Emily Dickinson Writing Style

Emily Dickinson is one of the writers that died before she could truly see her work become popular. This was a choice made by Emily because she did not want her work to be published. She also was known for staying in her home and not leaving for days because she was not very social. This could be why her writing is like no other authors writing. This could also be where she got her ideas of individualism. The idea of independence and being able to do things on her own was very important seeming as that is how she lived her life. This is what led her into her writing a Modernism like style of writing. This is shown in her poem "This is my letter to the World" because it is about the world seeing her a for who she is and not taking her as a person for granted. This is when the ideas of equality also came into her writing style and made her writing very much modernistic. The literary critic Conrad Aiken said, " When we come to Emily Dickinson's poetry, we find the Emersonian individualism clear enough, but perfectly Miss Dickinson's." (Aiken) about Emily Dickinson's writing style. In the poem she says,' He Message is committed; To hands I cannot see--- For love of her----Sweet---countrymen---Judge tenderly---of Me" (Dickinson) This shows how she believed that people should give her a break for who she is because she is an individual person, and is great in her own way. This greatness also came into her writing style of Realism. Her realistic writing style is displayed very well in her poem "The Lighting is a yellow Fork". The poem displays the ideas of realistic meanings and leaves out literal psychological meanings. The poem says, "Of mansions never quite disclosed; and never quite concealed; The Apparatus of Dark; to ignorance revealed" (Dickinson) This shows how Emily also liked to write realistically instead of always making the reader decipher what the author is trying to say. This making reading a passage easier for everyone. Using both of these styles has lead her to be to be one of the greatest authors of all time. She is particularly interesting to me because although she was not a "normal" person in her time, she was still fantastic. She worked against all odds that she was faced with to make her writing better and more interesting for herself over anyone else. This is why most of her writings became popular after her death because she did not have most of them published. This would also explain why they have no actual titles to most of her poetry because she didn't feel the need to name things that were thought to be for her eyes only. She thought that she didn’t have to keep any titles in place because if they would not have been published it would not have mattered. This is what makes her writing so unique.


Dickinson, Emily "This is my letter to the World." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 533 . Print.
Dickinson, Emily "The lighting is a yellow Fork." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 533 . Print.



Aiken, Conrad. "Emily Dickinson." In A Reviewer's ABC. New York: Meridian Books, 1935. Quoted as "Emily Dickinson" in Harold Bloom, ed. Emily Dickinson, Bloom's Major Poets. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 1998. (Updated 2007.) Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BMPED04&SingleRecord=True (accessed March 19, 2012).