Emily Dickinson's Contradiction

Emily Dickinson, regarded as important as Walt Whitman and Edgar Alan Poe, is one of the greatest poets in American literature. In The Life of Emily Dickinson, Sewall wrote: "Genius is ultimately unaccountable, and none more so than Emily Dickinson's" (Sewall 17). She lived in New England with dense religious atmosphere and was never married all her life. After her death, she left nearly 1800 poems and contributed greatly to the society.Dickinson's poems are diversified in theme, rich in content and profound in thoughts. Her creative themes are various, the contents are rich, and the thoughts are profound. Her poems can be generally divided into several types, religion, nature, love and death. They seemed on the surface to be quite simple but in fact, they had profound meanings in nature. Dickinson's world was a self-world constructed by herself. This world was full of paradox, contradiction and babelism. Dickinson's outlooks on religion, nature and love were not fresh any longer, however, there were not exact conclusions by critics. After the close reading of her poems and life experiences, it is not difficult to make a conclusion that she was always wandering in paradox and contradiction was an important part in her life.The reasons for choosing Dickinson's contradiction as the research subject are as follows: first, as one of the greatest poet in American literature, Dickinson's poems are always the focus of attention. Her poems are quite difficult to understand but it is obscurity that catches more and more people's attentions. In China, the research on her is still at the threshold and compared with American researchers, there is a great distance. As one of the most important features in Dickinson's poems, contradiction was once mentioned by some researchers. But there is not a detailed study and it needs a further discussion. Second, contradiction manifests itself in different ways in Dickinson's poems. Actually, it becomes Dickinson's one basic characteristic, which makes her and her poems more attractive and mysterious. Dickinson's contradiction is not strange, instead, it reflects the bewilderment and anguish in her mind, her exquisite and various emotions, profound and rich imagination and the influence of the society and the traditions. Overseas researchers began to analyze her poems from various angles, and they tried to interpret Dickinson as a normal woman. Therefore, the analysis of Dickinson's contradiction is helpful for better understanding her poems as well as the oddness in her life.This thesis, therefore, is a case study of Dickinson's contradiction with a particular emphasis on nature, religion, gender, and love through a close reading of her poems.The main body falls into four chapters. Chapter One is devoted to the analysis of her poetry on nature. Her attitudes towards nature were paradoxical. On one hand, she loved nature and tried to praise it in detail. On the other hand, she believed that nature was a cruel and merciless man who disregarded people's trouble and tribulation and never tried to help and save them, which made Dickinson disappointed and despaired. Generally speaking, Dickinson had a posture of paradox and contradiction. Both the optimistic nature conception and the pessimistic nature conception coexisted in her poetry. From her youth till death, she always had these two contrary attitudes to nature.Chapter Two discusses her poems about religion. Undoubtedly, Dickinson was not a religious poet and she never accepted religion all her life. However, Living in the little town in New England with dense religious atmosphere, she was inevitably influenced by religion. She was familiar with The Bible and could use its teachings and quotations skillfully in poems and daily life. As a result, similar to religious poems, her poems had many features of religion. She often praised Jesus and called him a docile gentleman. Nevertheless, she doubted God and often condemned him of his unfairness and mercilessness. Anyway, her views about religion were both devotional and challenging.Living in a patriarchal society, Dickinson recognized clearly that her position as well as other women's was not equal to men's. Therefore, Chapter Three pays much attention to her viewpoints to gender role, which has two parts. First, her attitudes towards men were contradictory. Sometimes, she pretended to be submissive and timid in order to attract men's attentions and affections. Meanwhile, she tried to fight for the due rights that men had. Second, her attitudes towards the gender role as a traditional wife were also ambivalent. She disdained the responsibility and position of women prescribed by tradition, however, at the same time, she wrote many poems in the hope of a wedding and to be a wife. This was closely related to her family, which was a perfect combination from the perspective of Puritanism. Her father was autocratic while her mother was submissive, which caused Dickinson's dissatisfactions with the traditional family pattern and resulted in her complicated feelings over the gender role and marriage.As the most important theme in literature, love also appeared frequently in Dickinson's poems. Chapter Four concentrates on her attitudes to love. Although she never got love, Dickinson kept pursuing love all her life. Her expressions to love were various, sometimes, she was submissive and timid, while other times, she was frank and bold. Anyway, Dickinson was active and positive in her pursuit of love and when she expressed her love, she was bold and direct. However, she didn't trust love and lover, therefore, when the love she pursued all her life came, she hesitated and refused it at last.Contradiction in Dickinson's poems revealed struggle and agony in her mind, which maybe was resulted of her special life experiences and sensitive literary talents, however, as the product of times and the society, she was inevitably influenced by surroundings which mainly manifested themselves in historical and societal background, religion and philosophy as well. She was inspired by the aspiring mainstream in American early years and saddened by the troublous times in civil war. Generally speaking, the period Dickinson lived in was contradictory, which was mixed with the new power that advocated advancement and reformation and the traditional force in Amherst. She was struggling in the conflicts between two contradictory cultures, which led to contradiction in her poems and life.