Obsessed Case
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Obsession
Emily Dickinsons work is considered among the greatest in American literature. Her poems conveyed many themes such as love, nature, doubt and fear, and suffering and death. But, there is eagerness in her poems to examine pain and death and to measure it and to intellectualize it a fully as possible. Her poetry tells a great deal about her lifestyle in which she was very secluded and withdrawn from society. Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amhurst, Massachusetts to a prominent family. As a young woman she was active socially but showed no interest in marriage. (DeShazer 967) She enjoyed school, she graduated from Amhurst Academy and she went to Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary for only one year. Many people believe that Dickinson left Mt. Holyoke because she was in poor health and was very homesick, however, Shira Wolosky stated that, “around the age of 28 she (Dickinson) began to display distinctive behavior: declining to go out; dressing in white; speaking to visitors from behind screens and refusing to address correspondence from letters” (444). This type of behavior drew much speculation that Dickinson suffered from a mental illness. According to Neil Scheurich there was “well known suspicion that Dickinson struggled with mental disorder. She was notoriously reclusive and seemingly agoraphobic for much of her adult life” (191). Many of Dickinsons poems tell of suffering and death.
One of Dickinsons poems that could possibly depict the suffering that she felt with the deterioration of her mental state is her poem titled, “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”. This poem is an attempt to formalize a complex and devastating mental process. The changing situations of the speaker in the poem mirror a gradual loss of reason. It is important to examine the different situations of the speaker by examining the different views of the funeral. In the first two lines of “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”, Dickinson writes, “I felt a Funeral in my Brain / And Mourners to and fro” (DeShazer 968), show that the funeral takes place in the speakers brain. Yet, the funeral is not created by thought or imagination or a dream, but it “felt. It takes place in the brain, it has effects on the brain, but the brain is also observing and reflecting upon the actions. The last word of line 3, “seemed” and line 7, “thought”, indicate the reflective action of the brain. And line 4, “That Sense was breaking through” and line 8, “My Mind was going numb” show the effects of the actions on the speakers mind ( 968).
However, the view changes slightly in lines 9-11, Dickinson writes, “And then I heard them lift a box/ and creak across my Soul, / With those boots of Lead, again,” (968). The creaking of the “Boots of Lead” is no longer “felt” but “heard”, which implies a certain distance of the speaker to the sounds. Furthermore, the creaking does not have an immediate effect on the brain or “Soul” rather; the consequences of this negative experience are not described. So it seems as if the reflective and the afflicted part of the brain are separated from the part where the incidents take place. With line 12, there is another, more radical change of view.
Dickinson writes in lines 12-16, “Then Space-bean to toll, /As all the Heavens were a Bell, /And Being, but an Ear, /And I, and Silence, some strange Race/Wrecked, solitary, here” (968). The “I” is opposite “Space”, which is compared to a bell. The image of the funeral becomes less concrete; the bell is only used to describe the tolling space, whereas the mourners steps and the box clearly refer to the funeral service. This tolling space affects not only the brain, sense, mind or soul, but the whole”I”, which is, together with “Silence”, “Wrecked, solitary, here-“(line 16). Therefore, the speaker is no longer split, but has entered, as persona the scene inside her head. This becomes obvious in the last stanza, where the speaker participates in the funeral scene.
In the last stanza the speaker says, “And then a Plank in Reason Broke” (968). This means that the speaker is standing on a “plank” of “Reason”, which breaks. This leads to her fall. This fall, which is a symbol for the breakdown, can only take place in the last phase of the speakers loss of sanity. This poem is possibly a look into Dickinsons life and how she was suffering from a mental illness. But, there is another poem in which she speaks of suffering, “I Like a Look of Agony”.
In Dickinsons poem, “I Like a Look of Agony,” she emphasizes the truth of pain, of hurt and of death. Uncertainty can and does often surround perceived happiness, the speaker in; “I Like a Look of Agony” the speaker likes the “knowing that accompanies a pained, discontented look. She likes that she can “know its true”( line 2, Bengtsson). The speaker enjoys the appearance of agony among people because its a very difficult emotion to fake. In recognizing the honesty and the realness of this hurt, the speaker is about to form a line between herself and others, a sort of pain community. The speaker has her own hurts, which she may or may not be able mask from others, but which she cannot really deny within herself. The speaker can find comfort in allowing herself to see and connect to the uncontrived pain of other individuals. She knows that pain is true because she has felt it herself, seen it in the face of her own suffering. After all, she does not say that she likes to see these types of pain in others because they are true-as a statement of universal fact- but rather because she knows they are true. In other words the knowing is personal, which she in turn uses to encompass a greater capacity, but which begins with her first. Then, the speaker uses this personal knowing to connect with those around her, which whom she can see similar pains.
This pain community, however, is also one of femininity, one that apparently excludes men. The speaker states that, “Men do not shame convulsions,/ Nor simulate a Throe”(line 3-4, Bengtsson). “Men” of course, could simply be an all-embracing word used to imply humankind in general. Yet, the speaker seems to upset this idea with the somewhat ironic use of the word, “Throe” in the following line, which is a severe pain, and which can specifically be used in the context of the pains of child birth. And, a man obviously cannot fake the discomfort of giving birth, not simply because one cannot truly fake pain but because a man cannot truly possess this type of pain.
In the second stanza, the speaker