Quote of the Day (Emily Dickinson, on a ‘Helpless’ Personal Victory)

“When I am not at work in the kitchen, I sit by the side of mother, provide for her little wants—and try to cheer, and encourage her. I ought to be glad, and grateful that I can do anything now, but I do feel so very lonely, and so anxious to have her cured. I hav'nt repined but once, and you shall know all the why. While I washed dishes at noon in that little ‘sink-room’ of our's, I heard a well-known rap, and a friend I love so dearly came and asked me to ride in the woods, the sweet-still woods, and I wanted to exceedingly—I told him I could not go, and he said he was disappointed—he wanted me very much—then the tears came into my eyes, tho' I tried to choke them back, and he said I could, and should go, and it seemed to me unjust. Oh I struggled with great temptation, and it cost me much of denial, but I think in the end I conquered, not a glorious victory Abiah, where you hear the rolling drum, but a kind of a helpless victory, where triumph would come of itself, faintest music, weary soldiers, nor a waving flag, nor a long-loud shout. I had read of Christ's temptations, and how they were like our own, only he did'nt sin; I wondered if one was like mine, and whether it made him angry—I couldnt make up my mind; do you think he ever did?”—American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), May 7, 1850 letter to friend Abiah Root

Robert Frost wrote of the impact of personal choices in “The Road Not Taken.” One hundred and seventy-five years ago this week, as the above passage indicates, an earlier New England poet, Emily Dickinson, found herself at a threshold she couldn’t cross.

In American literature, few figures are more enigmatic than “The Belle of Amherst.” I have been particularly interested in her since a visit to the Dickinson Homestead in town nearly 20 years ago (which I discussed in this 2008 blog post).

Though 1,000 of her letters survive, her younger sister Lavinia, at her request, destroyed the rest of her correspondence. So the secret chambers of her heart remain locked, despite the curiosity of residents in her Pioneer Valley community during her lifetime and of biographers and literary critics in the nearly 140 years after her death.

Maybe I should have inserted “largely” before “locked” in the last sentence. After coming home from Mount Holyoke Seminary (later Mount Holyoke College) in her teens, she engaged in a brief period of social activity until age 24 in her family’s original home on North Pleasant Street: going to dances, calling on friends, and attending book club readings and concerts.

It was during this time—before her family repurchased and moved back into the home her grandfather lost to bankruptcy, the one we now know as the Dickinson Homestead—that she confided in her close Amherst Academy friend Abiah Root about the “great temptation” she avoided.

Why didn’t Dickinson join the male friend who “who asked me to ride in the woods,” despite wanting “to exceedingly”? 

Could she have suspected his intentions, even as she felt drawn to him, because of his strenuous importuning (“he said I could, and should go")? 

Despite her refusal to join others in Amherst in the “Second Great Awakening” sweeping New England in the antebellum period, did she still feel the restraints of religion that urged pre-marital chastity?

I suspect another cause, hinted at in the very first sentence: the obligations of family, in this case her mother.

Emily Norcross Dickinson, already 45 years old at this point, was a chronic invalid who suffered from postpartum depression. She went on to live another 32 years—only three years before her daughter. 

But her condition worsened in time, until a stroke in 1874 necessitated even more constant care, far beyond her daughter’s earnest initial attempts to “provide for her little wants—and try to cheer, and encourage her.”

Alfred Habegger’s 2001 biography of the poet, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books, discusses her midlife deep attachment to Otis Phillips Lord, an elderly jurist and friend of her father whose marriage proposal she seriously considered.

But I can’t help wondering if the point of no return for her came years earlier, when she decided to resist a tug on her heart by a far younger man—whose identity, all these years later, has never been established. 

In 1856, while Abiah Root was urging her to come visit and meet her husband, Dickinson was resisting not just the responsibilities of marriage but even the freedom to step outside the Dickinson Homestead.