Tag Archives: selected letters

WWDT: What Would Dickinson Think?

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In a letter to Dickinson from Helen Hunt Jackson, Helen writes asking why Dickinson won’t consider publishing any of her works. She says that when she is dead and is looking back on her life, Dickinson will be sorry that she was so stingy with her work. It made me wonder if Dickinson would be or is regretting her decisions. Based on her reclusive and solitary nature, I’m not sure if she is disappointed. Her work has gotten out without her having to deal with the publicity that comes with it. If anything, I think that this is exactly what she would have wanted, if she wanted her work to ever be published at all.

Real Life Dickinson vs. Curated Literary Dickinson

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In letter #342a, Higginson writes to his wife about meeting Dickinson. Something that really stuck out to me in this letter was his description of meeting Dickinson in person for the first time; he describes her as very meek, saying that she seemed frightened and childlike. This feels like the complete opposite of the Dickinson that we see presented in her letters. Obviously, this description of meeting her shouldn’t be too surprising as we know that she rarely sees new people, but the difference between the self-assured confidence she exudes in her letters and her poetry compared to the shyness that she shows in-person felt very drastic.

How do Letters Connect Us?

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In letter #73, Dickinson is writing to Susie (unsurprisingly). Towards the beginning of this letter, Dickinson says “I cannot deny myself the luxury of a minute or two with you” (77), implying that taking the time to write to Susie is the same, or at least similar enough, to actually spending time with her. However, closer to the middle of the poem, Dickinson says “How vain it seems to write, when one knows how to feel” (77), contradicting the implication of her previous statement. This idea reminded me of the conversation we had in class about how Whitman would feel about social media as a form of connection. Is letter writing, to either Dickinson or to us, a form of connection that is either the same or similar enough to actually seeing someone in person? Or is there something fundamentally unique about being in-person that cannot be replicated through letters, no matter how intimately you write to someone? Also, what would Dickinson think of social media?

The Length of the Letters

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This may be a rather surface-level thought, but when reading for class on Tuesday, I couldn’t help but notice that as we get further into the letter collection and therefore further in time, Dickinson’s letters get noticeably shorter. Not only that, but they also include more phrases and writing that feel reminiscent of poetry rather than prose. This could just be a consequence of Dickinson just getting more involved in her own poetry, so she has less time to write letters, as well as causing poetic writing to become more prominent in her letters. However, I do wonder if there is some other reason for this; is it possible that it is more of a conscious choice that Dickinson made?