Emily Dickinson Mortality

“Because I could not stop for death” is one of the prolific Emily Dickinson’s most discussed poems. It offers a morbid proclivity displayed in many, if not most, of her work; the difference here being that, though those works discussed death and dying to great extents, none dealt with the idea of the journey of the soul in such an explicit way.

Dickinson lived a notoriously secluded life , though this was not forced upon her, nor a result of personal trauma. (Gabler-Hoover and Sattlemeyer, 884) This lack of social contact could enhance an innate fascination with mortality, especially one’s own. That and the Puritanical household in which she was raised, as well as the disconnection she felt from her family (she wrote: “I have a Brother and

Indeed, subjects of death and dying are heavy and solemn, but this particular work has an air of hope, as the speaker seem to feel as though the place she comes

Campbell 2 to at the end of the poem is only a resting place – “the Horse’s Heads/were toward Eternity”, after all – as observed by Mark Spencer in his essay on the subject.

Dickinson would have been exceedingly familiar with Christian theological views of the afterlife, given her father’s piety, but this poem does not seem to echo them. In fact, Dickinson could not bring herself to wholeheartedly subscribe to her father’s old religious conviction (Ottlinger, 31).

Her romantic fascination with death, however, were not exactly unusual for her time. The Victorians made mourning a public display, with elaborate mourning garb, as well as brooches or lockets containing locks of a deceased loved one’s hair. This also carried over to America in the same time, and it was not unusual to have such an object on one’s person in the late eighteenth and early-to-mid nineteenth centuries. (Melichor) People died young, of illness, in childbirth, by accident, and of course in the Civil War, which was raging in the period Dickinson wrote most of her poems (1862-65). The images of deathbeds and the last moments and breaths of the speaker often invade her poetry; the process of dying is extremely prevalent. (Ottlinger,

When looking closely, however, it seems clear that she means death as a way to obtain immortality – that is, in remembrance, in legacy. (Marcellino, 102) From a modern vantage point, authors, artists, public figures, politicians, royalty, and more gain more notoriety in death than in life –for example, Vincent van Gogh managed to sell only one painting while he lived, and yet is now renowned as one of the greatest artists of all time. And so it was with Emily Dickinson. Only ten of her poems were published (anonymously) during