Archetypes In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

Growing up, Dickinson spent most of her life at her home and in her hometown, she did not travel far besides for college, and even then she returned home because of homesickness and poor heath; her own poems were not even published until after her death- she instead sent them to friends. Even with her death, her reclusive behavior continued as she had special instructions to be buried so that her corpse would be in the sight of her home. Her father was not interested in allowing his children to read anything other than the bible. In Richard Wilbur’s criticism on Dickinson, he mentions that she had “refusal of such as ideas as original sin, redemption, hell, and election, she made it impossible for herself- as Whicher observed- “to share the

The idea of Dickinson falling in the feminist area of literary devices might seem a little farfetched to most readers, unlike most definition feminists, Dickinson does not spend a lot of time writing on female rights or any oppression the women of her time might face. Instead, she writes more with an archetypal stand point because her poems focus on the movement of the nature of life and death. Archetypal writing may have certain repeating themes and have uses of nature, “the root of an archetype is in the “collective unconscious” of mankind. The phrase “collective unconscious” refers to experiences shared by a race or culture. This includes love, religion, death, birth, life, struggle, survival etc. These experiences exist in the subconscious of every individual and are recreated in literary works or in other forms of art.” ("Archetype - Examples And Definition Of Archetype"). Those “collective unconscious” are used constantly in Dickinson’s work with the repeats of death, what happen s after death, and forms of pain and suffering. “Because I could not stop for Death” and “I heard a Fly buzz- when I died” are perfect examples of an archetypal device instead of a feminist device because they follow the nature of