Some of my recent posts have featured Dickinson’s “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House,” and yesterday I said, “OH – one last thing about (this) poem. Beyond the macabre details…did anything strike you as odd?”
Did you notice that in line 12 of the poem that Dickinson referred to herself as a boy?
Take a look at the third stanza:
Somebody flings a Mattress out--
The Children hurry by--
They wonder if it died—on that--
I used to—when a Boy--
To be fair, “I used to – when a Boy” is voiced by the speaker of the poem, and Dickinson did say in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse-it does not mean-me-but a supposed person.” Sooo…perhaps she is not the “Boy,” though the essence and images of the poem seem somewhat autobiographical – and many other poems seem to be extremely if not completely personal (take “One Sister have I in the house,” for example.)
Furthermore, Dickinson at times referred to herself and her narrators using masculine terms like "boy," "prince," or "earl.” On occasion she referred to her “boyhood” or signed letters as “Brother Emily” or “Uncle Emily.”
Was this a way for her to subvert 19th-century gender expectations, express a greater sense of freedom, and adopt a more powerful identity than was traditionally afforded to women? Was there more going on here than that?
Just yesterday, I connected “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House” with Robert Frost’s “Out, Out,” and in exploring Frost’s work, I stumbled upon a blog post that opened with a comparison between Frost and Dickinson:
Did you notice that in line 12 of the poem that Dickinson referred to herself as a boy?
Take a look at the third stanza:
Somebody flings a Mattress out--
The Children hurry by--
They wonder if it died—on that--
I used to—when a Boy--
To be fair, “I used to – when a Boy” is voiced by the speaker of the poem, and Dickinson did say in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse-it does not mean-me-but a supposed person.” Sooo…perhaps she is not the “Boy,” though the essence and images of the poem seem somewhat autobiographical – and many other poems seem to be extremely if not completely personal (take “One Sister have I in the house,” for example.)
Furthermore, Dickinson at times referred to herself and her narrators using masculine terms like "boy," "prince," or "earl.” On occasion she referred to her “boyhood” or signed letters as “Brother Emily” or “Uncle Emily.”
Was this a way for her to subvert 19th-century gender expectations, express a greater sense of freedom, and adopt a more powerful identity than was traditionally afforded to women? Was there more going on here than that?
Just yesterday, I connected “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House” with Robert Frost’s “Out, Out,” and in exploring Frost’s work, I stumbled upon a blog post that opened with a comparison between Frost and Dickinson:
The complete blog entry (by Patrick Gillespie/"PoemShape") is HERE.
The statement "I always get the feeling that the view is through her bedroom window (and sometimes explicitly so)")speaks to the personal if not autobiographical nature of her poems that I mentioned above. “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House” seems to incorporate occurrences she witnessed from her bedroom window – and if so, was she the “boy” in that third stanza? Or is that boy just some “supposed person”?
Interestingly, the blog entry I quoted above later delves into the subject of gender identity. A reader from Australia commented on the post and stated this:
“You’ve also alerted me to something I’d completely overlooked– the gendered aspect. I was reading ‘When Memory was a Boy’ as age-related. It seems to me patently obvious now that an important aspect of the prison she is describing is her femaleness.”
The blogger’s response included this:
The statement "I always get the feeling that the view is through her bedroom window (and sometimes explicitly so)")speaks to the personal if not autobiographical nature of her poems that I mentioned above. “There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House” seems to incorporate occurrences she witnessed from her bedroom window – and if so, was she the “boy” in that third stanza? Or is that boy just some “supposed person”?
Interestingly, the blog entry I quoted above later delves into the subject of gender identity. A reader from Australia commented on the post and stated this:
“You’ve also alerted me to something I’d completely overlooked– the gendered aspect. I was reading ‘When Memory was a Boy’ as age-related. It seems to me patently obvious now that an important aspect of the prison she is describing is her femaleness.”
The blogger’s response included this:
The observation “Girls are allowed to frolic in the same mud as boys” brought to mind Carly Simon’s song, “Boys In The Trees.” In the first verse, she recalls growing up in “The low beam room with the window looking out / On the soft summer garden / Where the boys grew in the trees.” That window and garden sound very Dickinson-y indeed.
Here’s the third verse:
Do you go to them or do you let them come to you
Do you stand in back afraid that you'll intrude
Deny yourself and hope someone will see
And live like a flower
While the boys grew in the trees
The complete lyrics are HERE.
By the way, I checked Franklin’s Variorum edition for his notes to see if he mentioned anything about the masculine references in this poem (i.e., "There's been a Death, in the Opposite House," but he did not.
Here’s the third verse:
Do you go to them or do you let them come to you
Do you stand in back afraid that you'll intrude
Deny yourself and hope someone will see
And live like a flower
While the boys grew in the trees
The complete lyrics are HERE.
By the way, I checked Franklin’s Variorum edition for his notes to see if he mentioned anything about the masculine references in this poem (i.e., "There's been a Death, in the Opposite House," but he did not.
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