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Emily Dickinson Essay

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Emily Dickinson Essay
Subjected to the patriarchal conditions of her 18th Century American community, Emily Dickinson often implicitly challenged normative conceptions of women through both her poetic brilliance, and the candid voice that she employs within her poems. While describing the effects of friendship in her poem “The Soul selects her own Society,–” Dickinson implicitly confronts the conventional, gendered, perception of women, a sentiment also evident in her poems “I started early–Took my Dog,” and “They shut me up in Prose.” Before tactfully criticizing them, Dickinson alludes to the elements of her culture that had perpetuated the subordination of women.
Indicative of her tacit agenda to challenge the normative conception of women, Dickinson conveys the soul as a powerful, selective, female figure. …show more content…
Denoting the superior status of the feminine soul, Dickinson writes, “Unmoved – an Emperor be kneeling/Upon her Mat –” (10-11). Within this quote, Dickinson conveys the emperor, a conventionally masculine, hegemonic, figure, as subordinate to the feminine soul, who considers the emperor himself dismissively. That the emperor kneels to the apathetic, unmoved, female soul reflects the Dickinson’s implicit intention to challenge the patriarchal hierarchy that she faces, as she poses this paradigm for male dominance as submissive to her empowered female figure. To emphasize the submissiveness of the emperor, Dickinson employs the passive voice, stating that “an Emperor be kneeling Upon her Mat” (10-11). By altering the syntax of the previous clause, Dickinson enhances the distinction between the empowered female soul and the submissive, typically despotic, emperor, thereby depicting the emperor as passive himself. This distinction between passivity and activity also complements
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