On Sept. 29, Martha Nell Smith presented Digital Forensics: Texting Emily Dickinson in this year’s Harding lecture. Her presentation was insightful and provided the audience with a rare view of the poet.
Smith spoke about the myth of Emily Dickinson as a recluse, a scorned lover and, in her opinion, a lesbian. The idea of Emily Dickinson as an almost virginal and innocent woman was created her male editors to fit into the dominant larger narrative about American literature forming and circulating during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Smith said she believes this myth is a far cry from the woman Dickinson truly was. Many critics like to say she was in love with men who did not love her back, but these claims about her romantic feelings are not supported by fact or primary sources, but rather by imagination and the idea of what Dickinson should be according to hetero-normative ideals.
The most obvious displays of affection in Dickinson’s letters are ignored because they don’t fit into her manufactured stereotype. Frequent correspondence with her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson proves to be both romantic and vulnerable. The letters she sent to Susan are among the most intimate she wrote to anyone. Dickinson even tells Susan that she was a source of inspiration second only to Shakespeare. She does not share this kind of sentiment with any men. Letters that contain the most visible forms of love are sent to women, not men. Her homoerotic letters have been damaged and destroyed to preserve the package of Emily Dickinson. The idea of a lesbian Dickinson would not appeal to as many consumers as a scorned spinster writing alone in her room.
The prejudice against the different and non-heteronormative explains the subconscious and conscious decision to place Dickinson in a hetero place, even if suggestion of homosexuality is present. The evidence brought forth by Smith and her research allows for the plausibility of a queer theory reading of Dickinson’s poetry. In fact, such readings allow for audiences to more greatly appreciate Dickinson’s work.
It is not difficult to believe that many members of mainstream society would rather accept a love poem based on a heterosexual relationship over one based on a homosexual relationship. The prejudice of this country has and will forever be present, as it was in the minds of the male editors and scholars who decided what and who Dickinson should be. Their ability to force her into a stereotype and disregard blatant proof is a testament to the power of editing.
By focusing on letters sent to men while disregarding those that were sent to Susan and other women in Dickinson’s life as friendship rather than courtship, this principle is once again proven. Within certain frameworks of what American literature is imagined to be, it was much easier to comprehend Dickinson’s work as a female American writer if her relationships with women were but close friendships, not sexual ones.
Emily Dickinson’s poetry is extremely unconventional, daring and sometimes controversial. Yet, it is unbelievable how editing, prejudice and stereotypes can make her, as a historical figure, entirely conventional. Her legacy is not of a strong, unapologetic woman who loved another woman, but of an anchorite who never left her home.
Of course Dickinson is long since passed and her poetry serves to be a challenge to students trying to understand her writing at 2 a.m. But we must try to identify the separation of her stereotype from her reality.