Could she escape seclusion?

"I never hear the word "escape" / Without a quicker blood, / A sudden expectation, / A flying attitude. / I never hear of prisons broad / By soldiers battered down, / But I tug childish at my bars, -- / Only to fail again!"

At first, I really liked the poem Escape by Dickinson. I think it relates well to what we discussed throughout the year during classes. It touches on the importance of freedom and the difficulties of finding such freedom in everyday life, no matter your situation. Thoreau, Douglass, Whitman, and Alcott all found freedom to be essential in their writings. It is a key aspect in each of their pieces, despite the range of genres. Her poem, Emancipation, has similar themes:

"The eagle of his nest / No easier divest / And gain the sky, / Than mayest thou, / Except thyself may be / Thine enemy; / Captivity is consciousness, / So's liberty."

These two poems both tell a story of entrapment, making the reader believe Dickinson is being captured and held. This is why, after some thought, I started to dislike these poems (only a little though – Dickinson is one of my favorites).

Dickinson was a shut-in. She secluded herself from the world voluntarily. According to a biography of Dickinson, “Because of her discomfort and shyness in social situations, Emily gradually reduced her social contacts, going out less and less into society. By her late twenties, this has led to an almost complete seclusion; spending most of her time in the family house, rarely meeting others from outside a close family circle. Her sister explains this wasn’t a sudden decision, but a gradual process that happened over a period of time.”

Although her seclusion probably allowed her to write freely and made her poems as beautiful and heart-wrenching as they are, I think it’s a stretch for her to write about freeing herself when she is physically secluded. Moreover, she describes the world in other poems with frightening accuracy and it seems as though she desires to travel across the globe in her writing. I understand her shyness, but she seems to want to get out of her house so badly. I find it silly that she writes about escape and freedom when she can’t even free herself from her social ineptitudes and travel the world.

I’d read Dickinson before, as I mentioned she’s one of my favorites, but I’d never read these two poems in particular. They make me see her in a different light; before I pictured her as this crazy genius with frazzled hair, locked up in her bedroom, and having papers scattered across the floor...but now, I see her as so much more docile and weak (plus no more frazzled hair).