[It’s not the
Boston area, and it’s not quite the
Berkshires, so the rest of Western Massachusetts tends to get short shrift
in our images and narratives of the state. Well, no longer! In this week’s
series, I’ll highlight five Western Mass. histories and stories, examples of
how much this part of the state has to offer our collective memories. I’d love
to hear your thoughts on these and other connections!]
On why we
shouldn’t limit Emily Dickinson to her hometown, and why the connection still
matters.
When it comes to
American authors who are associated with prominent and very specific images of
them and their work, I would put Emily Dickinson on the short list, right
alongside Poe
and his Raven and Twain and his white
suit (and maybe Plath
and her Daddy issues and suicide). Most of the authors whom I include on my
American Lit survey syllabi are unfamiliar to the majority of my students, but
these are the exceptions, Dickinson among them; they do have a sense of the
poet, one entirely tied to biographical details such as her lifelong seclusion
within her Amherst home and her unwillingness to publish the poems that she
obsessively wrote in that space. The latter stereotype is easy to push back on—I
just share with them Dickinson’s
conversations with Thomas
Wentworth Higginson about publishing her poetry. But the Amherst connection?
That’s a harder nut to crack.
After all, Dickinson’s
biographers and historians have confirmed that (to the best of our
knowledge) she never left her family’s property for the last two decades of her
life, leading to the local descripton of her as “the
nun of Amherst” (one often revised in the 20th century to “the
belle of Amherst”). One of her most famous poems open with
the lines, “This is my letter to the world,/That never wrote to me,” amplifying
that sense of separation and seclusion. Yet as a number of recent
scholars have demonstrated, during precisely that era of increasing
seclusion Dickinson
was profoundly engaged with and impacted by the Civil War, to cite only one
example of why and how her interests, imagination, and writing ranged far
beyond her home and town. Indeed, if we flip the reading of the “letter to the
world” lines, we can remember that just because illness and family issues and
other factors limited Dickinson’s mobility and ability to travel, that doesn’t
mean she was not deeply engaged with varied and widespread histories, stories,
and communities; her poetry, like her letters,
consistently reflects such broad and deep engagement.
But if we can
and should take the poet out of Amherst, we can’t and shouldn’t take the
Amherst out of the poet. Which is to say, there are many ways in which the
identity of this small Western Massachusetts
town can be connected to the work and perspective of its most famous
resident. For one thing, Amherst has as longstanding a history of higher
education as any small American community—Amherst College was founded in
1821 (9 years before Dickinson’s birth) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst in
1863, meaning that Dickinson did her artistic and intellectual work in a hotbed
of such activity. For another, the town is also a hotbed of political activity
and activism—throughout the 19th century, as illustrated by local
products such as Helen
Hunt Jackson, Chief Justice Harlan
Stone, and Congressman
Edward Dickinson, Emily’s father; and into the present, as demonstrated by
the saying “Only
the ‘h’ is silent” to describe the town. And for a third, the town has as
deep and complex a relationship to American history and identity as did
Dickinson, having been named after a hero of the French and
Indian War who was also one of the first to
recommend the use of smallpox-covered blankets in conflicts with Native
Americans. A town that is as complex, engaged, and intelligent as Dickinson
herself—not a bad fit after all.
February Recap
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Histories and stories from your home you’d highlight?
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