Essay About Emily Dickinson And Conscientious Thinkers

Emily Dickinson
Essay title: Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was raised in a traditional New England
home in the mid 1800s. Her father along with the rest of the
family had become Christians and she alone decided to rebel
against that and reject the Church. She like many of her
contemporaries had rejected the traditional views in life and
adopted the new transcendental outlook. Massachusetts, the
state where Emily was born and raised in, before the
transcendental period was the epicenter of religious practice.
Founded by the puritans, the feeling of the avenging had
never left the people. After all of the “Great Awakenings”
and religious revivals the people of New England began to
question the old ways. What used to be the focal point of all
lives was now under speculation and often doubted. People
began to search for new meanings in life. People like
Emerson and Thoreau believed that answers lie in the
individual. Emerson set the tone for the era when he said,
“Whoso would be a [hu]man, must be a non-conformist.”
Emily Dickinson believed and practiced this philosophy.
When she was young she was brought up by a stern and
austere father. In her childhood she was shy and already
different from the others. Like all the Dickinson children,
male or female, Emily was sent for formal education in
Amherst Academy. After attending Amherst Academy with
conscientious thinkers such as Helen Hunt Jackson, and
after reading many of Emersons essays, she began to
develop into a free willed person. Many of her friends had
converted to Christianity, her family was also putting
enormous amount of pressure for her to convert. No longer
the submissive youngster she would not bend her will on
such issues as religion, literature and personal associations.
She maintained a correspondence with Rev. Charles
Wadsworth over a substantial period of time. Even though
she rejected the Church as a entity she never did reject or
accept God. Wadsworth appealed to her because he had an
incredibly powerful mind and deep emotions. When he left
the East in 1861 Emily was scarred and expressed her deep
sorrow in three successive poems in the following years.
They were never romantically involved but their relationship
was apparently so profound that Emilys feelings for him she
sealed herself from the outside world. Her life became filled
with gloom and despair until she met Judge Otis P. Lord late
in her life. Realizing that they were well into their lives they
never were married. When Lord passed away Emilys health
condition which has been hindered since childhood
worsened. In Emilys life the most important things to her
were love, religion, individuality and nature. When discussing
these themes she followed her lifestyle and broke away from
traditional forms of writing and wrote with an intense energy
and complexity never seen before and rarely seen today.
She was a rarity not only because of her poetry but because
she was one of the first female pioneers into the field of
poetry. Emily often speaks of love in her poems, but she did