Emily Dickinson

Legacy: the Artists Behind the Legends

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was a 19th century poet whose immense body of influential works was not even found until after her death in 1886. Emily lived the majority of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, and though she was born into a prominent family, Dickinson herself lived a relatively simple life, becoming an odd sort of recluse in her later years. The reasoning behind Emily Dickinson’s desire to remain isolated as she grew older remains a mystery, but it is because of this isolated state that she was able to produce nearly 1,800 poems privately without distraction. There are innumerable assumptions made about Emily, and we will closely examine many of these scholarly and historical theories as we get further into the podcast, but one thing I find fascinating about her is that regardless of resigning from public life, Dickinson was kind of a rebel in an era that did not take kindly to being second guessed. Much to the chagrin of her family, Emily never gave into the pressures faced by the takeover of Calvinism in her town, nor did she stop educating herself when her father and mother disapproved of her habits. Some might argue that her accepted domesticity and care for her constantly ill mother contradict that; however, in my own humble opinion, Emily Dickinson realized that while some might look on her life as a prison, she saw it as freedom – freedom from the constraints of marriage, of motherhood, and of societal expectations, so that her dedication could be to her poetry rather than to others. So let’s get episode 22 of Legacy rolling, shall we?