian message to American Indians.

A religious crisis seems to have been behind young Emily's decision to leave Mount Holyoke after a year, as she found herself unable to fully accept the religious orientation of those at the school. But beyond religious differences, Emily also apparently found the social life at Mount Holyoke difficult.

She returned home to Amherst. She traveled a few times after that -- once, notably, to Washington, DC, with her father during a term he served in the U.S. Congress. But gradually, she withdrew into her writing and her home, and became reclusive. She began to wear dresses exclusively in white. In her later years, she did not leave her home's property, living in her home and garden.

Her writing did include letters to many friends, and while she became more eccentric about visitors and correspondence as she aged, she had many visitors: women like Helen Hunt Jackson, a popular writer of the time, among them. She shared letters with friends and family, even those who lived nearby and could visit easily.

She fell in love with several men over time, though never apparently even considered marriage. Her close friend, Susan Huntington, later married Emily's brother Austin, and Susan and Austin Dickinson moved to a home next door. Emily and Susan exchanged ardent and passionate letters over many years; scholars are divided today on the nature of the relationship. (Some say that the passionate language between women was simply an acceptable norm between friends in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; others find evidence that the Emily/Susan friendship was a lesbian relationship. I find the evidence ambiguous at best.)

Mabel Loomis Todd, a descendent of John and Priscilla Alden of Plymouth colony), moved to Amherst in 1881 when her astronomer husband, David Peck Todd, was appointed to the faculty of Amherst College. Mabel was twenty-five at the time. Both the Todds became friends of Austin and Susan -- in fact, Austin and Mabel had an affair. Through Susan and Austin, Mabel met Lavinia and Emily.

"Met" Emily is not exactly the right description: they never met face-to-face. Mabel Todd read and was impressed by some of Emily's poems, read to her by Susan. Later, Mabel and Emily exchanged some letters, and Emily occasionally invited Mabel to play music for her while Emily observed out of sight. When Emily died in 1886, Lavinia invited Todd to attempt to edit and publish the poems Lavinia had discovered in manuscript form.

Melancholic Witch
` 6:30 AM __