Emily Dickinsons Private World

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It is unlikely that her poems would be so insightful and perceptive had she been engaged in the daily business of dealing with people, for it is only by removing herself from the world that she could analyze it.
Dickinson's poems reflect the cloistered and enclosed world in which she lived-- they are rarely longer than a stanza or two, reminding the reader of small parcels with intricate wrapping that conceals their true intent. Within the poems the lines themselves are short- most are written in tetrameter or trimeter. She left the majority of them written on small slips of paper in her miniscule handwriting and concealed in fascicles throughout her chambers (Farr, pg. 8). Her life and her poetry can seem deceptively small in scale at first glance. However, there is nothing small about the ideas and reflections encompassed within her poetry.
Dickinson's poetry often reflected her voluntary disconnection from society. In "The soul selects her own society"(Ellman and ...

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wounded by it. She structured her world so that she was shielded from the possibilities of love and loss that are inherent in human interaction. For Dickinson this method of coping seems to have been successful at least to the extent that she found fulfillment in her poetry and she was able to find meaning and joy in her relationship with nature instead of with the outside world.
It is evident in much of her poetry that although she did shun interactions with the outside world, this was largely her own decision and she harbored surprising little animosity towards the world. Dickinson's poems suggest a far more complex individual than the timid, reclusive spinster that is the image ...

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