That feels to her — like Sacrament —
She's busy — with an altered Care —
As just apprenticed to the Air —
She's tearful — if she weep at all —
For blissful Causes — Most of all
That Heaven permit so meek as her —
To such a Fate — to Minister.
F587 (1863) J535
We have Coventry Patmore to thank for the powerful, and thankfully now nearly defunct, Victorian image of "the Angel in the House". Patmore wrote a poem with that name in 1854, and the term came to refer in general to the selflessly devoted wife and mother, one submissive to and protected by her husband. Long before Virginia Woolf and later feminists skewered this notion, Emily Dickinson wrote these two simple but biting stanzas.
Dickinson may have been sketching the stereotype, but she also may have had her dear friend and sister-in-law Susan Dickinson in mind. According to Judith Farr (The Passion of Emily Dickinson, p.154-5), the poem protests the changes Emily observed in Sue a few years after her marriage to Emily's brother Austen. It's a bit of a dig, portraying Sue as having adopted the Victorian woman's guises of meek innocence and devoted self sacrifice. In earlier poems, thought by various scholars to also be about Sue, Dickinson refers to Sue as "my moment of Brocade – / My – drop – of India (F388), or remembers how Sue came to town and "drifted your Dominions – / A Different Peru" (F418).
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| Queen Victoria as Angel |
But whether about Sue or about the stereotype of a good wife and mother, the poem gives with one phrase and takes away with the next. The first two lines are about the subject's happiness, but this happiness and contentment ring hollow. Next, she is "busy" but only as an apprentice to the Air. If she becomes "tearful" it is only for "blissful Causes" rather from any real anger or grief. The most blissful cause of all, though, is that she, such a meek woman, was permitted by Heaven "to Minister". Somehow that doesn't sound as sincere as it should. Might the subject have really feared Heaven wouldn't allow her to serve and tend others? I also hear echoes in "Minister" of its rhyming word, "sinister". More deviously, I am reminded that, according to Farr, Sue was in love with a minister: a certain Reverend Samuel Bartlett.
I said earlier that the poem might have been a "bit of a dig" about Sue, but I was understating the quite sharp sarcasm that ruffles the surface of nearly every line. Dickinson adopts a regular iambic tetrameter with an AABB rhyme scheme. The poem is too regular. It lacks poetic surprise, interesting juxtapositions, and the odd grammars that often lend a dynamic quality to Dickinson's work. The triteness of the composition reflects that of its subject.
Beyond form, the words are subtly barbed. The subject's contentment "feels to her" like Sacrament; not only is that a weak sort of conviction, but Sacrament should be entered into with awe and commitment and reverence rather than simple contentment (or even, in Dickinson's play on words, with "new Content"). Her busyness is attended by an "altered Care". She is not doing what once mattered to her. She is keeping busy but it is as if she apprenticed herself to the air. She's taking direction from every passing breeze. Both her contentment and busyness seem insubstantial.
But it is the fake-sounding humility of the last stanza that adds the sharpness, especially if written about Sue, a notably proud and accomplished woman. Emily loved Sue for her passion, her exoticness, and her lively intelligence. But by this time Sue had children, a prominent husband, and an active social life. It may be that Dickinson didn't like the "new Content".
Your reading may be the best -- but without knowing the context it is difficult to be certain.
ReplyDeleteIf the poem is not about marriage, any notion that the poem is proto-Feminist or sarcastic disappears. For example, if you posit that ED is writing about herself and that the subject is devotion to poetry rather than devotion to a husband -- then the poem could be entirely sincere.
The poem could also be about marriage -- but intended as a personal communication that accepts and affirms the recipient's conventional view of marriage.
Yes, I sort of threw it all in for one not-completely-convincing reading of the poem. But it's the reading that makes me like it best. (And gives me something to say about it ...) Actually, I hadn't considered reading it as a poem about Dickinson's apprenticeship to the air of poetry.
DeleteThanks!
I, too, read no sarcasm in it but the relief of one who has deeply suffered and finally reached a halcyon place--and seen from the distance ED usually takes when her wisdom eye is open. Without knowing any references, I believe that ED has characterized herself as meek in previous poems.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, the line starting with She's busy suggests to me the contrast between caring for her mother and the household, a demanding physical enterprise, and the "altered Care" of poetry, which to ED was a sacrament.
ReplyDeleteI do like reading this poem as ED reflecting on the days when she took up the mantle of poetry. If the "new Content" is poetry then the poem would have to be written about the past. And as the first Anonymous suggested, she might have written this as a nice message to someone or about someone.
DeleteAs to the "meek" -- she had written "faint" as an alternate word.
Anyway, re-reading the poem half a year later, it does seem as if it is my modern sensibilities (and Farr's credibility as an ED scholar) that made it seem so sarcastic.
ED Lexicon. Faint: Weak; feeble; languid; stripped of power.
ReplyDeleteDoes not sound like ED's view of herself to me, especially in reference to herself as a poet-think volcano. Her choice of meek seems to be in the same vein of meaning as faint, but with the added Christian connotations.
Furthermore, Dickinson can be powerfully sincere, but to me this is not Dickinson's voice of sincerity:"She's tearful - if she weeps at all - For blissful Causes - Most of all." Susan, I think you nailed it pretty well - Victorian sap.
So interesting the discussion of intent this poem engenders. I saw this poem as the poet reaching a "new" state of being when I read it, apprenticed to "air", as in to the -openness- of poetry, etc. (I didn't think of "air" as in "song" until I read this thread. Nor did I think of it, in the negative, as "insubstantial" until I read this thread.)
ReplyDeleteWeeping for blissful causes seems like a state of enlightenment, crying over bliss as opposed to anguish. That seems like a good thing? And "new content" reads like "quartz contentment" to me.
And meekness is another way of saying humility, no?
And "faint" could certainly be another way of saying humble.
I want to read it this way, because it's liberating to read it this way.
And yet, after reading your take, I can't not see it both ways.
I WANT that "She's happy" to really mean she (Emily) is happy. But when you read the poem with sarcasm intended it is just so... different. Happiness itself is suspect. And why should that be so? And yet, and yet, the very next poem in the fascicle is soooo dark. It makes you wonder.
What a litmus test this poem is. If you read the happy too happily you are suspect, but if you read the happy as sarcastic, you are equally suspect!
I love the ambiguity, and you have to wonder if it is at all intended.
To me, every line in this poem screams “Lavinia Dickinson!”, without a hint of sarcasm.
ReplyDeleteVinnie worshipped her poet sister and her poems, though she had no clue of their sound or sense. It was Vinnie who found ED’s stash a week after her funeral. It was she and Maggie, the maid, who gave us 1789 puzzles to spend our lives connecting.
ED knew all along that without Vinnie’s faith in her commitment to poetry, none of it would have happened, and she says this in her letters. And Vinnie did it cheerfully because taking care of her parents and sister was her raison d'etre. Stanza 2 makes that very clear.
I can see Vinnie in this -- except for the "new Content" and other lines that indicate a change.
DeleteI have often heard single professional women say “I wish I had a housewife”. ED had one in her sister, Vinnie, and she had Maggie, a full-time housekeeper as well. To her credit, she baked all bread and cakes, and was famous for it.
ReplyDelete“[Emily] had to think – she was the only one of us who had that to do. Father believed; and mother loved; and Austin had Amherst; and I had the family to take care of.”
Lavinia Dickinson, ‘Emily Dickinson’s Home’ by Millicent Todd Bingham