Emily Dickinson

One of the first things to know about Emily Dickinson is that she did everything in her power to avoid letting other people influence her writing. Around her twenties, she started spending less and less time around people, untile by the end of her life he rarely left her house and garden (McChesney). Her greatest goal in writing poetry was to understand her own soul and the connections between different aspects of life. To do this, she spent time thinking all alone. Even with her wish to escape from influences, she still had a lot in common with Transcendentalists.

One of her most famous poems about hope, she compares it to a little bird that somehow manages to keep singing despite terrible surroundings. In the last stanza, she mentions that even though it weathers such difficult circumstances, it never asks for anything to keep it going. The way she compares hope to an aspect of nature is very similar to some of Emerson's writings. In "Nature" he writes about it as the best teacher of morality, and as support mentions that many stories used to illustrate morals are about events in nature. Emily Dickinson uses nature to illustrate an emotion quality, so in that way the two authors are similar.

Another way that Dickinson is similar to Emerson is in her reclusive nature. Dickinson's lifestyle is like Emerson's phliosophy put into practice. Emerson wrote in "Self Reliance" that good people should form and hold their own opinions despite whatever criticisms they may bring about. He also wrote about the detrimental effects of society on an individual as such. Emily Dickinson spent her entire life thinking and forming opinions, and rejected what ever criticism she found unhelpful (McChesney). She also withderw from society almost entirely to work on her soul searching and her poetry. She put Emerson's philosophy in "Self Reliance" into practice and because of it she was able to write thousands of wonderful poems.



Dickinson, Emily. "Hope Is the Thing with Feathers." Web. 11 Mar. 2012. .

McChesney, Sandra. "A View from the Window: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson." In Harold Bloom, ed. Emily Dickinson, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 11 March, 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BCED03&SingleRecord=True.