Yesterday I shared various comments on a thread from Substack that led me (a) to post Dickinson’s poem “How happy is the little stone” and (b) to explore why the number 7 is a “happy number.”
 | At that point, I wondered how often Dickinson used the word “seven” in her poetry. I searched the online archive, and – coincidentally – seven entries popped up. However, that does not mean “seven poems.” No, the seven entries represented two poems, “At half past three a single bird” (which I discussed WHEN?) and “Rearrange a ‘wife’s’ affection.” My post from yesterday opened with the statement, “Okay, I have this very strange poem by Dickinson to share – one with which I was not familiar at all – and I got to it in a very odd way (literally ‘odd,’ LOL – you’ll find out what I mean in a minute).” Of course, the reference to “a very odd way” was related to the trivia I’d discovered about the number 7; you can find it HERE. The Dickinson work I referenced as “this very strange poem” – which I did not share yesterday – was “Rearrange a ‘wife’s’ affection." This is a poem that explores themes of unwanted marriage and the suppression of a woman's true desires, through some heavy imagery of suffering, and it portrays a woman burdened by the role of a wife, hiding her true self while longing for a different life. I’ve written before about some of Dickinson’s poems that mention housewives, and the traditional and expected role for women in the Victorian age – the “social conventions created by a patriarchal society, which continued the division of both genders into different spheres of society”-- does not come across as desirable in Dickinson’s works. Some examples are HERE. |
For this poem, an excellent analysis can be found HERE, and I’d recommend reading the comments at the end as well to get other readers’ various interpretations of the poem.
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